Soviet Aeroflot Encounter 1978

On September 7, 1978, an Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134 crew flying over the Black Sea encountered a massive luminous sphere that matched their aircraft's speed and altitude for 20 minutes. The crew reported a sphere approximately 100 meters in diameter emitting a brilliant blue-white light that illuminated the aircraft's interior. Civil aviation radar at the relevant Soviet radar facility confirmed the contact alongside the Aeroflot flight. Soviet civil aviation authorities — the Министерство гражданской авиации (MGA) — investigated and classified the report. The case resurfaced during the glasnost era when Soviet journalist Vladimir Azhazha and physicist Felix Zigel obtained access to Soviet civil aviation UAP records and published summaries in the late 1980s as part of Mikhail Gorbachev's partial transparency initiative. Soviet Air Force and KGB files obtained after 1991 showed the Aeroflot encounter was one of hundreds of similar Soviet aviation UAP reports accumulated over decades, paralleling the classified American aviation UAP archive maintained by Project Blue Book and its successors.