Statement by Kate Russell

28 June 2007

The Trislander is a little plane, it holds about 16 people maximum. There's no separation between the passengers and the pilot. It's a bit like sitting in a car, there's no aisle like in larger aircraft.

We were sitting four rows back behind Ray, the pilot. There was a couple in front of us, and a man on his own sitting directly behind the pilot.

During the flight, as we were on the run to the airport, I was reading a book. I noticed Ray was turning around and talking to the man behind him. I have never seen this happen before, it was very unusual. Other passengers then started paying attention. This went on for some time, but at this point because of the position of the plane I could not see what they were looking at.

Ray then dropped the nose of the plane down. I could then see something through the windscreen.

It looked like the sun reflecting off glass. What I was looking at was a very bright light over the sea below us. It could have been sunlight reflecting off something. There were two lights. The second was roughly where I was expecting the airport to be (over Alderney). The lights persisted for a few minutes.

Then the plane lifted up again and I lost sight of them.

Then when the nose dropped again I saw the light again; at first I thought it was a light reflecting from a ship on the sea. My husband said it was an orange colour, but he's colour blind! What I saw was definitely not an orange light. I saw a bright white light; it was a sunlight-coloured light' if you understand what I mean? The second time I saw it had more of a [yellow] tinge? So I saw them on two separate occasions.

I saw two lights; one was larger  it appeared to be closer than the other  and whilst I was watching the second time I could clearly see a little fishing boat on the sea below (could they have seen it too?).

When we landed Ray asked did anyone see that?' and asked us to leave our names. He did not tell us what he had seen. I left my name but the man sitting behind him did not leave his; he wasn't from the island and I didn't recognise him; he didn't want to get involved and I got the impression he didn't want anyone to know he was there!

I then began to look for explanations but could not find them.

The first time I saw it, it was definitely below us. I was looking through Ray's windscreen. It appeared to be on the water, and the second appeared to be over the land (Alderney). The one that seemed closer, appeared to be about 10-15 miles away, but it's impossible to be sure.

However, there is one thing I disagree with Ray about. He says it must have been huge, but I didn't think it was anything like as large as he saw. But it's difficult to estimate size. [the first one] appeared to be at the halfway point between us and Alderney. It was shaped like a fat cigar  held at arm's length. But we just saw a light, there was no solid outline to it.

Ray is a sound rational man but he was quite shaken by this.

I don't believe in little green men and I don't think this was a UFO. I think it was something quite extraordinary, but something for which we don't have an explanation at the present moment. I suspect it was something natural but unexplainable.

Since the sighting we have had a couple of calls from the media but no one else before you wrote to us.

However there was an article in our local magazine, the Alderney Journal, a week ago from a chap who believes the lights were a sundog, caused by the sun's rays reflecting through ice crystals. Ray wrote a letter, which was published this week, saying this was not what he saw. He said on the day of the sighting visibility was good, with a haze below 2000 ft. At 8000 ft there was a layer of stratus clouds covering the whole of the English Channel and blocking out the sun. He says he has seen sundogs before, and these two objects were both to the same side of the sun in their relative positions which is not what you would see if it was caused by parhelia.

(Transcript of shorthand notes from telephone interview by Dave Clarke)