American Airlines Flight 2292 UFO Encounter, February 21, 2021

The below article was originally began in June 2021. It is an evolving article, and is updated to archive additional information released. Last update was on December 18, 2024.

Above Video Recorded June 2021

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On February 23, 2021, The Drive’s WarZone broke a story about a UFO encounter on February 21, which involved American Airlines Flight 2292 and an encounter with a “cylindrical-shaped” object moving at a high speed.

According to articles written by Tyler Rogoway:

“American Airlines Flight 2292, an Airbus A320 flying between Cincinnati and Phoenix on February 21st, 2021, had a bizarre close encounter with what its crew described as a “long cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile” moving extremely fast over the top of their aircraft as it cruised along at 36,000 feet and 400 knots. The incident occurred over the remote northeast corner of New Mexico, to the west of the tiny town of Des Moines.”

Then he published:

“Less than 48 hours after our initial reporting on an outright strange incident involving American Airlines Flight 2292 as it flew at 36,000 feet over the northeastern corner of New Mexico on February 21st, 2021, we have confirmation that the event in question did indeed occur and that it is being investigated by the FBI. The incident involved pilots of the Airbus A320 being buzzed by an unidentified cylindrical-shaped object moving at high-speed, which resulted in them querying the FAA’s Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center.”

The Black Vault filed numerous FOIA requests, including ones to the FBI and to the FAA, based on the above reporting.

The FAA Records

In this case, as responded to on June 21, the FAA refused to confirm or deny whether records exist on the event. Their letter is below:

After an appeal, on July 22, 2021, the FAA sent The Black Vault records pertaining to the above flight. Interestingly, some of the responsive records found were the property of the Department of Defense (DoD).

The number of records is unknown that will be reviewed by the DoD, but the FAA did release a small number of their own.

Here they are:

DOWNLOAD [6 Pages, 0.85MB]

Then, in mid December 2024, all of the ATC recordings and radar track information was released along with the ATC recordings.

The raw downloads of all data released is found here (note the letter above for instructions on the audio files and their channel assignments):

	21-02-21 Video – AAL2292.mp4		1.9M
	P50 FOIA AAL2292 APACHE 02-21-21 2004-2043Z.wav		74M
	P50 FOIA AAL2292 FREEWAY 02-21-21 2013-2047Z.wav		65M
	PHX FOIA AAL2292 LN 02-21-21 2017-2056Z_Exmpt 3 DCRIT Military.wav		74M
	ZAB 21-02-21 AAL2292 AUDIO.wav		13M

.ZIP File of all files above:

2021-002114.zip

2024-12-18 08:07

95M

The FBI Records

Despite American Airlines recommending to The WarZone to contact the FBI for more information; the FBI told The Black Vault in a FOIA response dated March 2, 2021, that they were unable to find any records relating to the event.

(story continues below…)

The FBI DOES Have Records

After the above article was published, it came to The Black Vault’s attention that another FOIA request, William Puckett, received information from the FBI on this case. Despite the response given to The Black Vault above, there were responsive records. This is outlined at the video above, and the documents are archived here:

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