At 18:00 UTC the Tornado crews were flying in darkness. The so-called Uniform Daylight Period in the Netherlands had ended at 16:20 UTC on November 5, 1990. At 18:00 UTC, the moon had just risen a couple of degrees above the north-eastern horizon. Meteorological data show that there may have been a thin cloud layer just below a height of 9,000 feet, but little to none at higher altitudes [10]. Visibility was good. The Tornado crews of two (pilot & systems operator) saw a group of lights passing them that remained visible for a few minutes and that seemed to fly at a slightly higher altitude. Because it was dark, it was impossible to tell whether these lights were moving independently of each other or were fixed as part of an aircraft. The illusion that they were lights of an aircraft could however arise easily, because the lights were travelling at a seemingly small distance from each other, at identical speed and direction. There were also smoke trails that looked like contrails. Also, the positions of the lights were probably not changing much with respect to each other, which reinforced the illusion that the lights marked the outline of a solid object.
The human eye has the natural tendency to see points of light observed against a uniformly dark background as if they are interconnected [11][12], giving the illusion that they form a single entity. For this optical effect to have created such an illusion was almost inevitable. Besides, the brilliance of the lights in conjunction with such good visibility could create the impression that the lights were very much closer than was the case in reality. During their observations, the pilots did not notice anything that could have broken this illusion.
The pilots' expectations probably played a role as well. In the communications, we hear them speculating about which type of aircraft they are seeing. That is to say, they expected their observation to have been an aircraft. Pilots are trained to notice and observe aircraft, and this illuminated debris created the illusion of a passing plane with lights, as described above.
A re-entering and disintegrating satellite in darkness is a relatively rare event. In our opinion, the interpretation of the phenomenon by the pilots is not the result of inexpert observation. Their interpretation was caused by the occurrence of an exceptional event, limited visual information and an overly short time-period in which to come to a correct identification.
and there is more, in reference to this same event:
http://www.zip.com.au/%7Epsmith/pilot-ufos.html#first
Now, what can we make of these impressive testimonials? The satellite reentry was occurring right before their eyes, and these pilots made many, many perceptual and interpretative errors, including:
1. In FSR, the anonymous BA pilot (obviously D'Alton) recalls: "One of the lights . .. was brighter than the others, and appeared bigger, almost disklike." It was just as light, a piece of burning debris, and the "disk" interpretation was a mental pattern conjured up from previous experience, not from this actual apparition. Note that later, Good alters this comment to have the pilot unequivocally call it "a silver disc".
2. The main light "was followed closely by another three that seemed to be in a V formation," according to the pilot. Referring to a "formation" is an assumption of intelligent control. The pieces of flaming debris were scattered randomly in a group and stayed approximately in the same relative positions, but the pilots misinterpreted this to mean they were flying in formation.
3. FSR reports the pilot saying "I watched the objects intently as they moved across my field of view, right to left," but the objects' actual motion was left to right, as reported elsewhere correctly. Either the FSR writer, or the pilot, jumbled this key piece of information.
4. The pilot did not believe the apparition was a satellite re-entry because "I have seen a re-entry before and this was different." These re-entries are particularly spectacular because of the size of the object, and the pilot was speaking from an inadequate experience base here.
5. The RAF military pilots in the Tornadoes concluded that "the lights 'formated on the Tornadoes', which is the kind of thing a fighter pilot is trained to detect and avoid, not dispassionately contemplate. The lights, of course, never changed course, but the pilots who were surprised by them feared the worst.
6. The accompanying Tornado pilot was so convinced that they were on collision course with the lights that he "broke away" and took "violent evasive action". This move would be prudent in an unknown situation, but there's no need to believe that the perception of dead-on approach was really accurate. Since the flaming debris was tens of miles high, no real "collision course" ever existed, outside the mind of the pilot.
7. D'Alton in the National Enquirer is quoted as claiming " it made a sharp turn while flying at high speeds -- an impossible maneuver that would rip any man-made aircraft to bits. " Again, the actual object never made such a turn, and the pilot's over-interpretation of what the object MUST be experiencing was based on mistaken judgments of actual distance and motion.
8. After two minutes of flying straight, said D'Alton, ". . .it took a lightning-fast right-angle turn and zoomed out of sight." But we know that the actual observed object never made such a maneuver, but D'Alton remembered it clearly when trying to explain in his own mind how it disappeared so fast.
9. The newspaper account, quoted in Good's book, has D'Alton claiming that "ground radar couldn't pick it up, so it must have been travelling at phenomenal speed." Actually, the speed would have had nothing to do with radar failing to pick it up, but the actual distance -- which D'Alton misjudged, leading to subsequent erroneous interpretations -- did.
10. The Tornado pilots described the flaming debris as " two large round objects, each with five blue lights and several other white lights around the rim." Since they were used to seeing other structured vehicles with lights mounted on them, when they spotted this unusual apparition, that's the way they misperceived and remembered it.
11. "In Belgium, dozens reported a triangular object with three lights, flying slowly and soundlessly to the south-west," but these were separate fireball fragments at a great distance, which witnesses assumed were lights on some larger structure. Their slow angular rate was misinterpreted to be a genuine slow speed because their true distance was grossly underestimated.
12. "A British pilot . . . reported four objects flying in formation over the Ardennes hills in south Belgium." The pilot may have been over southern Belgium, but the objects he saw didn't have to be, they were hundreds of miles away. And despite his instinctive (and wrong) assumption the lights were "flying in formation", they were randomly-space fireball fragments.
13. Note that Good writes that "Jean-Jacques Velasco,. . . said an investigation would be launched," but Good saw the results of that investigation before his book went to press, and he neglected to tell his readers that Velasco proved the lights were from the satellite re-entry.
Such selective omissions make many such stories appear far stronger than they really are.
14. One Air France pilot told a radio interviewer: '. . . It couldn't have been a satellite (re-entry) because it was there for three or four minutes', but such reasoning is groundless since near-horizontal re-entriers can be seen for many minutes, especially from airplanes at high altitude. The pilot didn't know this, and rejected that explanation erroneously.
15. "In Italy, six airline pilots reported 'a mysterious and intense white light' south-east of Turin. Pilots also reported five white smoke trails nearby." They may have been near Turin when they saw the lights and assumed incorrectly they were 'nearby', but the lights were far, far away.
