An Alitalia Crew's Near-miss with a 'Missile' over Kent

Alitalia flight AZ284 was on the Milan-Linate to Heathrow run on the evening of Sunday 21 April 1991. At about 20:00 GMT the MD-80 was descending through flight level 222, some 30 nautical miles south of the Biggin VOR. For three or four seconds the captain saw a flying object "very similar to a missile". It was light brown, "desert colour", about 3 metres long and round, with no exhaust flame. It was on the opposite track and about 1,000 feet above. His co-pilot looked out and saw it too. The captain radioed London, and the controller said he saw "an unknown target 10 n.m. behind you".

What is on the record

The papers are in the Ministry of Defence's UFO files at The National Archives (DEFE 24/2061). The captain's ICAO near-collision report is there, with air traffic control occurrence reports that record a primary radar return behind the airliner tracking north-east. The Civil Aviation Authority passed the case to HQ Military Air Traffic Operations. The military radar could not help, because its recording camera was unserviceable that day.

MoD staff checked the obvious launchers: Rapier could not reach 22,000 feet, no Sea Dart was fired and the Lydd ranges held only small arms, anti-tank weapons and mortars. On 16 July 1991 HQ Military Air Traffic Operations wrote that a missile from Lydd was ruled out, no space activity explained it and the description did not fit a meteorological balloon. It would be treated as a UFO with no further investigation. When Paul Murphy MP pressed the ministry that September, an air defence minute judged it "probable that the object was not a missile; indeed it may have been another aircraft". The file also holds a cutting from The Independent of 6 May 1991, quoting an MoD spokesman: "certainly not anything that was fired".

The captain's form puts the encounter about 30 nm south of Biggin. Ministry minutes and the press say "over Lydd", further east.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — released government records name who saw it. The file redacts the captain's name, and The Independent's cutting names him as Achille Zaghetti. His co-pilot and the London controller on duty are identified by role. Neither pilot speaks anywhere else in the archive. A government file lifts the grade; it does not settle the question. What crossed the airliner's path is not resolved here.