FBI releases underwelming docs on American Airlines Flight 2292 UAP encounter

 

On February 21, 2021, American Airlines Flight 2292 was cruising at about 36,000 feet over northeastern New Mexico when the crew suddenly reported something very unusual.

The Airbus A320 was en route from Cincinnati to Phoenix when one of the pilots radioed that a “long cylindrical object” had just passed over the aircraft. He said it looked almost like a cruise missile and was moving extremely fast.

I happened to record the radio traffic from the incident, and I’m including those transmissions with this post. Hearing the pilot describe what had just happened gives the event an immediacy that doesn’t quite come across in the FBI paperwork.

The encounter was brief, but serious enough to attract attention almost immediately. The report was eventually passed along to the FBI, which opened an assessment into the incident.

And that is where these newly released documents become interesting.

What strikes me most about them is just how little investigative effort appears to have gone into determining what the crew actually saw.

The FBI documents show that agents contacted the Las Animas County Sheriff’s Office, Union County Sheriff’s Office and Colfax County Sheriff’s Office, asking whether anyone had reported objects descending from the sky or anything crashing in the area.

Apparently, nobody had.

But one thing that immediately jumps out at me is who the FBI apparently didn’t contact.

The military.

This happened in New Mexico, in a region surrounded by military installations and enormous blocks of military airspace. In the broader area are Kirtland Air Force Base, Cannon Air Force Base, Holloman Air Force Base and the Army’s White Sands Missile Range.

Yet, at least in the documents released here, I see no indication the FBI contacted any of them.

No apparent effort to determine whether there had been military aircraft operating in the area.

No apparent inquiry about missile or weapons testing.

No visible attempt to obtain military radar data.

No indication anyone asked whether some classified or otherwise restricted activity might account for what the American Airlines pilots saw.

Instead, the FBI checked with a few sheriff’s departments, made attempts to contact American Airlines, and ultimately closed the matter because it “does not fall within the FBI’s jurisdiction.”

Reading through it, my impression is that the FBI put in about the minimum amount of effort necessary before closing the file.

Why?

There are several possibilities.

Maybe the stigma still attached to UFO/UAP reports caused investigators to treat it as something less than serious.

Maybe someone within the government already knew exactly what the object was and there was consequently little reason to dig deeper.

Or perhaps the simplest explanation is the correct one: this just wasn’t the FBI’s circus.

The FBI investigates federal crimes. There were apparently no bad guys to round up, no warrants to serve and no obvious evidence of a crime to collect. From their standpoint, this may simply have been an aviation incident belonging to somebody else.

Still, there is an uncomfortable wrinkle in that reasoning.

Whatever passed over Flight 2292 apparently came close enough to concern a professional airline crew flying hundreds of passengers at 36,000 feet.

Had there been a collision, suddenly there very well might have been a federal investigation — and potentially hundreds of fatalities.

So even if the object itself wasn't inherently an FBI matter, the potential threat to a commercial airliner certainly deserved somebody's attention.

And that's what these documents leave unanswered.

They don't tell us what flew over American Airlines Flight 2292.

More importantly, they don't show much evidence that anybody tried very hard to find out.

Maybe it was stigma.

Maybe somebody already knew.

Maybe it belonged to another agency.

Or maybe it was simply the bureaucratic equivalent of:

Not my monkeys. Not my circus.

No crime. No suspect. No case.

File closed.

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