India UFO: Airport grounds flights for hours as two fighter jets investigate sighting of 'small object'

An airport in India grounded flights for hours on Sunday (19 November) while two fighter jets investigated the sighting of an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO). The UFO sighting was reported from the northeastern state of Manipur at about 2.30pm local time.

An alert was issued by security forces and the Indian Air Force (IAF) halted flight operations at state capital Imphal’s Bir Tikendrajit International Airport for several hours. Posting on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, the IAF said: “IAF activated its Air Defence response mechanism based on visual inputs from Imphal airport. The small object was not seen thereafter.”

Rafale fighter jets were dispatched to investigate the object from the Hashimara airbase in the eastern state of West Bengal. When the first jet returned another one was later sent to investigate.

The fighter jets were equipped with advanced sensors and carried out low-level flying over the suspected area near the airport but didn’t find anything suspicious. Indian authorities have not revealed specific details of their investigation of the UFO sighting.

An official from India’s Central Industrial Security Force was quoted as saying by news agency PTI: “The UFO was visible with bare eyes moving westwards of the airfield [at the Imphal airport] till 4 pm.” Flights at the Imphal airport only resumed operations after 5.30pm on Sunday after authorities received clearance from the IAF. Two flights were diverted from the airport while three flights departing the airport were delayed.

It comes after a Ryanair pilot claimed his plane came “within 20 metres” of a UFO as the flight was taking off from Stansted Airport. A summary of the incident, obtained from the Essex Police through a Freedom of Information request, revealed that the pilot saw an object which he described as "black" when his Ryanair aircraft was ascending out of Stansted Airport and was at a height of 4000ft. 

The pilot said that the object passed within 20 metres of the aircraft while the plane was travelling at 230mph and the object was travelling from north to south. The sighting occurred last year but according to EssexLive he was not the only pilot that reported UFO sightings that year. Another report from 2022 was made after three aircraft reported seeing an object “in their vicinity” at the same time.