America West Flight 564 sighting
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Type | Event (airliner sighting) |
|---|---|
| Date | 25 May 1995, about 9:20–9:25 p.m. |
| Place | Near Bovina, Texas, close to Clovis, New Mexico; restricted military area "Tieband" |
| Aircraft | America West Airlines Flight 564 ("Cactus 564"), Boeing 757, at 39,000 ft |
| Route | Tampa – Dallas/Fort Worth – Las Vegas |
| Witnesses | Capt. Eugene Tollefson; First Officer John J. Waller; lead flight attendant |
| Object | Dark, wingless cigar about 300–400 ft long, with a row of sequencing strobe lights |
| Investigator | Walter N. Webb, UFO Research Coalition / Fund for UFO Research |
| Status | Unexplained |
| Topics | Military encounters (topic) |
| People | Walter Webb |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 122 |
| Year | 1995 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1995 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 8 |
On the night of 25 May 1995 the crew of America West Airlines Flight 564, a Boeing 757 cruising at 39,000 feet over the Texas Panhandle, reported a huge, dark, cigar-shaped object with a row of strobing lights. The flight was the final leg of a service from Tampa to Las Vegas. The crew's conversations with air traffic control were recorded, and the case was investigated in detail by Walter N. Webb for a coalition of UFO groups. No satisfactory explanation was found.[1][2]
The sighting
"Cactus 564" began in Tampa, and its final leg ran from Dallas/Fort Worth to Las Vegas. At about 9:25 p.m. local time the 757, flown by Captain Eugene Tollefson and First Officer John J. Waller, was passing near Bovina, Texas, just across the state line from Clovis, New Mexico. There were thunderstorms to the north-east. The lead flight attendant, watching the lightning, was the first to notice a line of regularly flashing lights to the north and below the airliner. Waller then saw them too: a horizontal row of about eight strobe-like lights, as bright as landing lights and white with a tinge of blue, flashing in sequence from left to right. The crew judged them to be at 30,000 to 35,000 feet. Captain Tollefson left his seat to look and saw the sequencing lights as well.[1][2]
As the airliner continued west, the lights fell behind and could be seen against dark thunderclouds. When the clouds flashed with lightning, the crew saw the silhouette of a dark, wingless, elongated cigar shape around the lights. They did not know its distance. The pilots estimated its length at 300 to 400 feet, and other accounts say up to 500 feet depending on range. "When it lightning'd you could see the dark object," a crew member radioed. "It was like a cigar shape ... and the length is what got us." It was, he said, "the first time in 15 years I've ever seen anything like this", and probably military, since it was in a restricted area.[1][2][3]
Air traffic control
After about five minutes Waller radioed the Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center: "Off to our 3:00, got some strobes out there. Could you tell us what it is?" The conversation was recorded on FAA tapes. The controller said the position was over a restricted military area called "Tieband", used during the day, and that nothing showed on radar. The controller remarked that the description sounded like a tethered aerostat balloon, except for the many strobes. He checked with Cannon Air Force Base, which had released no balloons, then with other military units, including one that wondered aloud whether "any of our aerostats cut loose". All said they had nothing in the air. "It's a UFO or something, it's that Roswell crap again!" the controller joked to Cannon. He asked other aircraft in the area to look, but no one else saw the object.[1][2][5]
The controller also contacted the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). NORAD at first reported nothing, then called back to report an unidentified return in the area. It later said the return was a small aircraft whose transponder had not been working. The next morning, the controller said, NORAD told him it had tracked another, very unusual target in the same area shortly after the first. This target was at first stationary, then accelerated rapidly and stopped abruptly, several times over, with bursts of speed computed at 1,000 to 1,400 mph. This rests on one controller's account and could not be confirmed independently.[1][2]
Investigation
The investigator Walter N. Webb studied the case for the UFO Research Coalition. He interviewed the crew, the air traffic controllers and NORAD and FAA staff, and obtained a copy of the FAA tapes. He filed Freedom of Information Act requests and checked military installations for any activity that might explain the sighting. His interim and final reports, the latter published by the Fund for UFO Research in July 1996 with sketches of the object, found no known object or phenomenon that matched it. The case was later included in the compilation The UFO Evidence, and featured on the television series Sightings.[1][2][6][7]
Explanations
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Some have suggested the crew saw celestial objects or lightning effects in the clouds. In the 2015 Smithsonian Channel documentary UFOs Declassified: Pilot Eyewitness, the SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak said that "the kinds of things that can fool even, I think, trained pilots are, for example, bright planets". The controller's tethered-aerostat idea was ruled out by the units he called.[2][3]
The case is often cited alongside discussion of "fastwalkers", NORAD's term for unidentified objects that enter or leave the atmosphere at great speed, sometimes seen by the Defense Support Program satellites. Slower ones are called "slowwalkers". In December 2013 U.S. Northern Command told The Black Vault it had found two documents referencing the terms, but that they were properly classified. It said NORAD itself, as a bi-national organisation, was exempt from FOIA, so no search was made of its records.[4][8]
People and topics
- Boeing — The aerospace company whose Phantom Works looked at gravity research in 2002.
- Walter Webb — Investigator of the 1995 America West sighting.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- Freedom of Information Act — The 1966 U.S. law that lets the public request government records.
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- Fastwalker — A nickname for fast-moving unknown objects detected by space sensors.
On the Timeline
- Clinton witness order claim (1995) (31 March 1995) — Vallée says he was told President Clinton signed an order protecting certain witnesses.
- End of Stargate (1995) (30 June 1995) — The CIA ends Star Gate, its remote viewing program.
See every 1995 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Holloman Air Force Base — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- NORAD — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Patrick Gross, "America West Flight 564, Texas, May 25, 1995", UFOs at close sight · ufologie.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- America West case file, The Black Vault · theblackvault.com · archived copy
- "1995 UFO spotting in US was actually that of celestial bodies, claim astronomers", WION · wionews.com · archived copy
- "Fastwalkers & Slowwalkers", The Black Vault · theblackvault.com · archived copy
- nicap.org · nicap.org · archived copy
- youtu.be · youtu.be · archived copy
- books.google.com · books.google.com · archived copy
- documents.theblackvault.com · documents.theblackvault.com · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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