The Campeche Infrared Lights

Eleven heat sources crowded the infrared screen of a Mexican Air Force aircraft over Campeche, and at one point they appeared to surround it. Only three of them showed on radar, the archive's telling says. The crew of a Merlin C-26A were flying an anti-drug patrol between Copalar in Chiapas and Ciudad del Carmen in Campeche. It was between five and half past five in the afternoon of 5 March 2004.

The record names three officers. Major Magdaleno Castañón Muñoz was the pilot. Lieutenant Germán Marín Ramírez ran the radar and Lieutenant Mario Adrián Vázquez Téllez operated the forward-looking infrared camera.

What is on the record

The Mexican Defence Ministry, SEDENA, released the footage to Jaime Maussan and confirmed it to Reuters. It called the objects unexplained. Independent analysts, among them Mexican researchers and sceptics, attributed the infrared sources to gas flares burning on the Cantarell oil platforms in the Bay of Campeche. That is the standard explanation for this case and it should be read alongside the footage. The archive's single telling raises the flares too, and its host leaves the question open.

The case was carried by international wire services as well as by the ministry's own release. The archive also holds one document, a file from the UK Ministry of Defence UFO papers at the National Archives. It classes that file as reporting and not as a primary record of the flight.

Why it sits where it does

This case grades L3 on three resolved claimants from one video on one channel, the three men in the crew. The tier reflects named military witnesses and footage released by a defence ministry. It is not a judgement against the flare explanation. The record holds a filmed patrol, an official release and a specific ordinary answer. Whether every one of the eleven sources was a flare is not resolved here.