Weather Balloon, Or Aliens Waiting For A Landing Slot?

A group of United Airlines employees swear they saw a saucerlike, flying object hovering low over Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in November.

The Chicago Tribune swears it isn't making this up.

Workers told the paper they saw the UFO hovering over the airport November 7. The craft floated above the airport for several minutes, before witnesses claim it shot through the air, leaving a hole in the cloud layer.

A United supervisor even reported the object to air traffic controllers... who say they didn't see anything on radar.

FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said lack of evidence closes the matter as far as the agency is concerned... and the FAA won't investigate further. Neither will highers-up at United.

"Our theory on this is that it was a weather phenomenon," she said. "That night was a perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low [cloud] ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you can see funny things. That's our take on it."

The employees maintain they saw a real object. And while it's possible the phenomenon could have been something as benign as an odd weather event... many of the workers say what they saw was a lot more substantial than 'swamp gas.'

"I tend to be scientific by nature, and I don't understand why aliens would hover over a busy airport," said one United mechanic, who observed the Frisbee-shaped object hovering over Gate C17 from a B777 cockpit. "But I know that what I saw and what a lot of other people saw stood out very clearly, and it definitely was not an [Earth] aircraft."

A United manager told the paper he ran to see the object for himself, after hearing workers discuss the phenomenon over company radio.

"I stood outside in the gate area not knowing what to think, just trying to figure out what it was," he said. "I knew no one would make a false call like that. But if somebody was bouncing a weather balloon or something else over O'Hare, we had to stop it because it was in very close proximity to our flight operations."

One controller on duty took a more lighthearted approach to the matter.

"To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable," said Craig Burzych.

The incident has attracted the attention of several paranormal groups, including the National UFO Reporting Center.

FMI: www.united.com, www.ufocenter.com