“WHILE FLYING THE VISUAL APCH [approach], ABOUT 10 MI [miles] OUT, I FELT SOMETHING LAND ON MY R [right] FOOT. REACHING DOWN WITH MY R [right] HAND, I WAS SURPRISED TO FEEL SOMETHING COLD AND DAMP, WHICH MOVED …”
So begins an airline pilot’s report (number ACN: 311910) as archived by the US Aviation Safety Reporting System.
“The Aviation Safety Reporting System, or ASRS, is the US Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) voluntary system that allows pilots and other airplane crew members to confidentially report near misses and close calls in the interest of improving air safety.“
Reports logged in the database, which is maintained by NASA and now contains nearly a million entries, are anonymous, as the official website explains :
“ASRS’s database includes the narratives submitted by reporters (after they have been sanitized for identifying details).”
[ that’s the narratives, not the reporters]
ACN: 311910, which is indexed under ‘anomalies’, continues …
“
… ASKING THE CAPT [captain] TO TAKE THE ACFT [aircraft], I LOOKED DOWN AND SAW A LARGE BULLFROG HOP OFF MY FOOT AND BEHIND THE RUDDER PEDALS, WHERE IT SAT LOOKING AT ME. WE LANDED WITHOUT INCIDENT, AND COULD NO LONGER SEE THE FROG. AS THE PAX [passengers] DEPLANED [left], ONE TOLD ME WE HAD A STOWAWAY FROG IN THE CABIN. WHEN THE PAX [passengers] WERE GONE, WE FOUND A TOTAL OF 8 LARGE BULLFROGS HIDING UNDER THE SEATS. WE NEVER FOUND OUT WHERE THEY CAME FROM.”
Anyone can interrogate the online ASRS database using an extensively configurable (though somewhat daunting) search page, (and yes, there are some entries for UFOs)
Notes:
[1] Oddly perhaps, there doesn’t appear to be a way of linking directly to a particular report – if you find one, let us know.
[2] The reports are automatically abbreviated, or one might say ‘jargonized’ – so ‘passengers’ becomes ‘pax’ and ‘aircraft’ becomes ‘acft’ etc. The added grey text is ours.
[3] the picture crop is courtesy User:Fir0002/Natures pics at Wikipedia]