Description

Time: 1986

Location: Hungary

English translated transcript of the 1986 Malév (former Hungarian national airlines) incident. Experiencer pilot Dezső Szentgyörgyi. (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8HaAJS8QUk)

Dezső Szentgyörgyi Malév Pilot

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I spent over 35 years flying with Malév. I started on the Tupolev 134, then the Yak-40, and eventually I flew the entire Boeing 737 family.

During that time, something happened for which I am very grateful to fate. Very few people have ever experienced it, and for such a long time, I think only myself and two of my colleagues.

It was on September 1, 1986. In the evening, we departed from Ferihegy Airport on a flight to Dresden. The flight usually left around 7:30 PM. The weather was beautiful after a cold front had passed—the visibility was crystal clear, like the contours of everything were carved with a razor blade. The air was perfectly clean, no haze at all. The lights of the cities below would pierce upwards like columns, illuminating the faint dust above them, and the different towns were sharply separated from each other.

From high altitude, you could see as far as 300 kilometers or more, and it was stunning.

After takeoff, the first significant waypoint was Esztergom. By then, the Tupolev 134 had reached about 4,000 meters altitude. I was in the navigator’s seat, surrounded by glass—like sitting on a plank outside the airplane, observing the world like a bird. I loved that view.

Above Vienna’s glow, I suddenly noticed something about the size of an orange—an orange-colored object just hanging there. I only saw it because my two pilot colleagues, sitting above me, called out, “Look outside!”

I looked and saw it. At first, I thought it was just the setting sun reflecting on a weather balloon launched from the airport—maybe some meteorological balloon catching the sunlight. I was about to turn back to my maps and instruments when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it suddenly move.

It didn’t accelerate or decelerate. It just… shifted. In less than a second, it crossed the distance from over Vienna to above Prague’s city lights—200 to 300 kilometers away—like when you pause a video and then start it again. Just instantly there.

I froze. What was that?

Now remember, this was during the Cold War. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had just happened. Between Vienna and Czechoslovakia was the European air defense zone—everywhere, missile launchers were manned, fighter jets were sitting in readiness, pilots with their fingers on the button. It was a near-war situation.

So my first thought was: *Who would be crazy enough to test a new superplane in this kind of tense military environment?* I was convinced it was some side’s secret aircraft—either theirs or ours.

But then came the next shock: it stopped.

And if it stopped, it couldn’t be an airplane.

I thought, maybe it’s so far away it just looks stationary because it’s turning. The distance between Esztergom and Prague is about 300 to 400 kilometers. But no—that wasn’t it.

Because then it traced a perfect square in the sky. At each corner of the square, it stopped for about a minute.

That’s when I thought: *What kind of technology is this?*

I had already read about UFOs. I was sure we weren’t the only wonders in the universe. But seeing it with my own eyes felt like… well, like the Pope meeting his boss. My first reaction was still: *Is there some trick or deception behind this?*

I tried to switch my mind off. But I couldn’t—not me, not the two pilots either. The plane was on autopilot, flying smoothly like a waterfowl gliding.

By the time we reached the area near Nitra, climbing close to 10,000 meters, that “orange” just hanging there suddenly moved—fast. In an instant, it darted above us.

It happened so quickly that only my consciousness really registered it. It was like when you’re talking to someone normally, but something flashes into your field of vision—you still *know* what you saw, even if it was just a fraction of a second.

The orange-sized light became the size of a basketball, then transformed into a luminous torus—a glowing ring of light.

In the clear, moonless black sky, the stars were silver. This thing had its own light.

It positioned itself deliberately above us but slightly in front of the cockpit, so we could only see it from the front windows. It looked about the size of a large sombrero. It was impossible to judge its true size because there was nothing to compare it to.

Then it began to slowly “descend” toward us.

As it came closer, it changed color—probably because at first it still reflected the sunlight, and later it switched to its own illumination. Its light pulsed through colors—purple, then green, then back to purple, and green again.

It hovered there, maybe about five meters across if I had to guess. A solid, thick ring of light. In the center, a dark void. It was a striking phenomenon.

While we watched, I called the captain and suggested we report it.

I’ll admit it—this is the part I still regret. I was too much of a coward to use the words “flying saucer” or anything like that on the radio. Instead, I told the Slovak controller, “Something is flying above us.”

He replied, “Impossible. There are no planes in your area.”

I repeated, “But something *is* flying above us.”

His voice got tense. “How high?”

We were at 10 kilometers altitude. I told him it was at least five times higher—so around 50 kilometers up.

He went silent. At that time, even military jets didn’t fly that high.

Then he asked, “What speed?”

I quickly estimated the distance between Prague and Nitra and did the math on my handheld computer. The speed came out to roughly one-third the speed of light.

Another long silence.

Now, keep in mind, this was a Hungarian trying to speak English to a Slovak controller who also spoke poor English. Neither of us wanted to escalate it. If I forced the issue, they would have had to scramble fighter jets. And then what?

So I let it go. I just said, “Forget it. It’s probably nothing.”

Maybe he already understood more than he said. Maybe he didn’t want to make a record of it either.

From then on, I knew this wasn’t from Earth.

It stayed with us, guiding us like the Star of Bethlehem, following the same route as we did. At one point, the captain even called a flight attendant to look. She came, looked, and said, “Captain, that’s a very strange aircraft. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Then she went back to her work serving passengers.

When we reached the East German–Czechoslovak border and began descent, the pilots pulled back the throttles. The object immediately reacted.

In a fraction of a second, the large glowing ring shrank—first into a basketball-sized orange, then into a tiny golden star among the silver stars. We watched it for about half a minute as it slowly faded away among them.

The whole encounter lasted about 40–45 minutes.

This wasn’t just a fleeting glimpse. It was continuous. There was a sustained *contact*—not communication, but contact.

It was a textbook “Close Encounter of the Second Kind.”

When we landed, the ground felt like it was waving under my feet, like walking on the deck of a ship in rough seas.

We were all silent. My captain was the party secretary for the airline pilots’ union. My other colleague was the son-in-law of a high-ranking official. I was the only one without ideological baggage.

I asked, “Tibor, should we tell anyone about this?”

He just said, “I know what I saw.” And that was it.

Back at the airport, I tried to tell some people. They laughed. “You probably saw some secret fighter jet being tested.”

I called my mother. She said, “My dear son, what have you been drinking?”

That’s when I realized—this isn’t something people will accept easily.

That night, I even stopped at a friend’s house because I just *had* to tell someone. He listened, smoked his cigarette, and said, “Forget it. Everyone in this world is an idiot except you? You’re the only one going against the traffic?”

So I kept it to myself.

But my life changed completely.

Until then, I believed humans were the ultimate miracle of the universe. That night, I understood we’re no different than little ants scurrying around. Maybe we matter, maybe we don’t.

My whole value system shifted.

Before, I was an atheist. After that night, I didn’t suddenly become religious, but I knew the world doesn’t work the way we were taught. There is more—something beyond just the body.

My priorities changed. I stopped caring about career or ambition. I just wanted peace of mind, to raise my child, to live normally.

Since then, I know—we are not alone. And what I saw was *not* built on this Earth.

Would you like me to also add paragraph breaks for easier reading and maybe highlight the key phases of the encounter (like “initial sighting,” “movement,” “close pass,” etc.)?