Statement by John Russell

28 June 2007

We were sitting behind the pilot, 4th row back in the seats. At some stage my wife drew my attention to something outside, through the windscreen. Because of where I was sitting, I had to physically lean over her to see what all the fuss was about. There was only one object that I saw, but Kate saw two.

It was a lozenge-shaped, orange light. It was a brilliant object. It was a lot brighter than the reflection of the sun would create. However, the sun was in the right position to have been bouncing its rays off something.

A local scientist here thinks it is a sundog, he's written about it in the Alderney Journal. Ray has written a letter in to contradict this theory, saying the aircraft was at the wrong altitude.

It was a hazy day and we were descending from 4000 ft. The pilot got agitated and called to the man sitting behind him. This bloke was by himself. We don't know him, he's not from the island. But he was talking to the pilot for some time before we saw it, and he got the chance to look at it through the binoculars.

I got the impression the light I saw was moving, possibly in a westerly direction.

It's size? I thought it was much smaller than Ray has been quoted as saying. It was significantly smaller than any of the merchant ships we had passed over earlier in the flight before we started the approach.

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