INITIAL INFORMATION  WORKSHEET
DATE OF THIS INQUIRY:        
     Feb 23, 2021                                                                                                                                                             
SOURCE:
      YouTube story, Deep Black Horizon
SUBJECT:
      AAL Flight 2292 encounter over New Mexico
SIGHTING DATE:
       Feb 21, 2021
CMS NO.                                                            
This worksheet is designed to assess the possibility of a correlation with a qualifying potential sighting of interest and a credited MADAR anomaly and involves working with the known sighting date and time in UTC and the immediate state, or sometimes the adjoining state. If that protocol is met, the sighting and node locations will be taken into consideration.

1. INITIAL SOURCE:

February 21, 2021; Northeast corner of New Mexico west of Clayton.
Approx. 1:19 pm CST. Pilots of an American Airlines jet Flight 2292 flying over New Mexico reported (actual transmission on file) they saw something fly directly over them that they could not explain. The strange encounter happened over the northeast corner of New Mexico west of Clayton, New Mexico as the jet was cruising at 36,000 feet traveling around 460 mph. The unidentified flying object sighting was documented by the pilots when they radioed the Albuquerque Center. The pilot reported: “Do you have any targets up here?” the pilot asked. “We just had something go right over the top of us – I hate to say this but it looked like a long cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing – moving really fast right over the top of us.” Nine minutes prior to the encounter a Learjet lj60 passed the airbus 320 AA2292 with the Lear at the top of the radar screen at FL410 (41,000) and AA2292 coming onscreen on the right at FL360 (36,000'), the Lear being 5,000' higher. Lear is traveling SE at 500 mph; the AA2292  heading SW at 387 mph.  AA2292 had plenty of time to see the Lear and never considered this a near miss. Albuquerque knew they were there and had them vertically spaced 5,000' and I was able  show the horizontal separation was about 3 km at closest approach. At 1:19 when the real UAP event took place ARTC did not have anything on radar. AA2292 travelled 54 miles in those 9 minutes. (Fran Ridge)

Deep Black Horizon c/o Steve Douglass. See YouTube stories.
https://deepbluehorizon.blogspot.com/
Also our archived audio, FR24 loop with audio, below)
Global News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9Jpg9ouXxE


Exhibit A
Audio of transmission from AA2292.
http://www.nicap.org/match/correlations/20210221/20210221NM-AAL2292.MP3

Exhibit B
This is our first FR24 radar loop with audio at 1:19 pm, the estimated time of the actual encounter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYXCuCLK130&t=30s

Exhibit C
This is the loop 9 mins prior to UAP (1:10 pm) and one can see at least 3 other "near misses"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5NP3eAQSRY

Exhibit D
This close-up shows what "looks like" a "near miss" at FR24's playback speed of 12x
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4c7JB9Rbmw

Exhibit E
This close-up at near normal speed shows no "near miss" with 5,000' vertical separation and about 3 km horizontal separation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhoYQTzpOuM&t=125s


2. NUFORC DATA CHECK:

Interesting sighting investigated by MUFON at Albuquerque on the same day.

* Note: NUFORC lists the incorrect time for the cruise missile-like sighting. Should be 13:19 or 1:19 pm CST.

3/2/21 19:25 Socorro NM USA Formation 10 seconds Observed 5 round orange lights in a line formation. I believe the formation was in a roughly SW to NE line, ((Starlink satellites??)) 3/31/21
2/21/21 19:18 *
NM USA Cylinder
Cruise missile looking. ((NUFORC Note: Report from FAA employee. PD)) 3/2/21
2/21/21 15:07 Albuquerque NM USA Disk
Silver/dull disk with Greenish/Gold dome. Witness provided several photos (3). ((MUFON report)) 3/31/21
2/19/21 18:50 Santa Fe NM USA Disk 10 min Far but looked like heat around a saucer. 3/2/21

3. MUFON CMS CHECK:

MUFON Case Management System - SEARCH
  The search result is limited to max 50 returned Sighting Reports
Cases Found = 2
  Date Submitted Date/Time
of Event		 Short Description Location of Event Long Description Attachments
1 2021-02-26 2021-02-21
3:07PM		 Slver Disc w/ Gold Dome Hovered and Responded to Thought. Alnuquerque, NM, US Golddisc1.JPG
Golddisc2.JPG
Golddisc3.JPG
2 2021-02-24 2021-02-22
6:00PM		 Two objects flying appear reflective and on fire, glowing silver, pink Roswell , NM, US SmartSelect20210224182944Gallery.jpg
SmartSelect20210224202009Gallery.jpg


Feb 21, 2021; Albuquerque, NM
3:07 pm. MUFON Case # 113846 Albuquerque, N.M. The witness provided three photos. Only the first called Golddisc1.jpg provides an unadulterated image of a very tiny glodish disc against a blue sky background with no foreground objects with which to gauge distance or size. The EXIF Data shows he used a COOLPIX B500 digital camera and no manipulative software enhanced the original image. So go so far. However, the date stamp of the original says Feb 19, 2021 at 12:2:53 p.m. and the date it was digitized was the same. Of course, the camera's clock could be off. However when there is only one witness, a blurry photo and a witness who claims to have made telepathic communication I have doubts. However the witness contact info seems legit (sorry i cant share it or MUFON would can me) and the witness seems sincere. No photo manipulation either except for date descrepancy.

MUFON Case # 113818 from Roswell the following day. Another two photos submitted. One is a blurry crop on the first photo. The first photo seemingly justifies the time of day as evening at 6 p.m. with a red skyline. The photos appear to be short jet contrails illuminated by the set sun beneath them. Image contained no EXIF data so no date/time stamp was possible. My feeling is this is just far away contrails and not actual round and missile shaped objects.Since the object touched Oklahoma and Colorado and came near western Texas, I checked MUFON CMS for the 21st for those three states. Colorado had no reports for the 21st. Oklahoma had not reports for the 21st. Texas had one 600 miles away in Ft. Worth area called North Richlands Hills, Texas. Case # 113763. 10:05 p.m. Going north to south for a few seconds. Zig - Zagging star like object. No photo. Probably unrelated.

Since the object touched Oklahoma and Colorado and came near western Texas, I checked MUFON CMS for the 21st for those three states. Colorado had no reports for the 21st. Oklahoma had no reports for the 21st. Texas had one 600 miles away in Ft. Worth area called North Richlands Hills, Texas. Case # 113763. 10:05 p.m. Going north to south for a few seconds. Zig - Zagging star like object. No photo. Probably unrelated. So I checked Kansas. Nothing on the 21st. And then Arizona. Arizona had one report. MUFON Case #113825. 9:15 a.m. Oro Valley, Arizona. Near Tuscon, southeast of Phoenix. White cigar shaped object. Stationary for two minutes. No photo. My conclusion is that based on these MUFON reports I researched, the American Airlines encounter has no likely relation to these MUFON reports.

4. SIGHTING SEARCH TOOL:

20210221 no data
20210220 no data
20210222 no data
Next anomaly reptd in NM was
2021-02-24 at 11:49 UTC NM  Santa Fe  node 78 converted is 4:49 am local MST

5. PROXIMITY:


Map from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Clayton, New Mexico 88415
6. MADAR DATA:

Negative

7. COMMENTS:

As you can tell, I was able to create a number of FR24 loops. The loops show the Learjet lj60 passing the airbus 320 AA2292 with the Lear at the top of the radar screen at FL410 (41,000) and AA2292 coming onscreen on the right at FL360 (36,000'), the Lear being 5,000' higher. Lear is traveling SE at 500 mph; the AA2292  heading SW at 387 mph.  AA2292 had plenty of time to see the Lear. Albuquerque knew they were there and had them vertically spaced 5,000' and I show the horizontal separation was about 3 km at closest approach. If the flight had contacted Abuquerque at the time of the Lear encounter at 1:10 pm, ARTC would have confirmed what we already know and can see on the loop. No mystery. At 1:19 when the real UAP event took place ARTC did not have anything on radar. AA2292 travelled 54 miles in those 9 minutes.

We can eliminate the Learjet for several reasons, including the fact that AA2292 was equipped with a Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS). This can detect aircraft up to 40 mile range and at altitude differences of 10,000 feet. They detect the transponders from other aircraft. If the aircraft transponder on the Lear was off, then the TCAS wouldn't have detected it. We know that lj60's transponder was on because it showed up on their radar. It was obvious on our FR24 radar here as well and in all of our recorded loops. The pilot would have seen the Lear on the TCAS.

And again, we have shown that there was no near miss with the Learjet. Not only that, but my model shows the Lear was in view for a much longer period and no closer than 3 km in horizontal separation. The pilot's description of a "long cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing - moving really fast right over the top of us" is not borne out by Exhibit C. 

So if it wasn't the Learjet, what was it?

I suggest three possibilities:
1) A missile test. No significant military aircraft presence was noted on ADS-B logs, and Sundays are typically the day off for military training. When tests occur the military notifies the FAA, aircraft are kept out of the area and their schedules and strict flight lanes at aircraft need to stay in to not interfere with these tests. As noted when I made the FR24 playback loops there was/is no sign of a "no fly zone" or "restricted area", no holes on the screen. In fact aircraft everywhere.

2) Black project test gone awry. Pretty much the same situation but I seriously doubt that someone will come forward and say they made an awful mistake.

3) A real UAP. Since in today's world we are stuck with two realities on every topic, we are almost right back where we started. Almost....but it ain't over yet.

I found it somewhat odd that the call sign intro was missing from the audio. There should have been a portion at the beginning of the transmission where the pilot said, "Center, this is 2292, do you have any targets up here..........." The man who reported this incident may have thought that the airline would balk at using this, but after listening to the entire file I was able to locate the transmission, and that portion is NOT included. The informant had said that a different transmission had ridden over that portion. But that brings up the question as to how it was established that AA2292 was the flight in the first place. But then the company denied that 2292 had even made the call! Later, they admitted the incident:

"Following a debrief with our Flight Crew and additional information received, we can confirm this radio transmission was from American Airlines Flight 2292 on Feb. 21. For any additional questions on this, we encourage you to reach out to the FBI."

More recently, Rod Dyke, one of our colleagues asked:
"Wouldn’t it be fruitful to find out who the Lear jet was and ask the pilot(s) if they too saw anything unusual?

My response was that somebody should do this, just to make sure that no leaf was unturned. But I think the the chances are very slim since the two events were 9 mins and 50+ miles apart. However, this does bring up something even more potentially fruitful. There were a lot of aircraft in the areas at the time. And even more SE of the area if the UAP was on a collision course as AA2292 hinted at, giving them longer to study the object. Did anybody else downrange or someone earlier on the same flight path see anything?

Luaan Gutierrez wrote;
"I was curious about the overlay of the high altitude IFR charts with the radar that you sent to us. The jet did kind of a curious thing. If you notice on Exhibit B radar that at 1:04 takes a sharp turn to the left.  When I overlaid the HI-6 enroute chart, it shows that he was most likely coming in on J96.  According to the chart, he would have had to make a slightly RIGHT turn to stay on the airway.  Could this possibly have been the precise moment that they encountered the UAP and were taking evasive action?  Here is what I found."

I had noticed that. On 25 Feb I wrote:
The audio portion is not syncd to the OBS video but at 19:31:00 UTC (1:31 pm) 10 mins after the "near miss" 2292 looks like it took evasive action. It may have been a course change but its hard to tell and as to why. 2292 was at flight level 370 (37,000') and was heading SW at 411 mph. Still don't know what direction the UAP came from but I'm assuming it was going SW to NE. There was a time zone error in our preliminary yesterday and was caught when the flight didn't appear on our FR24 display.  When corrected to 19:19 UTC the flight popped right up on our radar in the NE quadrant. See the full data block for AAL2292. Rechecking our MADAR site data at node 78 at Sante Fe showed no field readings nor any compass deviations. Range was 200 miles.

At this point we are awaiting the FOIA's that might help us learn more about this incident.

Fran Ridge
MADAR Operations Center Director
Investigator

ENDREP