Salzburg, Austria
Salzburg is the fourth-largest city in Austria, located on the northern boundary of the Alps in the western part of the country. In this wiki it appears as the point of origin of TAE flight JK 297, the Spanish commercial aircraft at the center of the Manises UFO Incident of November 11, 1979 — considered the first recorded case in aviation history of a commercial flight being grounded due to a UFO encounter.
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Connection to the Manises UFO Incident
On November 11, 1979, TAE flight JK 297 departed Salzburg bound for Las Palmas, Spain, with a scheduled refueling stop at Mallorca, Spain. The aircraft was a Super Caravelle carrying 109 passengers, crewed by Captain Javier Leo de Taha, co-pilot Jose Ramon Zarazua Ingore, and flight mechanic Francisco Javier Rodriguez.
After departing Mallorca and resuming its southbound route over the western Mediterranean, at approximately 23:05 hours while cruising at 23,000 feet, flight mechanic Rodriguez warned the crew of two powerful red lights visible to the front left of the aircraft. Captain Javier radioed Barcelona Air Traffic Control, which confirmed no other aircraft were operating on or near the flight path. The lights drew closer to the aircraft, and the crew discerned them as two powerful sources of light with no visible solid body attached. When Captain Javier changed altitude to avoid a potential collision, the objects mirrored the new trajectory and maintained a distance of between half a mile to 5 miles from the aircraft.
With no safe evasive option available, Captain Javier aborted the flight path and performed an emergency landing at Manises Airport in Valencia — the first time in aviation history a commercial flight was grounded due to a UFO encounter. Just before landing, the crew detected three additional UFO radar signatures, each estimated at approximately 200 meters in diameter. Airport personnel and Marines stationed at the nearby Manises Air Force Base independently witnessed the anomalous lights.
The Military Escalation
The emergency landing triggered a Spanish Air Force response. At 04:00 hours, Captain Fernando Kamaro was scrambled from Los Llanos Airbase in a Mirage F1 fighter jet to intercept the objects. Kamaro had to accelerate to Mach 1.4 (1,074 mph) to make visual contact with a truncated cone-shaped craft displaying bright, changing colors. When he attempted to close with the object and lock onto it with an infrared missile, his avionics were completely jammed and his onboard systems warned him he was being targeted by continuous wave missile radar. The UFO then accelerated toward mainland Africa, and Kamaro returned to base with dangerously low fuel after nearly 90 minutes of pursuit.
The incident reached the Spanish Parliament in September 1980, where it was officially dismissed as "a series of freak optical illusions" — a conclusion Kamaro publicly rejected, specifically disputing the claim that electronic interference from the nearby US 6th Fleet could account for what he witnessed and experienced.
Significance in Aviation UAP Research
The Salzburg-to-Las Palmas route established flight JK 297's position and heading over the western Mediterranean at the time of the encounter. UAP Gerb identifies the Manises UFO Incident as a benchmark case because it combines multi-witness civilian testimony, independent corroboration from military ground personnel, military pilot visual contact, and documented electronic countermeasure effects — all in a single incident. The incident is also cited alongside the 1976 Tehran UFO Incident, in which Major Parvis Jafari of the Imperial Iranian Air Force similarly experienced total avionics failure when approaching a UAP in an F-4 Phantom 2, as evidence of a recurring pattern of electronic warfare capabilities exhibited by anomalous craft across multiple independent military encounters.