Argentine Pilot Says Three 'Dancing' Lights Stayed Ahead of His Plane for 35 Minutes
A corporate pilot with 14 years of flying, his co-pilot and three passengers watched three lights move in front of their aircraft over Buenos Aires Province. Two air traffic control sectors told him no other traffic was reported in the area.
Location Between Tandil and Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
TANDIL, Argentina (reported Sept. 21, 2026) — It was a clear, dark night at 8,000 feet when three lights appeared directly ahead of Gaspar Gouane’s aircraft. For the next 35 to 40 minutes, he says, they moved like dancers, side to side and up and down, blinking out and coming back in the same patch of sky. His co-pilot saw them, and so did his three passengers. When he radioed air traffic control to ask what was out there, the answer came back twice: nothing that anyone had reported.
Gouane told the Salta newspaper El Tribuno that in 14 years of flying he had never seen anything like it. He also said he isn’t calling it a UFO.
What we know
On the record: documents, statements, dates and places. Sources below.
- The flight. According to El Tribuno, Gouane, a pilot from Salta who now lives in Bahía Blanca, flies an executive aircraft for a company based there. “A few days” before the paper’s Sept. 21 report (it didn’t give an exact date), he took off from San Fernando airport in Buenos Aires around 9 p.m., bound for Bahía Blanca on a flight of about an hour and 40 minutes.
- When and where. At about 10:10 p.m., near Tandil, three lights appeared directly in front of the aircraft. It was flying at about 8,000 feet (roughly 2,400 to 2,500 meters) on a night El Tribuno describes as completely clear, with no clouds.
- Five witnesses. The pilot, co-pilot and three passengers all saw the lights and filmed and photographed them. The paper reports that the phone images, taken from a moving plane on a pitch-black night, didn’t capture what they saw with the naked eye.
- The app check. Gouane is also an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer. Using the plane’s Starlink internet connection, he pointed the Stellarium sky-mapping app at the lights mid-flight. It returned no identification.
- Two calls to air traffic control. Gouane asked Ezeiza Sur, the sector controlling the flight, whether any aircraft were declared in the area. Controllers said no other flights were reported besides his. After Tandil, the flight was handed to Bahía Blanca control, which also had no reported traffic in the area and asked him to keep them updated on what he was seeing.
- The blackout video. On the night of Saturday, Sept. 19, a large blackout hit parts of the Buenos Aires metropolitan area (AMBA). Crónica reported that a roughly 15-second video circulating on social media that night showed three bright lights forming a kind of V. Users on X debated whether the clip was authentic.
What’s claimed
Accounts, testimony and theories, as told by the people who tell them.
In Inexplicata’s English translation of the El Tribuno interview, Gouane describes the lights this way:
“You could see the three lights appear; they seemed to dance among themselves—moving side to side and up and down—before vanishing. A short while later, they would reappear, always in the same spot.”
The distance never seemed to change, he said: “They didn’t get closer to us or move further away. They didn’t seem very far off, yet it was hard to gauge their exact position. It felt as though we were never getting any closer, nor were we moving away.”
About the app, he said: “If it had been a satellite, the app would have flagged it.”
He points to his experience flying at night: “I fly more at night than during the day. You get used to seeing satellites, the Starlink satellite train, shooting stars. Even when there’s another plane on the horizon—over the years and with experience, you train yourself and know what you’re looking at. But this is something I’m seeing for the first time.”
Gouane describes himself as a skeptic and won’t put a name on it: “I don’t attribute it to UFOs. I don’t know. I think anyone can interpret it however they wish. But it wasn’t something I’d consider normal. You’re left with that sense of helplessness—not being able to put a name or an explanation to it.”
The experience came back to him, El Tribuno reports, when he saw the footage of lights over Buenos Aires during the blackout. He recognized what he calls the same three lights that had seemed to dance in front of his plane somewhere between Tandil and Bahía Blanca.
Still unnamed
The details on the record are specific: a trained pilot, five people on board, a clear sky, an astronomy app with no match, and two control sectors reporting no other traffic. The one thing missing is a name for what they saw, and the pilot is in no hurry to give it one. For now, it’s three lights, 35 minutes, and a pilot who says it’s the first time in 14 years he couldn’t tell what he was looking at.
Sources
- Misterio en el cielo: luces "danzantes" acompañaron durante 35 minutos a un piloto salteño (Spanish) — El Tribuno
- Argentina: Mystery in the sky: "dancing" lights accompanied a pilot from Salta for 35 minutes (English translation) — Inexplicata
- Video: ¿Un OVNI sobrevoló Buenos Aires durante el apagón masivo en AMBA? (Spanish) — Crónica