Sighting record / 2022
November 2022. Night over Porto Alegre. A LATAM crew descending towards Salgado Filho Airport comes on the radio with a polite, puzzled question. Is there any report of an object at the 10-to-11 o'clock position? There are some lights, the pilot says. Sometimes they go out. Sometimes there is one, sometimes two or three. Another crew, inbound from Confins, has been watching three lights turning in a spiral ever since leaving. Controllers see nothing on radar. Over about five nights, some seven airline pilots report lights in the skies of southern Brazil. Then the satellite trackers go to work.
October 22, 2022. About 22:30. Azul flight 4517 was flying from São Paulo/Guarulhos to Porto Alegre, high over Santa Catarina. The pilot reported a very strong light, like an aircraft's landing light, pointing towards the plane. Its movement followed no traffic circuit. He called it "movimento aleatório". Random movement. The light, he said, "aparece e some, aparece e some, várias vezes". It appears and disappears, again and again. Controllers had no matching traffic on radar.