The Manises Incident: TAE flight JK-297 and the Mirage F1 interception

Sunday night, 11 November 1979. TAE flight JK-297, an SE-210 Super Caravelle, was bound for the Canary Islands after a refuelling stop at Palma de Mallorca. On board were 109 people. Captain Francisco Javier Lerdo de Tejada flew with co-pilot Ramón Zuazu and flight engineer Francisco Javier Rodríguez.

About 23:00, over Ibiza. The captain turned off the cabin lights. Then the flight engineer saw them. Red lights, to the left of the aircraft. They came toward the airliner fast, apparently on a collision course. Lerdo de Tejada climbed and descended to shake them off. The lights mirrored each change of course and held about 0.5 km away.

Over the radio he said: "Es mucho más rápido que nosotros y se acerca cada vez más. ¡Me voy para Valencia!" It's much faster than us and keeps getting closer. I'm heading for Valencia. The tower reported no traffic in the area. He declared an emergency and diverted to Manises Airport, reportedly the first commercial flight forced down by a UFO. On the ground, airport director Miguel Morlán saw five lights moving quickly and easily. One passed near the runway. Staff switched on the runway lights for an aircraft that never came.

At 00:40 a Mirage F1 of Ala 14 left Los Llanos Air Base in Albacete. Captain Fernando Cámara found a large, static red light over Manises. When he closed at about 1,000 km/h, it flew ahead of him at the same speed, with no apparent effort. He needed Mach 1.4 to keep it in sight. "Vi la luz, aunque mi radar no detectaba nada," he said later. I saw the light, although my radar detected nothing.

Over Sagunto it became an inverted cone without a base. It changed colour and accelerated away. His warning system reacted as if a missile radar had locked on. Radio interference hit every frequency at once. A last contact, a white disc, came toward Menorca. After about an hour and a half, almost out of fuel, he returned to Los Llanos.

The Defence Ministry called the matter reserved. In September 1980 Enrique Múgica Herzog of the PSOE asked for an explanation in parliament. The Air Force file, declassified in the 1990s, concluded: "No se ha podido averiguar el origen de las referidas luces." It has not been possible to determine the origin of the said lights. It also records no radar contact.

Not everyone believed the crew. Days later, 58 of the 109 passengers signed a statement accusing the pilot of hiding a technical failure behind fanciful stories. Yet an inspection at Valencia found no fault with the aircraft.

Juan Antonio Fernández Peris of Fundación Anomalía, in El expediente Manises, proposed flashes from a chemical complex about 160 km away, made visible by an exceptional thermal inversion. Witnesses have repeatedly rejected it. Cámara said the lights moved toward Zaragoza, not toward the ground. Others suggested US Sixth Fleet electronic warfare. Cámara said the fleet was too far away.

J. J. Benítez wrote Incidente en Manises in 1980. Cuarto Milenio staged a 40th anniversary reconstruction with Cámara. Journalist Javier Cavanilles calls it the most famous UFO case in Spain.