Why Airline Pilots Still Hide UFO Sightings

An active commercial airline pilot spoke publicly about UFOs, but only under complete anonymity. Identified on the broadcast as First Officer Kurt, the pilot appeared on the Dr. Phil Podcast with his face hidden and his voice altered. According to the segment, his flight certificates and medical class were verified ahead of time, and a former captain who had flown with him vetted his character before the interview took place, a level of vetting that signals how seriously the production treated the risk he was taking by appearing at all.

Kurt described a career trap built into the current reporting system. He said pilots who admit to seeing something unexplained can be flagged as medically unfit during routine Federal Aviation Administration exams, since examiners unfamiliar with UAP topics may treat a report as a sign of instability rather than an observation. At the same time, staying silent carries its own risk. If another crew member or air traffic controller reports the same object and a pilot did not, that pilot could later be accused of lying on a federal document. Kurt also said he personally received pressure to stop discussing a sighting, and that a friend received a cease and desist letter from an airline after speaking about one publicly.

This tension is not new, and research from federal agencies backs it up. In September 2023, NASA’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team, a panel of 16 outside experts chaired by astrophysicist David Spergel, released its final report after more than a year of review. According to that report, the panel found no evidence that UAP sightings have an extraterrestrial origin, but it identified stigma as one of the biggest obstacles to understanding the topic at all. Spergel stated directly at the time that stigma has limited reporting by pilots, both civilian and military, meaning researchers know there is missing data simply because people are afraid to submit it.

NASA'S Independent UAP Study Team

The NASA panel’s report also pointed to a practical gap that lines up with what Kurt described. According to reporting from Nextgov and other outlets covering the release, the study team recommended that NASA work with the FAA to better use the existing Aviation Safety Reporting System, sometimes referred to informally as a NASA report, as a channel for commercial pilots to submit UAP sightings. At the time of that report, there was no dedicated, anonymous, nationwide UAP reporting mechanism built specifically for commercial pilots. Kurt’s account this week suggests that gap still has not closed. He said pilots rarely use the existing NASA report option for sightings, because the same stigma tied to mental health gets attached directly to the stigma tied to UFOs, and he argued the industry needs a system built specifically for this issue rather than relying on a form designed for ordinary safety mistakes.

On the military side, the Department of Defense created the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, known as AARO, to serve a similar function for active duty personnel and government contractors, collecting and investigating reports as part of a broader effort to reduce classification barriers around the topic. Even with both a NASA backed research initiative and a dedicated Pentagon office asking for this data, commercial pilots like Kurt say they still do not feel safe using the outlets that already exist.

Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot, has been working on this same problem from outside government. He founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, known as ASA, specifically to support pilots willing to come forward. According to reporting on the organization, ASA has been in contact with more than one thousand military and commercial pilots about sightings and has referred more than eighty cases to the FBI for further review. That level of engagement shows the appetite for reporting exists. What remains unresolved is whether pilots feel safe enough to use the systems designed to receive it.

Sources

The Dr. Phil Podcast. (2026, August 6). Silence from the cockpit: An airline pilot’s UAP confession [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSH74IKoskI