A question for pilots
 

Hi,
Im not sure if this is the appropriate place to post this, but, I have a question which i would love to get a pilot's perspective on.
I am currently researching a documentary of the disappearance of Pilot, Frederick Valentich in 1978. In a nutshell, Valentich was making a flight from Moorabbin, Victoria to King Island, Tasmania in Australia. During the flight he radioed air traffic control and reported he was being followed by a UFO. This was the last time he or his plane were seen or heard from again. He was flying a Cessna 182L light aircraft and had limited flying experience. The time of the flight was around 7pm, so dark.

Valentich disappearance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now, one of the proposed explanations is Valentich became disorientated and
either
1. was flying upside and mistook his own lights for those of a UFO, before crashing into the ocean
2. mistook Venus (which was at its brightest) and possibly a combination of Mercury, Mars and Antares for landing lights before becoming disoriented and crashing.

or another proposed solution:
3. suffered from hypoxia and hallucinated the aircraft.

I would love to get an actual pilot's opinion on the subject. I am wondering, is such as optical illusion possible? What do you guys think happened?

Thank you very much. Any opinions on the subject would be greatly appreciated.

Joe

I'm not an expert on this. (2) seems unlikely. There is generally a healthy amount of cultural lighting that would alert you to the presence of an airport. A few random lights is not a good indication. (3) is also unlikely due to the altitude he was flying at.

(1) seems like the most plausible solution, although still unlikely. If he was flying upside down, his engine would not have continued operating for very long due to its design. This could, however, account for the reports of engine roughness. However, his control response to instrument indications would have been backwards enough to alert him of a more severe problem (such as inadvertently flying upside down.)

The article mentions the "graveyard spiral" combined with seeing lights reflected off of the water. This is more realistic. Read this article for more information on visual illusions. http://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pil...d_visillus.pdf


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