The Phoenix Lights: what thousands saw in 1997

What happened

The Phoenix Lights were two separate incidents on the night of March 13, 1997, though they are usually remembered as a single event. In the early evening, people across Arizona reported a wide, V-shaped formation of lights moving slowly across the sky. Around 10 p.m., a different set of lights, arranged in a stationary arc, hovered over the Phoenix area before going dark one by one. Thousands of people said they saw one or both displays that night.

Both incidents traced back to the same source, according to Robert Sheaffer, writing in Skeptical Inquirer in 2016: Operation Snowbird, an Air National Guard winter training program flown out of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. Sheaffer described the two sightings as "two unrelated incidents, although both were the result of activities of the same organization."

The early evening formation

The earlier, V-shaped lights were explained as a formation of returning military jets. Sheaffer wrote that this first event involved "A-10 jets returning from Nevada" as part of the Snowbird exercises. James McGaha, a retired Air Force pilot and astronomer who investigated the case, told NBC News in 2007 that what people saw was "clearly aircraft in formation, flying at two different times and then dropping flares" — describing both sightings as parts of one military operation, not one craft.

The lights over Phoenix at 10 p.m.

The later, stationary lights had a more specific, official explanation. Eight A-10 ground-attack jets from the Maryland Air National Guard, training at the Barry M. Goldwater Range southwest of Phoenix, dropped flares from 15,000 feet that night, military officials said in July 1997. Air Force Captain Drew Sullins said the flares "fall slowly by parachute and illuminate a wide area"; one pilot on the mission called the display "one hell of a light show."

That 1997 statement, however, did not clearly separate the two sightings. It referred only to lights reported "the night of March 13" without specifying whether the flares explained the earlier V-shaped formation as well, or only the 10 p.m. lights. Sheaffer's 2016 account is more precise, crediting the flares to a different flight of A-10 jets from the Maryland Air National Guard, distinct from the formation seen earlier that evening.

What the footage shows

Amateur video and photographs of the lights were taken that night and are still widely shared. They have also been mixed with fiction: Sheaffer noted that a dramatized film, The Phoenix Incident, combined real footage of the lights with invented alien scenes, which he said only made the case harder for outsiders to evaluate objectively.

What witnesses said

Fife Symington, Arizona's governor at the time, mocked the furor for years, at one point having an aide dressed as an alien appear at a press conference. In 2007 he said that performance had been a cover: he had personally seen the object and stayed quiet only because he feared causing panic. "I'm a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies," he said. "It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen." He called the experience "otherworldly."

McGaha rejected Symington's account directly. He told NBC News that the former governor "is not a trained observer" and that what he "feels in his gut doesn't make any difference," maintaining that the same aircraft-and-flares explanation covered what Symington saw as well.

Where scientists and skeptics stand

Physician Lynne Kitei has been the most prominent voice disputing the flare explanation, saying she had watched similar lights over Phoenix as early as 1995, two years before the main event. Sheaffer, skeptical of her case, wrote that he had not "run across anyone who understands what she's saying" about why the military account falls short.

Verdict

Real or Legend stamps the Phoenix Lights disputed, not fully debunked, because the two events are not equally settled. The 10 p.m. lights over Phoenix match a military account with a named unit, aircraft, altitude and quoted officers, and that explanation holds up well. The earlier V-shaped formation has a plausible explanation too, but it rests on retrospective analysis rather than an equally specific contemporaneous statement, and both Symington and Kitei continue to argue otherwise. Until a comparably detailed account of the first sighting surfaces, that half of the case stays open.