O'HARE

1. Public Record

O'Hare, 7 November 2006, about 16:15. United people at Gate C17 look up. A grey metallic disc, low, rotating, under two thousand feet. Visible something like five minutes. Pilots, supervisors, mechanics. Radio chatter pulls more of them onto the tarmac. Some accounts do not agree on height, shape, or number. Several agree it leaves upward and cuts a clean hole in the cloud deck that holds its shape long enough to point at.

United and the FAA first say they have nothing. Jon Hilkevitch at the Chicago Tribune files FOIA. The FAA then finds a United supervisor's call to the tower. An inbound ground controller has already used the word on the tape, earlier than the departure. Radar, the Agency says, shows nothing. NARCAP later writes a safety paper: revolving grey object over C17, implications for a busy field whether or not anyone likes the caption.

A gate, a hole in cloud, a tape the airline did not volunteer.

The disc was visible for approximately five minutes and was seen by close to a dozen United Airlines employees, ranging from pilots to supervisors.

2. Date of Incident

7 November 2006, approximately 16:15 CST. Tribune FOIA in the following days.

3. Location

O'Hare International, Gate C17. Approximate 41°59 N 087°54 W.

4. Official Narrative

FAA: not on radar, weather phenomenon, no investigation. Official narrative is absence plus a tape they released under statute. United's first sentence was also absence.

5. Witness Layer

United employees at C17. Tower voice. Hilkevitch. NARCAP. Passengers who were not the first source.

6. Recovery Logistics

Tower tape via FOIA. No airframe. No radar plot the Agency will own.

7. Assessment

A gate-and-tape file. Keep C17 and 16:15. Keep the disagreements on shape so the file is not a single drawing. The hole in cloud is the physical claim that outlives the disc arguments. Do not write radar silence as proof of weather. Do not write a fleet because a dozen people left a break room.

8. Materials & Remains

Tribune reporting. FAA tape. NARCAP paper. No photograph from the gate that this archive treats as primary.

9. Key Personnel

United employees at C17 : First look.

Jon Hilkevitch : The FOIA.

FAA tower : The tape they had.

10. Aftermath

O'Hare becomes the modern airport case. The hole is still the sentence people repeat. The Agency did not open a type file.

11. Current Archive Status

Status: C17, 7 Nov 2006. FOIA tape. No radar. Cloud hole claimed.

Confidence: High that United staff reported an object over C17 and that a supervisor called the tower. High that FAA first said it had nothing. Low that weather covers every account. Low that a disc is typed.

Filing note

A Tuesday afternoon gate, radio chatter, a grey rotation under the cloud, a hole that did not fill on time, an airline that had no comment, a reporter who asked in writing, a tape that had the word on it anyway.

Initially denied that they had any information. Then the statute found the call. That order is the case.