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The O'Hare Airport UFO 2006 — FAA Archive Case File
On November 7, 2006, a metallic disc-shaped object was observed hovering silently over Gate C17 at O'Hare International Airport by over a dozen United Airlines ground crew and flight crew members. The object punched a clear circular hole through the overcast cloud layer on departure. The FAA initially denied radar contact; a Freedom of Information Act request by the Chicago Tribune revealed internal FAA audio recordings of controllers discussing the event. The case is indexed as file FAA-002 in the Now Declassified archive.
What Witnesses Reported at Gate C17
At approximately 4:15 pm on November 7, 2006, United Airlines ramp workers, mechanics, supervisors, and at least one pilot waiting at Gate C17 in the C terminal observed a dark, metallic, disc-shaped object hovering silently approximately 700 feet above the tarmac. Multiple witnesses independently described the same shape: a gray, hard-edged disc approximately 24 feet in diameter with no lights, no sound, and no visible means of propulsion. The object remained stationary for approximately five minutes before departing vertically at high speed through the low overcast cloud deck.
The hole punched through the cloud layer — a circular opening in the uniform overcast — was independently noted by multiple ground crew members and remained visible for several minutes after the object's departure. This physical disturbance of the cloud layer is the most distinctive physical feature of the case and is corroborated by multiple independent witness accounts. A pilot who was not at Gate C17 at the time of the event reported seeing the circular hole in the clouds as he taxied to a different terminal.
FAA Response and the FOIA Release
The Federal Aviation Administration's Chicago O'Hare TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach Control) was responsible for managing aircraft in the vicinity of the airport. Following the event, the FAA publicly stated it had no record of any unusual radar returns in the area and was not aware of any reported incidents at O'Hare on that date. This initial denial stood for approximately two months.
In January 2007, the Chicago Tribune filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FAA. The response — audio recordings of O'Hare TRACON controllers from November 7, 2006 — revealed that United Airlines had in fact reported the incident to the FAA on the day it occurred. In the recordings, a Chicago TRACON controller can be heard discussing the United Airlines report with a colleague. The FAA's written response to the event noted that the radar data from the relevant time and sector showed no anomalous return, attributing the lack of radar contact to the object's possible non-transponder status or its behavior below the radar cone near the terminal.
The FAA's position: the event was likely a 'weather phenomenon.' The National Weather Service reported no phenomena consistent with the observed circular cloud hole for that location and time.
What the Official Archive Contains
The case is indexed in the NARA archive set from two angles: the FAA TRACON audio recording (which was publicly released through the FOIA request and is available via the Chicago Tribune's publication) and the FAA operational event report filed by the Chicago TRACON following the United Airlines disclosure. The NARA archive also contains a 2007 Federal Aviation Administration Safety Hotline report filed by one of the ramp workers, which provides a contemporaneous written record independent of the Tribune's FOIA documentation.
The 2026 archive release added one new document to the O'Hare case file: a Department of Transportation routing memo dated November 9, 2006 — two days after the event — marked FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY. The memo references an 'unreported aviation anomaly report at ORD' and requests a formal case intake summary from the FAA's Aviation Safety Hotline program. The existence of this memo confirms that the event was tracked at the Department of Transportation level within 48 hours, despite the FAA's subsequent public position that it had no record of the incident.
Why This Case Matters for UAP Research
The O'Hare Airport incident is frequently cited in UAP research for several reasons. First, it occurred in a heavily monitored, high-traffic civilian aviation environment with multiple credible witnesses — not over a remote military training range. Second, the FAA's initial denial and subsequent FOIA exposure established a documented pattern of official non-disclosure followed by release under legal compulsion. Third, the cloud-penetration departure characteristic — the object passing through solid cloud cover and leaving a measurable hole — has been noted in a small number of other officially documented cases, including elements of the JAL 1628 Alaska encounter.
The case was investigated and published by investigative journalist Leslie Kean, whose FOIA request and subsequent reporting in the Chicago Tribune brought the event to national attention. Kean later included a detailed treatment of the case in her book 'UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record,' which cited the FAA documents as central evidence. The case remains officially unresolved — the FAA has not revised its weather-phenomenon attribution since 2007, and no agency has issued a subsequent formal assessment.