Incident · 5 March 2004 · Over southern Campeche, near Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico
Campeche, Mexico: Mexican Air Force infrared video of eleven lights
Also known as Campeche 2004, Mexican Air Force UFO video, Mexican Air Force FLIR video, Campeche FLIR
Partly explained. Sceptical analysts, among them the Mexican former pilot Alejandro Franz, matched the infrared lights to the continuously burning gas flares of the Cantarell offshore oil platforms behind the aircraft; the Mexican defence ministry never published a conclusion. (source)
On 5 March 2004 the crew of a Mexican Air Force Merlin C-26 on a routine anti-drug patrol over the state of Campeche tracked objects first seen on radar and recorded them with the aircraft's infrared camera. The video shows up to eleven bright lights that seem to hover in formation, dart about and, at one point, surround the aircraft. The crew could not see them with the naked eye. The Defence Ministry (SEDENA) gave the tape to the UFO journalist Jaime Maussan, who presented it on 11 May 2004 as proof of UFOs, and the ministry confirmed to Reuters that the footage was its own.
The Defence Secretary, Gen. Ricardo Vega García, said the ministry had analysed the video, did not call the objects UFOs, and that the conclusions were Maussan's, not SEDENA's. No official finding was ever published.
The explanation most analysts accept came within weeks: the lights were the gas flares of the Cantarell offshore oil platforms, tens of kilometres behind the aircraft, filmed in hot, humid air near sunset. The match rests on the camera's recorded bearing, the flames that the camera resolves at full zoom, and the Mexican pilot Alejandro Franz's photographs of the flares. It is a private analysis, and the radar contacts were not recorded. Earlier suggestions from UNAM researchers, atmospheric electrical flashes or ball lightning, were not backed by any published analysis.
Sources: Reuters (NBC News), 11 May 2004 · AP, 12 and 14 May 2004 · R. Sheaffer, Skeptical Inquirer, Sept/Oct 2004
Facts and claims
- documented On 5 March 2004 a Mexican Air Force Merlin C-26 surveillance aircraft on a routine anti-drug patrol over Campeche recorded, with an infrared camera, a series of bright objects at more than 3,500 metres that appeared to accelerate and change course suddenly; they were not visible to the naked eye. Source: elsiglodetorreon.com.mx (archived)
- documented Mexico's Defence Ministry confirmed to Reuters that it had provided the video. On it, after the crew switched on the infrared camera to track objects first picked up by radar, one of the pilots can be heard yelling "We are not alone! This is so weird"; the film shows 11 blobs of light that appear to hover in formation or dart about. Source: nbcnews.com (archived)
- claimed In videotaped interviews released with the footage, three members of the crew said the objects were invisible to the naked eye and at one point surrounded the aircraft at a minimum distance of two miles. Source: elsiglodetorreon.com.mx (archived)
- claimed Defence Secretary Gen. Ricardo Vega García said the video had been analysed at the ministry, which chose to give it to the UFO journalist Jaime Maussan rather than archive it as secret; that he had forbidden his staff to speak of UFOs or flying saucers; and that the conclusions were Maussan's: "Es el punto de vista de Maussan, para eso se le dio (el video), para que pudiera sacar él sus conclusiones... pero esa ya es una versión de él". He said his first impression was that they were drug-carrying aircraft. Source: elsiglodetorreon.com.mx (archived)
- claimed Maussan, who presented the 15-minute video at a press conference on 11 May 2004, said the objects were real: "They were invisible to the eye, but they were there, there is no doubt about it." Source: nbcnews.com (archived)
- claimed Julio Herrera, a nuclear-science researcher at Mexico's National Autonomous University (UNAM), suggested the lights could be electrical flashes emitted spontaneously by the atmosphere, but said more data, including precise atmospheric conditions, would be needed to test it. AP noted that the Campeche coast is Mexico's main oil and gas region, where platforms release or burn off gas. Source: spokesman.com (archived)
- claimed Writing in Skeptical Inquirer (September/October 2004), Robert Sheaffer reported that by 20 May sceptical analysts had identified the probable source as burning gas flares on the offshore oil platforms of the Bay of Campeche, and that on 26 May Capt. Alejandro Franz, a Mexican former pilot of the private research group Alcione, independently reached the same conclusion for the Cantarell field. Using the camera's recorded azimuth (about −134°, behind the aircraft to the left), Sheaffer placed the main objects in the direction of the largest platform complex, with individual flames resolved at maximum zoom; he wrote that the radar returns lay in a different direction, some probably trucks on Highway 186 (an analysis by Brad Sparks). Source: centerforinquiry.s3.amazonaws.com (archived)
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