The Chilean Navy Video

On November 11, 2014, a Chilean Navy helicopter crew filming a coastal patrol with a WESCAM infrared camera captured nearly ten minutes of footage of an unidentified object flying level over the ocean, twice appearing to eject a hot plume or trail. Chile's official investigative agency, CEFAA, studied the video for two years and declared it unexplained in January 2017. Independent analysts identified the object within days of release as a commercial airliner and its contrails.

The crew, flying near San Antonio west of Santiago, spotted the object visually and on IR at an estimated 35 to 40 miles. Radar reportedly showed no return, and attempts at radio contact failed. The crew tracked it until cloud cover intervened. CEFAA's analysis committee consulted meteorologists, imaging specialists, and military experts, considered and rejected the airliner hypothesis (no scheduled flight matched, in their reconstruction), and released the video calling the object a UAP of unknown nature.

The full-length official IR video, the crew's testimony, and CEFAA's published analysis, followed by the independent identifications.

CEFAA's unexplained verdict is the official Chilean position at release. The agency did not formally retract it, though its then-director acknowledged the airliner analyses deserved consideration.

Within a week of the January 2017 release, analysts including Mick West's Metabunk community matched the object to Iberia flight IB6830, a two-engine A340 climbing out of Santiago, whose flight-track timing and bearing align with the footage, with the "plumes" as aerodynamic contrails forming intermittently and the radar absence explained by range and coverage. The identification is widely accepted, including by many ufologists, and the case became the standard example of an official body declaring "unexplained" one flight-tracking query short of the answer. Defenders of CEFAA note the agency did its work transparently and released everything, which is why the correction was possible at all. Both the process failure and the process virtue are the case's lessons.