A mysterious unidentified flying object described as a ‘white something’ panicked both passengers and pilots after an alleged near-miss over Hawaii.
A woman on board a Mokulele Airlines flight between Molokai to Maui said she spotted the object which forced the plane to swerve to avoid a collision as they exited a cloud bank on July 9.
Molokai resident Tami Dixon said the incident: ‘Literally scared the hell out of me. Both pilots looked at each other and veered to the right.’
The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board both could not confirm that another plane or craft was in the area.
Dixon suspected that the object may have been a drone, but drone experts have stated that, if everyone was following US air safety rules, plane and drones should never get that close.
The incident came just a day before the latest batch of declassified UFO files were released by the Pentagon, including video evidence of another strange white object nearly colliding with a US military aircraft at extreme speed.
While Hawaii is not the biggest hotbed for UFO activity, there have already been nine other sightings submitted to the National UFO Reporting Center this year.
While the US government has maintained for decades that there is no physical proof UFOs and alien life exist, the public disclosure of once-classified sightings has now revealed many similar incidents to the one reported between Molokai and Maui this month.
Pictured: A Mokulele Airlines flight similar to the plane that swerved to avoid an unidentified flying object over Hawaii
Tami Dixon, a passenger on the July 9 flight, suggested that the object may have been a drone
Timo Sullivan of Aloha Aina Drones said after the incident that, if the UFO was a drone, it would have had its own flight lane over Hawaii, making a collision unlikely.
‘The FAA establishes very clear guidelines of where aircraft can fly. Kind of like on a highway, you have your own driving lane,’ Sullivan told Hawaii News Now.
‘They should never actually interact or you should never have one car or aircraft entering another car’s lane.’
Dixon had said that the mystery object did not appear to be a bird and was too small to have been another plane in the Mokulele Airlines’ path.
According to the passenger, who was reportedly headed to undergo eye surgery, the small commuter plane had been passing through clouds which brought visibility down to zero.
Once the plane left the clouds, however, Dixon claims the UFO suddenly appeared and was seen by both pilots, who took action to avoid a collision.
A spokesperson for Mokulele Airlines told the Daily Mail they have no record of a near-miss involving one of their planes that day.
Meanwhile, the fourth tranche of UFO released on July 10 captured a similar encounter over the eastern US in 2015.
UFO files released on July 10 revealed a near-miss with an object over the eastern US in 2015
Like multiple military videos released before it, cameras caught a small object moving at the speed of a missile, jet aircraft or something even faster than human technology is capable of achieving.
In Hawaii, NUFORC, an independent website where everyday people can report and read about UFO sightings worldwide, there have been over 700 incidents made public since 1960.
These have ranged from Americans seeing strange lights in the sky to objects described as orbs, triangles, diamonds and rectangles hovering over the islands.
The son of music star Willie Nelson revealed last year that he has had multiple encounters with UFOs while visiting the state.
Singer and songwriter Lukas Nelson revealed on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in July 2025 that he and several other people watched as orb-shaped UFOs streaked over Hawaii in 2006.
The group watched as an orange orb floated less than 200 yards over Maui, which seemed to be observing the onlookers below.
‘Then I swear it seemed like as soon as enough people saw it, it went whoosh. And then it went whoosh. And it moved like nothing else I thought possible at the time. It went out of the atmosphere. And it was crazy. Faster than any drone,’ the performer said.
