UFO photographed over Filton

An unidentified flying object has been photographed over Filton.

Taxi driver Paul Matthews spotted the object in the air near the Royal Mail depot on 2pm on Friday afternoon soon after he had driven into the Airbus site.

He quickly pulled over his car and watched as what he described as a disc-shaped object hovered in the air before disappearing as swiftly as it had appeared.

Now the Bristol Evening Post is calling on readers who believe they know what the object is to get in touch.

Mr Matthews said that at first he thought it was an aeroplane, microlite or parachute, but it wasn't behaving like anything he had seen before.

"It was very weird. It was so strange. I have been a lorry driver in my time and seen some strange things, but this is something else," said Mr Matthews, 45, from Patchway.

"I had never ever seen something like this before. I was really surprised how other people had not noticed it. I thought they would be stopping in their droves, but that was not the case at all."

Denis Plunkett of Winterbourne, who runs the British Flying Saucer Bureau, believed Mr Matthews' sighting was just the latest in a series of visits by aliens to Earth.

Mr Plunkett said: "They come in all shapes and sizes, mainly disc-shaped but in the upper atmosphere also cigar-shaped – the so-called motherships.

"When they get in the upper atmosphere, they discharge the smaller ones that are used for surveillance.

"We have had quite a few UFO sightings in the last few months, in Cardiff for example when one almost crashed into a police helicopter.

"Before that, it was seen over Kingswood and the Suspension Bridge before heading to Wales."

Former RAF pilot Mr Plunkett, 77, added: "I'm not surprised this UFO was spotted over somewhere like Patchway because quite often they visit airports like Filton. They visit anything to do with the air because they want to know the infrastructure of the planet. What they are obviously doing is surveying and collecting information about us."

Did you see the mysterious object in the sky over Filton on Friday – or do you think you know what it was? Contact the newsdesk on 0117 934 3333 or e-mail us.

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