On the night of March 13, 1997, thousands of people across the state of Arizona reported seeing a massive, V-shaped formation of lights silently traverse the sky from the Nevada border to the southern edge of Tucson. What became known as the Phoenix Lights remains one of the most widely witnessed and persistently debated mass sighting events in modern American history. Despite an official Air Force explanation attributing the later sightings to military flares, witnesses, including the state’s sitting governor, maintain they saw something that defied conventional explanation.
Timeline
January 1997 — Dr. Lynne Kitei, a Phoenix-area physician, reports filming a formation of equidistant lights that appeared to form a V-shape approximately two months before the main event.
March 13, 1997, 7:55 PM MST — A witness in Henderson, Nevada, reports seeing a large V-shaped object traveling southeast, marking the earliest documented sighting of the evening.
March 13, 1997, 8:00-8:30 PM MST — Multiple witnesses in the Prescott and Dewey-Humboldt area report a V-shaped formation of five to seven lights passing overhead at low altitude. Witnesses describe the object as blocking out stars as it moved.
March 13, 1997, 8:30-9:00 PM MST — Reports flood in from across the Phoenix metropolitan area. Witnesses describe a massive V-shaped or boomerang-shaped object moving silently from northwest to southeast.
March 13, 1997, approximately 10:00 PM MST — A second set of lights appears over the Estrella Mountains south of Phoenix. These stationary lights are captured on home video by multiple witnesses, including Mike Fortson and a family in the Maryvale neighborhood.
March 14, 1997 — Local news stations broadcast the home video footage. The story spreads nationally within days. Luke Air Force Base receives hundreds of calls.
June 1997 — The Maryland Air National Guard confirms that A-10 aircraft from the 104th Fighter Squadron were dropping LUU-2/B illumination flares over the Barry M. Goldwater Range on the night of March 13. Drew Sullins, a spokesman for the Maryland Air National Guard, states the planes were dropping flares from 15,000 feet.
September 1997 — Governor Fife Symington holds a press conference about the lights. He presents his chief of staff, Jay Heiler, dressed in an alien costume, and jokes that the Air Force had “found who was responsible.”
November 2007 — Symington writes an op-ed for CNN stating he personally witnessed a UFO on March 13, 1997, describing it as something that “defied logic and challenged my reality.”
2007-2008 — Symington appears on ABC News, calling the craft “enormous” and “absolutely breathtaking,” and participates in the documentary “Out of the Blue.”
July 2023 — Arizona Representative Ruben Gallego references the Phoenix Lights during a congressional hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, citing the event as an example of unresolved mass sighting cases.
What Happened
The evening of March 13, 1997, was clear across Arizona. Reports of unusual lights began appearing just before 8:00 PM in the northwestern part of the state and continued as the evening progressed.
According to Phoenix New Times, the events of that evening are typically described as two separate phenomena: a V-shaped formation of lights observed moving across the state between approximately 7:30 and 9:00 PM, and a series of stationary lights observed over the Estrella Mountains south of Phoenix at approximately 10:00 PM.
The first event generated reports from multiple communities along a path stretching from the Nevada border through Prescott, Phoenix, and Tucson, a distance of over 300 miles. Witnesses consistently described seeing either a V-shaped or boomerang-shaped formation of lights, or in some accounts, a solid dark object with lights along its edges. Multiple witnesses reported the object was silent and appeared to be at relatively low altitude.
Dr. Lynne Kitei, a physician at the Arizona Heart Institute, told NewsNation that between 10,000 and 20,000 witnesses may have observed events that evening. Kitei had been documenting similar formations since January 1997 and came forward publicly after seven years of anonymity. She described what she witnessed as “the most witnessed and most documented anomalous aerial event in modern history.”
The second event, occurring later that evening, produced the video footage that became the public face of the Phoenix Lights. Stationary amber lights appeared over the Estrella Mountains south of Phoenix, arranged in a roughly triangular pattern. Multiple people captured the lights on home video, and this footage received widespread media distribution.
The two-event structure is important for understanding why the Phoenix Lights remain debated. The flare explanation, provided by the U.S. Air Force, is plausible for the second event. The first event, the V-shaped formation reported by communities separated by hundreds of miles, has no widely accepted conventional explanation. Critics argue that conflating the two events allows skeptics to dismiss the entire case by addressing only the more easily explained portion.
The Luke Air Force Base public affairs office initially told reporters it had no aircraft operating in the Phoenix area that evening. This claim was later revised when the Maryland Air National Guard confirmed its A-10s were active over the Barry Goldwater Range. The shifting official response fueled public distrust and contributed to the perception that the government was concealing information.
The distinction between the two events is not merely academic. The V-shaped formation was reported moving across the state from north to south over a period of roughly 90 minutes. The stationary lights appeared over the Estrella Mountains and remained in place for a shorter duration. The V-shaped formation witnesses described a physical craft or structure. The stationary lights are consistent with independently deployed flares. Treating the two events as a single phenomenon obscures the specific characteristics of each.
The V-Shaped Formation
The earlier event, the V-shaped formation, remains the more controversial and less documented of the two. Witnesses from multiple communities described what appeared to be a single large object with five to seven lights arranged in a V or boomerang pattern.
Witnesses in the Prescott area reported the object passed directly overhead at an estimated altitude of several thousand feet. Many described it as blocking out stars as it passed, suggesting a solid structure behind the lights rather than independent light sources in formation.
In Phoenix, residents in the northern suburbs, including the neighborhoods of Cave Creek and Carefree, reported seeing the formation pass over their homes. Some witnesses described individual lights that appeared to be attached to the underside of a massive dark structure. Estimates of the object’s size varied, but many witnesses described it as roughly a mile wide.
The V-shaped formation reports are notable for their geographic range. Witnesses along the object’s apparent path from Nevada to Tucson reported descriptions that are broadly consistent with each other, which is unusual for mass misidentification events. The sightings spanned a period of approximately 90 minutes as the object, or objects, moved south.
The consistency of witness accounts across communities separated by hundreds of miles is one of the most challenging aspects of the case for skeptical explanations. Typically, mass misidentification events produce wildly divergent descriptions as witnesses interpret ambiguous stimuli through different lenses. The Phoenix Lights V-shaped formation reports show unusual uniformity in descriptions of shape, movement pattern, sound level, and apparent altitude.
However, no video footage of the early evening V-shaped formation has been confirmed as authentic. The widely circulated video footage, which shows stationary lights over the Estrella Mountains, was recorded during the later event. This distinction is critical to understanding the case, and confusion between the two events has persisted since 1997.
Some researchers have proposed that the V-shaped formation may have been a flight of conventional military aircraft in formation. Aircraft flying in a V-pattern with landing or formation lights could theoretically produce the visual effect described by witnesses. However, no military unit has claimed a training flight along the reported path that evening, and witnesses who reported the object blocking out stars would contradict a formation of individual aircraft at moderate spacing.
The Prescott area reports are particularly significant because the witnesses there observed the object during the earlier part of the evening, before the media coverage began. Their accounts are therefore less likely to have been influenced by the emerging national narrative. Several residents of the Prescott area reported independently to local law enforcement, creating a paper trail of initial observations that preceded the media frenzy.
The Flares Explanation
The official explanation for the Phoenix Lights centers on military training activity. On July 25, 1997, Drew Sullins, a spokesman for the Maryland Air National Guard, confirmed that A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft from the 104th Fighter Squadron were conducting training exercises at the Barry M. Goldwater Range on the night of March 13. The aircraft were dropping LUU-2/B high-intensity illumination flares from approximately 15,000 feet.
As reported by the Las Vegas Sun, the military initially stated it had no aircraft in the Phoenix area at the time of the sightings, then later clarified that A-10s were indeed operating over the Barry Goldwater Range. This delayed and shifting response contributed to public skepticism about the official explanation.
The flare explanation addresses the second event, the stationary lights over the Estrella Mountains. The Barry Goldwater Range lies to the southwest of Phoenix, and the Estrella Mountains are visible from much of the metro area. LUU-2/B flares burn at approximately one million candlepower and can remain visible for several minutes as they descend on small parachutes.
Researchers have noted that mountains not visible at night partially obstructed the view of the flares from certain angles, potentially creating the illusion of a row of lights appearing and disappearing one by one. This geometric pattern, combined with the lack of visual reference points at night, may have contributed to the perception that the lights were arranged in a deliberate formation.
The flare explanation has been widely cited by skeptical analysts, including Mick West of Metabunk, who has conducted detailed analyses of the video footage. West and other researchers have compared the video evidence to known flare behavior and argued the stationary lights are consistent with standard illumination flares.
However, the flare explanation does not address the earlier V-shaped formation. No military exercise has been identified that would account for the low-altitude, silent, V-shaped object reported by witnesses from multiple communities between 7:30 and 9:00 PM. The military’s own timeline places the A-10 training over the Barry Goldwater Range during the later time period, roughly 10:00 PM, not during the earlier period when the V-shaped formation was observed.
This gap between the flare explanation and the earlier reports is the core of the ongoing debate. If the flares explain only the second event, the first event remains unaddressed by any official investigation. The U.S. Air Force never conducted a formal investigation into the V-shaped formation reports, despite the volume of witness testimony and the involvement of the state’s governor.
Governor Symington
The role of Arizona Governor Fife Symington III is central to the Phoenix Lights story, both because of his initial response and his later reversal.
Symington, a Republican serving his second term, was governor at the time of the sightings. After receiving numerous constituent reports, he promised to investigate. On June 19, 1997, he held a press conference that many witnesses found dismissive. During the event, he presented his chief of staff in an alien costume, joked that the Air Force had “found who was responsible,” and deflected the seriousness of the reports.
A decade later, Symington reversed course. In a November 2007 op-ed published by CNN, he wrote: “In 1997, during my second term as governor of Arizona, I saw something that defied logic and challenged my reality.”
In an interview with NBC News, Symington described what he witnessed: “It was enormous and inexplicable. Who knows where it came from? A lot of people saw it, and I saw it too.”
He told ABC News: “It was absolutely breathtaking. I mean when I saw it, I said this is definitely a UFO.”
Symington, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and a former Air Force officer, stated: “As a pilot and a former Air Force officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man-made object I’d ever seen. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares because flares don’t fly in formation.”
According to reporting by The New York Times, Symington told CNN that the craft “just felt otherworldly.” He said he initially told only his wife about his sighting and kept quiet publicly because, as governor, he did not want to panic the populace.
Symington’s reversal is notable for several reasons. As a military veteran and sitting governor at the time, his account carries institutional weight. His 1997 press conference, now widely viewed as an attempt to deflect public concern through humor, contrasts sharply with his later statements describing a genuine unexplained experience.
The former governor has continued to advocate for serious investigation of the event. He joined the board of directors of the UFO research organization, participated in the 2007 documentary “Out of the Blue,” and has publicly called for the federal government to declassify information about aerial phenomena, an issue that has since become part of the broader UAP disclosure movement.
Symington’s political career was complicated by the Phoenix Lights timing. He was indicted on federal bank fraud charges in 1997 and convicted in September of that year, though the conviction was later overturned on appeal. Some critics suggested his 1997 press conference was partly an attempt to deflect public attention from his legal troubles. Symington has denied this characterization, stating that the alien costume gag was simply an attempt to lighten the mood during a period of public anxiety.
Witness Accounts
The Phoenix Lights produced one of the largest bodies of witness testimony for any single UAP event. Witnesses came from diverse backgrounds and occupations, and their accounts, while not identical, share broad consistencies.
The event gained celebrity attention when actor Kurt Russell revealed he had been one of the initial witnesses. Russell was piloting his private aircraft toward Phoenix with his son when they observed a series of lights over the airport. He reported the sighting to the control tower at Sky Harbor Airport, which had received similar reports from other pilots. Russell did not publicly discuss the event for years, later describing his experience on camera for a Discovery UK documentary.
Dr. Lynne Kitei, a physician who had been the Chief Clinical Consultant at the Imaging-Prevention-Wellness Center at the Arizona Heart Institute, documented her sightings with 35mm photography. As reported by ABC15, Kitei recalled two lower orbs appearing to hover motionlessly during her sighting. “It was just bizarre. Again, I’m a healthy skeptic, but I was seeing something that was so extraordinary,” she said.
The consistency of witness descriptions across communities separated by hundreds of miles is a significant aspect of the case. Witnesses along the apparent flight path of the V-shaped formation described similar features: a V or boomerang shape, amber or reddish-orange lights, complete silence, and an estimated size ranging from hundreds of feet to over a mile wide. Multiple witnesses independently reported that the object appeared to block out stars, suggesting a solid structure rather than isolated point lights.
The Phoenix New Times documented numerous witness accounts, including those of trained observers such as retired airline pilots and active-duty law enforcement officers. Some witnesses reported seeing the object pass directly overhead at what they estimated to be a few thousand feet, close enough to make out structural details on what appeared to be an angular, dark craft.
The observation that the object blocked out stars has been cited by multiple independent witnesses. This detail is significant because it suggests a physical structure of considerable size at a relatively low altitude, rather than a formation of distant point-source lights. If accurate, this observation is difficult to reconcile with a flight of conventional aircraft, which would not create a continuous occlusion of the sky.
However, witness testimony, while valuable, has known limitations. Eyewitness accounts are subject to distortion by expectation, environmental conditions, and memory reconstruction. The wide range of size estimates (from several hundred feet to over a mile) suggests that distance and size perception varied significantly among observers. Some researchers have noted that individual lights in a V-formation of aircraft could, from certain angles and distances, create the appearance of a single connected object.
Video Evidence
The video evidence associated with the Phoenix Lights consists entirely of footage recorded during the second event, the stationary lights over the Estrella Mountains. No confirmed video of the earlier V-shaped formation has been publicly released.
The most widely circulated footage, recorded by a family in the Maryvale neighborhood of Phoenix, shows a series of amber lights in a roughly triangular pattern against the dark sky. The lights appear to descend and blink out one by one. This footage was broadcast repeatedly by local and national news outlets in the days following March 13.
Additional video recordings of the stationary lights were made by other witnesses, including Mike Fortson. Independent analyses of the footage have produced conflicting conclusions. Supporters of the flare explanation note that the lights descend at rates consistent with falling flares and blink out sequentially as they pass behind mountain ridges.
Skeptics of the flare explanation, including some analysts who examined the footage, have argued that the lights maintain a consistent triangular formation that is not typical of randomly drifting flares. Dr. Kitei’s account of filming a V-shaped formation in January 1997, two months before the main event, suggests that similar phenomena may have occurred before the date that drew national attention.
The absence of video evidence for the earlier V-shaped formation is a significant gap. In 1997, consumer video cameras were available but not ubiquitous, and the V-shaped object reportedly traversed each witness’s field of view in a matter of minutes, limiting the window for recording. The stationary lights over the Estrella Mountains, by contrast, remained visible for an extended period, giving multiple observers time to retrieve cameras.
The video evidence is therefore most useful for evaluating the second event (the stationary lights) and provides little direct evidence about the nature of the earlier V-shaped formation. This asymmetry in evidence quality has shaped the public understanding of the Phoenix Lights, with the video of stationary lights becoming synonymous with the case despite representing only one of the two reported events.
Skeptical Analysis
The skeptical case for the Phoenix Lights rests on several pillars, each addressing a different aspect of the event.
The most straightforward skeptical explanation, advanced by the U.S. Air Force and supported by researchers including Mick West of Metabunk, attributes the second event to LUU-2/B illumination flares dropped by A-10 aircraft during training. The video evidence, the location of the Barry Goldwater Range, and the confirmed presence of A-10 aircraft in the area are all consistent with this explanation.
The earlier V-shaped formation is more difficult to explain skeptically, and most skeptical analyses focus on the second event rather than the first. Some researchers have proposed that the V-shaped formation may have been a flight of conventional aircraft flying in formation. The absence of photographic or video evidence of the V-shaped formation makes it difficult to confirm or rule out this explanation.
The Axios Phoenix coverage of the event noted that skeptics point to the natural tendency of eyewitness accounts to converge and amplify over time. Witnesses who discussed the event with each other or saw news coverage may have unconsciously adjusted their descriptions to match the emerging consensus. The “miles-wide craft” description, for instance, may have originated with a small number of witnesses and been adopted by others through social influence.
The delayed military response also fuels skeptical analysis in a different direction. The Maryland Air National Guard’s initial denial of aircraft in the area, followed by a later admission about the A-10 training flight, has been cited by both believers and skeptics. Believers argue it suggests a cover-up. Skeptics argue it reflects normal bureaucratic confusion and the mundane reality that military public affairs offices are not always immediately aware of ongoing training operations.
Professional skeptics also note that the Phoenix Lights occurred during a period of heightened public interest in UFOs, driven by the “Independence Day” film released in July 1996 and ongoing media coverage of the Roswell anniversary. This cultural context may have primed witnesses to interpret ambiguous stimuli as extraordinary, a well-documented psychological phenomenon known as expectation bias.
The lack of radar data or official sensor readings for either event limits what can be definitively concluded. Unlike the USS Nimitz encounter, where multiple sensor systems detected the objects, the Phoenix Lights case relies almost entirely on visual observations and home video. Without corroborating sensor data, the case cannot be resolved through technical analysis.
RationalWiki and other skeptical outlets have noted that the Phoenix Lights case suffers from a common problem in mass sighting investigations: the inability to determine what individual witnesses actually saw versus what they later believed they saw after absorbing media coverage. The human memory is reconstructive, not recorded, and witnesses who discuss events with each other tend to converge on shared details. This does not mean the witnesses are dishonest, but it means the uniformity of descriptions cannot be taken as independent corroboration.
What Is Actually Known
After nearly three decades, the following facts about the Phoenix Lights are established:
Two separate events occurred on the evening of March 13, 1997. The first, between approximately 7:30 and 9:00 PM, involved reports of a large V-shaped or boomerang-shaped formation of lights moving across the state. The second, at approximately 10:00 PM, involved stationary lights over the Estrella Mountains south of Phoenix.
The U.S. Air Force has provided an official explanation for the second event: LUU-2/B illumination flares dropped by A-10 aircraft during training at the Barry M. Goldwater Range. This explanation is consistent with the video evidence and has not been effectively challenged by physical evidence.
No official explanation has been provided for the first event, the V-shaped formation. No military exercise or known aircraft formation has been identified that matches the reported characteristics of the object: silent, low-altitude, spanning approximately a mile, and observed over a distance of more than 300 miles.
Governor Fife Symington, an Air Force veteran, has stated he personally witnessed the event and that what he saw was not flares or any man-made object he recognized. His credibility as a military officer and elected official adds weight to his account, though his initial dismissive response in 1997 complicates the narrative.
The Phoenix Lights have been cited in congressional discussions about UAP transparency and were referenced by Arizona Representative Ruben Gallego during historic congressional hearings on unidentified aerial phenomena. The case remains a touchstone for both proponents of serious UAP investigation and proponents of prosaic explanations.
What the case ultimately demonstrates is the difficulty of investigating mass sightings when the primary evidence consists of eyewitness testimony and ambiguous video footage. The two-event nature of the Phoenix Lights means that a single explanation cannot account for all reports. The flare explanation may be entirely correct for the second event and irrelevant to the first.
The case remains open, unresolved, and, for the thousands of people who looked up that night and saw something they could not explain, unfinished. Nearly three decades later, no comprehensive government investigation has been conducted into the V-shaped formation, no sensor data has been released, and the Air Force’s flare explanation addresses only the second event. The Phoenix Lights continue to be cited as one of the most significant mass sighting cases in the history of unidentified aerial phenomena.
ABC15 Arizona’s report on the 28th anniversary of the Phoenix Lights includes interviews with witnesses and an overview of what remains unexplained.
Actor Kurt Russell recounts his personal experience witnessing the Phoenix Lights while piloting his private aircraft.
Sources
FOIA Documents
No FOIA documents specific to the Phoenix Lights investigation have been released. The U.S. Air Force confirmed the A-10 training flight through public statements, not declassified documents. If you are aware of relevant FOIA filings, contact the site.
Source Links
- Las Vegas Sun: Military now says flares may be cause of mysterious Arizona lights (July 25, 1997)
- CNN: Symington: I saw a UFO in the Arizona sky (November 9, 2007)
- NBC News: Former Ariz. governor boosts UFO claims (March 23, 2007)
- ABC News: Former Arizona Governor’s Close Encounter With UFO (March 30, 2007)
- The New York Times: Arizona: O.K., It Was a U.F.O. (March 24, 2007)
- NewsNation: What was the Phoenix Lights incident of 1997? (May 11, 2025)
- ABC15: The Phoenix Lights: 28 years later, the mystery endures (March 13, 2025)
- Axios Phoenix: Phoenix Lights put Arizona on the UFO map in 1997 (March 13, 2024)
- Phoenix New Times: Phoenix Lights explained: Everything to know about the legendary UFO sighting (June 3, 2024)
- Metabunk: Phoenix Lights analysis thread
- The Arizona Republic: What caused the Phoenix Lights? 28 years after the UFO drama, here’s what we know