FBI-UAP-D024: White Lights Over North America and a Black Triangle Over Bagram - An FD-302 Pilot Interview

Source file: FBI-UAP-D024_FD-302_Airborne-Lights-and-Triangle_2002_2023-2024.pdf Originating agency: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Document type: FBI form FD-302, record of interview; interview conducted March 2024, entered April 2024 Date: March 2024 (interview); covers events of June 2002 and October 2023 to February 2024 Classification: Unclassified law enforcement record; released with redactions Page count: 3 VIRIN: 260807-O-D0360-1144 PURSUE Release: 5

Summary

The FD-302 is the standard instrument FBI agents use to record an interview. It is not an affidavit, not sworn testimony, and not a Bureau finding; it is a third-person summary of what the interviewee said, as written down by the agent. The footer printed on every page says so directly: "This document contains neither recommendations nor conclusions of the FBI."

This record covers an interview conducted in March 2024 and entered into the file in April 2024. The interviewee's name, the interviewing agents' names, the identity of the party who referred him, and the location of the interview are all redacted. From context he is a former U.S. military pilot now flying for a commercial airline. No individual is named in the released text, which is why the Key People table below is deliberately empty.

The account divides into three separate components: a wave of white lights the interviewee says many pilots have been seeing since October 2023, a video he shot himself in February 2024, and a single memory from June 2002 at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, connected to the others only by the fact that the same man was the witness.

The accompanying digital rendering, FBI-UAP-D025, is this entry's featured image. It is not a photograph: it is an artist's reconstruction prepared by the FBI in 2026 as a visual aid, showing a huge dark triangle blocking out a starfield.

Research Article

The report: white lights from October 2023 onward

The interviewee opens with a general claim: "starting in October 2023, a lot of pilots have been seeing the same event occurring, namely seeing lights in the sky." He said pilots had been discussing the events among themselves over a channel whose identity is redacted.

The timing is consistent: pilots typically saw them between midnight and 3 AM. The interviewee volunteers the right methodological caveat, and the document records it: he did not know whether the events occurred at that hour because that was when it was dark enough, or because that was when the lights were present.

The first sighting: Boston to Dublin, over Gander

His first observation came in October 2023, on a flight from Boston, Massachusetts to Dublin, Ireland, with the lights to the northeast toward Gander, Canada. The document is precise about the geometry: the pilot "was at an elevation of 37,000 feet and believed the lights were higher than him, probably at 50,000 feet or higher."

The behavior is the most distinctive element of the account: "The lights were white in color, would start out as dim, and get brighter before they eventually faded out. The full cycle of the lights would range from 10 seconds to one minute."

Number and motion: between one and four lights at a time. "Some lights did not move, while others moved in straight lines, sometimes changing direction, and typically did not move in a coordinated fashion." That absence of coordination argues against the first explanation anyone would reach for, a satellite train.

What the pilot explicitly rules out

Evidentially, the itemized exclusions are among the document's most important lines. The lights "looked like airplane landing lights," but the interviewee knew they were not, "nor did he think it was Starlink, Starlink flares, satellites, or meteors."

That list is not arbitrary: those four are exactly the conventional explanations offered for high-altitude night lights in 2023 and 2024. But this is a witness's exclusion, not an analysis. The document contains no independent test of any of these hypotheses, and does not state that one was performed.

Since that first sighting the interviewee has seen the lights approximately ten times, sometimes losing them for minutes before they returned, for durations of 45 minutes up to two hours. He "has seen the lights in all directions except for towards the south." Three times he saw them toward North Dakota while flying to either Seattle or Phoenix, and he has also seen them off the west coast and the mid-Atlantic coast. He did not know how far away they were but ventured 200 to 500 miles. He never saw them below the horizon, and had not heard about them at all prior to October 2023.

The February 2024 video

The only component with physical documentation is a video shot in flight in February 2024 (the day of the month is redacted), filmed on a Samsung Galaxy S22 phone. He noted the lights were brighter in person than on the camera, and were at a similar elevation to him or slightly higher. The document stresses the conditions: "The video is filmed from the cockpit of his aircraft with the lights turned off," a darkened cockpit, which reduces internal reflections off the windscreen.

The position is comparatively precise: approximately 150 miles northwest of Minneapolis, Minnesota, flying east. The lights were seen toward the north, in the North Dakota region, at around 4:36 AM Eastern Standard Time on a clear night.

The footage itself: "white lights were seen, sometimes ten or more present at once, moving around in straight lines and getting brighter/dimmer." The interviewee marks the limits of his own reading of it: at the 3:27 mark he was not sure whether two of the lights were really close together or whether it was a single light with a tail, and at the 3:47 mark he did not know whether it was three separate lights.

The most important corroborating detail comes shortly after: "At the 5:22 mark you can see the flight panel, showing that the airplane was traveling at approximately .80 Mach, and that the airplane was 40-50 miles northeast of Sioux Falls and could see the KFSD airport on the radar." That is checkable: the video carries its own position and speed stamp. He added that he never felt unsafe and did not believe the lights were within 100 miles of him.

June 2002: Bagram, Afghanistan

The third component is entirely separate, and also the most damaged in textual integrity. It begins at the foot of page 2, and its opening sentence is itself broken by redaction: "While [redacted] as a reservist, [redacted] got activated to go to Afghanistan." What is withheld is most likely a description of his role or civilian unit, plus his name. The sentence carries over onto page 3.

The account itself is short and clear. One night he was outside looking at the stars with another pilot. At approximately 4:30 AM local time he "noticed that the stars were getting blacked out over Bagram." Then: "It appeared as if something huge went overhead, from west to east, and was an equilateral triangle shape."

Motion characteristics: "The object was moving silently, at a consistent speed and altitude, possibly 150 knots, with no lights visible." He estimated it was 500 feet in size, but stressed that he could not fully see the shape of the object.

This sighting has a second witness: "The other pilot with [redacted] also observed the triangle, and when it passed over stated, 'did you see that?'" That is the single most corroborating detail in the file, immediately followed by the most weakening one: the interviewee did not further discuss the sighting with anyone else, nor did he hear anyone else discussing it.

Page 3 also carries a paragraph badly damaged by redaction and scanning. The available text reads: "Looking through the data, [redacted] never found information that could explain what he saw in Afghanistan in," and then, after a gap, "not aware of anything that would explain what he had seen." Who reviewed the data, what data it was, and who exactly was not aware cannot be established from the released copy. The paragraph must be treated as partial.

What the document does not say

The document offers no explanation. It does not state that an investigation was opened, that the video was analyzed, that radar or air traffic control records were checked, or that the second pilot from 2002 was located. It does not conclude that the lights or the triangle were craft, and it cross-references no other file.

The three components also differ in evidentiary weight. The 2023 and 2024 light sightings are single-witness testimony, but one is backed by video carrying a verifiable position and speed stamp. The 2002 sighting is two-witness testimony with no physical record at all, given roughly 22 years after the event. The two kinds of evidence do not reinforce one another, and the document makes no claim that they are related.

Significance

The value here lies not in drama but in the witness's profile and the quality of his caveats. The record captures checkable specifics from him (a named phone model, timestamps within a video, a Mach number, a distance from a named airport) alongside explicit admissions of uncertainty (whether it was two lights or one, how far away they were, that he could not fully make out the shape at Bagram).

The pairing of two events so far apart was made by the FBI in the document's own title because the same man witnessed both, not because any connection is asserted. The reader should preserve that distinction.

His closing remark may be the most quotable passage in the file. He believed not a lot of discussion was happening openly about the events with the lights, and he "did not think there was as much stigma, but people were just not used to talking about it." That is an observation about professional culture rather than about a phenomenon, and it is the witness's own explanation for why reports of this kind so rarely reach an official record.

Key People

Locations

Incidents

Notable Quotes

"Starting in October 2023, a lot of pilots have been seeing the same event occurring, namely seeing lights in the sky." -- page 1

"The lights were white in color, would start out as dim, and get brighter before they eventually faded out. The full cycle of the lights would range from 10 seconds to one minute." -- page 1

"The lights looked like airplane landing lights, but [he] knew that it was not them, nor did he think it was Starlink, Starlink flares, satellites, or meteors." -- pages 1-2

"Some lights did not move, while others moved in straight lines, sometimes changing direction, and typically did not move in a coordinated fashion." -- page 2

"The video is filmed from the cockpit of his aircraft with the lights turned off." -- page 2

"As captured on the video, white lights were seen, sometimes ten or more present at once, moving around in straight lines and getting brighter/dimmer." -- page 2

"At the 5:22 mark you can see the flight panel, showing that the airplane was traveling at approximately .80 Mach, and that the airplane was 40-50 miles northeast of Sioux Falls and could see the KFSD airport on the radar." -- page 2

"[He] noticed that the stars were getting blacked out over Bagram. It appeared as if something huge went overhead, from west to east, and was an equilateral triangle shape." -- page 3

"The object was moving silently, at a consistent speed and altitude, possibly 150 knots, with no lights visible." -- page 3

"The other pilot with [him] also observed the triangle, and when it passed over stated, 'did you see that?'" -- page 3

"[He] did not think there was as much stigma, but people were just not used to talking about it." -- page 3