IncidentO'Hare Airport UFO (7 November 2006)

aka O'Hare Airport UFO (7 November 2006)

About a dozen United Airlines employees at Chicago O'Hare reported a dark metallic disc hovering silently over Gate C17 before it shot up through the overcast, reportedly leaving a circular hole in the clouds; the FAA declined to investigate, calling it a weather phenomenon.

under-corroborated Multiple credible aviation witnesses but no instrument record, no authenticated imagery, and a contested hole-punch-cloud explanation the FAA never formally closed. Held under-corroborated.

status history (1)

2026-06-14 · new → under-corroborated — seeded 2026-06-14 — corpus-growth pass (canonical cases the record lacked)

▸ Deep dive — full timeline, named personnel, sensors, theory-by-theory analysis, and the conventional explanations weighed against the open questions →

On 7 November 2006, around 4:15 pm, ramp and gate staff and pilots at O’Hare’s Concourse C reported a silent disc hovering below the cloud deck over Gate C17 for several minutes before a fast vertical climb said to punch a clean hole in the overcast. The story surfaced via a Chicago Tribune FOIA request; the FAA, finding nothing on radar, attributed it to a ‘weather phenomenon’ (a hole-punch / fallstreak cloud) and did not investigate. The case is cited for its credentialed aviation witnesses, but it has no authenticated photograph despite the airport setting, and the temperatures that afternoon are debated as to whether they support fallstreak-cloud formation.

Notable & intriguing

The story emerged through a Chicago Tribune FOIA request (Jon Hilkevitch) after United and the FAA initially denied having information; an internal review then found a United supervisor’s call to an FAA tower manager.

Chicago Tribune; Wikipedia
The FAA’s non-committal ‘weather phenomenon’ (hole-punch cloud) framing is contested because such clouds require below-freezing layer conditions; no radar return and no authenticated photo exist.

Wikipedia; NARCAP

Public-record items already documented about this subject. Folklore is labelled. Sources cited where the specificity warrants it.

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