2007-01-21 - Accrington (UK/England) - Other

Strange aircraft in sky over Lancashire,

The sighting took place on Sunday 21st of January 2007 at around 7.30pm. I was driving from Clitheroe to Altham to return a van i borrowed from work.

I looked South towards Blackburn and noticed a low flying aircraft flying directly towards me, it looked quite bit (737 size) and had flashing lights quite similar to a standard passenger plane. As i planes quite often i just ignored it and assumed it was making a landing approach, it was only when it turned that i noticed the light pattern underneath, again it was similar to an plane but there were subtle differences, the rear 4 lights made up a large diamond shape and there was another light at the front but the gap between these was very large, again this does not sound that much different to a plane until you compared it to other planes in the sky, as they make a diamond shape of lights, one at the front, one at the rear on and one on each wing tip, but this did not explain the extra light at the front and the distance between the lights.

So now i decided to keep a close eye on this mysterious plane. It circled the entire ribble valley about 5 time between 1000 and 2000 feet, far too low to be a commercial plane and why would it keep circling over populated area in an area that is not on route to any local airports.

I tried as hard as i could to get into a position where i could see the actual body of the aircraft not just the lights, but this proved to be quite difficult.

My suspicions were however confirmed when the strange aircraft was intercepted by a Royal air force Tornado jet. The jet assumed a position above and behind the craft and continued to follow it were ever it went, this carried on for about 3 minutes then they both went out of view. I kept looking for about 10 minutes but so no sign of either of them.