Javier Leo De Taha
Javier Leo de Taha was the captain of TAE flight JK 297 during the Manises UFO Incident of November 11, 1979, the first recorded case in aviation history of a commercial airliner being grounded due to a UFO encounter.
| Role | Commercial airline captain, TAE flight JK 297 |
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The Manises Incident
On the night of November 11, 1979, Captain Javier was piloting a Super Caravelle aircraft with 109 passengers from Salzburg, Austria to Las Palmas, with a refueling stop at Mallorca. At approximately 23:05 hours while cruising over the Mediterranean Sea at 23,000 feet, his flight mechanic Francisco Javier Rodriguez warned him 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 his flight path. When he changed altitude to avoid the lights, the objects mirrored his maneuver and maintained a distance of between half a mile to 5 miles from the plane. Recognizing that continuing to fly near unidentified objects violated all aerial safety rules and posed unacceptable risk to his crew and passengers, Captain Javier made the decision to abort the flight path and performed an emergency landing at Manises Airport in Valencia.
His decision to ground the flight based on UFO proximity set a precedent in commercial aviation and prompted a military response, with Fernando Kamaro subsequently scrambled in a Mirage F1 fighter jet to intercept the objects. The incident reached the Spanish Parliament in September 1980, where it was officially dismissed as optical illusions.