On the night of 31 July 1995, the crew of an Aerolíneas Argentinas Boeing 727 approaching Bariloche reported a bright object near the approach path — and the airport’s power and runway lighting failed. The encounter was officially investigated. The object identity remains unresolved.
Bariloche matters because it combines an airliner crew’s report, multiple corroborating witnesses, and a coincident power failure — yet the causal link and the object identity are unresolved. It is a concise test of treating a strong aviation account without overstating it.
Captain Jorge Polanco, approaching San Carlos de Bariloche in an Aerolíneas Argentinas Boeing 727, reported a bright object with several coloured lights near the approach path. As the object appeared to move, Polanco discontinued the first approach.
Documented
The crew’s report and the discontinued approach are documented.
Personnel in the control tower and the crew of a National Gendarmerie aircraft also reported an unusual light around the same time. This provides corroboration beyond the airliner crew.
Documented
The control-tower and gendarmerie reports are documented.
At approximately the same time, electrical power and runway lighting at the airport failed, forcing the airliner to remain airborne until emergency or auxiliary lighting became available. Whether this outage was causally linked to the sighting is not established.
Debated
The relationship between the sighting and the outage is unresolved, and the object identity remains open.
Argentine aviation and military authorities investigated. No photograph of the object is established in the record. The case rests on multiple aviation and military witness accounts rather than recovered evidence.
Unverified
Any extraterrestrial origin, or that the object caused the outage, is unverified.
These sources do different jobs: the official record is the investigation, and the Dolan volume is the later research account. Neither establishes a causal link between the sighting and the power failure.
The documented investigation of the encounter.
A later account, recorded as the research source.