Sighting record / 1994
January 1994. A Boeing 747SP nicknamed "Snow Leopard" cruised at 41,000 feet over western Kazakhstan. It was still dark. Then a light of enormous intensity appeared over the eastern horizon, coming fast. For about 40 minutes Tajik Air chief pilot Ed Rhodes and his American colleagues watched it fly circles, corkscrews and 90-degree turns high above them. Veterans of Pan Am, they had seen thousands of falling stars. This was nothing like them. After sunrise they flew beneath the trails it had left. The US Embassy in Dushanbe sent their account to the Secretary of State "for what it may be worth." In 2026 the cable resurfaced in the first batch of newly released government UAP files.
The aircraft was a Boeing 747SP with a past. It had flown for Pan Am and United before Tajik Air leased it in December 1993. Its nickname was "Snow Leopard." It flew from London Heathrow to Dushanbe and on to Delhi and Karachi, crewed by former Pan Am pilots and flight attendants. Its chief pilot was Ed Rhodes, an American.