2019-07-10 - Penna Turnpike I-476 S Lehigh Tunnel, PA - Triangle

Triangle shaped silent aircraft with two white lights and red light underneath seen on Penna Turnpike I-476 S right after Lehigh Tunnel

Triangle shaped aircraft with two crisp white lights, one blinking (left) and one solid (right) positioned at the “rear” of the craft relative to its trajectory, with a dim red circle in the middle of the bottom of the aircraft seen on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on I-476 South immediately after exiting the Lehigh Tunnel near Mahoning Valley.

I was driving home from Wilkes-Barre to the Philadelphia area late at night, with the sighting occurring at approximately 1:15 am on Wednesday morning. Immediately after exiting the Lehigh Tunnel, roughly in-between the Jim Thorpe/Mahoning Valley and Allentwon exists, I noticed two white lights to my right. They appeared to be about 30 ft apart, and the left one was blinking about every other second while the right light was solid. I was engrossed in a podcast at the time I first noticed the lights, and thought oh it’s just some plane.

However after about 10 seconds past the tunnel exit, when the glare from the lights of the tunnel exit were fading away, I looked back at the object in confusion. Why is this plane flying so low? It was right at the tree line, less than 200 ft from the ground. Why does this aircraft seem to be flying slow enough for me to nearly keep up with it? Why is there only one blinking white light and while the other one was remaining solid? As I was able to see the object more and more clearly, I noticed the two lights appeared to be at the rear corners of a silhouette of an equilateral triangle, with the tip of the triangle (again relative to the aircraft’s trajectory) having no light emanating from it. It was bizarrely black. Like the blackest black I’ve ever seen. It literally blended in with the night sky almost too well for me to make out a shape. And then I noticed in the middle of the bottom of the aircraft, there was this dim glowing dark red/orange circle (it reminded me of the glow from the last ember of a dying campfire), that looked like it had some kind of hatch over it. At this point the craft began moving over the highway and to the left, still shockingly low in the sky, and it was beginning to slow down. Still barley in front of me at the same height, I noticed a bright light shooting up vertically from what seemed like a random spot in the forest next to the highway. The craft appeared to be heading for this light, as it had slowed down and then halted one it reached it. As I passed by, trying to go slowly as acceptably possible on the highway, still seeing it hovering over the light, I lost it in my rear view mirrors after a few seconds. It hadn’t dawned on me until a minute or two after the sighting that I thought to myself, why the heck didn’t that thing make any noise? At its altitude, if it was any kind of traditional aircraft, it should have been VERY loud especially considering how close I was to it. From start to finish of viewing the aircraft, it was as silent as if there was nothing there at all.

I consider myself an amateur astronomer as I frequently take my telescopes out at night in my suburban Philadelphia backyard or elsewhere for viewing the night sky. Only 30 minutes (or less depending on the time and day) from the Philadelphia International Airport, I have seen every type of passenger aircraft that frequent the airport flying to and from it, at all sorts of heights and perspectives, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this. (I actually have seen a similar bizarrely noiseless totally black V shaped aircraft flying at low altitude a couple years ago in my backyard, but that is not what this report is about.) I would do anything to get in touch with the one or two other cars on the turnpike near me at the time of the sighting for verification that I’m not nuts. If you guys received any calls or anything regarding an aircraft of similar description that same night, I would really appreciate knowing.