Sighting record / 1999
February 15, 1999. A senior air traffic controller at Glasgow Prestwick Airport saw a bright blip on the radar screen. It was big. The return suggested an object 10 miles long and two miles wide. It was fast. Around 3,000mph, crossing the Scottish coastline and heading south-west to Belfast. Two minutes later, it was gone. The report went to the Ministry of Defence's UFO desk. RAF air-defence staff launched an urgent investigation and impounded radar tapes. They found nothing to corroborate it. The public only learned of the Prestwick incident in 2000, after the Ombudsman pushed the ministry into a disclosure. A decade later, The National Archives released the files.
Prestwick sits in Ayrshire, on the west coast of Scotland. It is home to Glasgow Prestwick Airport and to the Scottish civil area-control centre. The area already had a history of strange reports. In 1997 several sightings of triangular craft were passed to Prestwick air traffic control, and in a separate scare, searchlights from an Irvine nightclub were mistaken for a UFO.