Imphal airport closed for over three hours after a UFO was seen hovering

Flight operations at Bir Tikendrajit International (BTI) Airport in Manipur’s Imphal were closed for three hours and 20 minutes on Sunday following an unidentified flying object (UFO) hovering above the airport.

A senior Airport Authority of India (AAI) official said that the flight operations at the Airport in Imphal were suspended for three hours and 20 minutes from 2.30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon and the flight operations were resumed in the evening as usual after a “thorough checkup about the UFO”.

The official said that two flights from Delhi and Guwahati have been diverted and three departing Agartala, Guwahati and Kolkata bound flights have been delayed and the flight operations restarted after getting clearance from the competent authority.


The UFO was reportedly sighted by the Central Industrial Security Force personnel and a pilot of a private airliner before his flight was about to depart around 2.20 p.m.

Unprecedented ethnic violence erupted in Manipur on May 3, following a tribal solidarity rally that turned violent in Churachandpur district, leading to retaliatory violence between Chin-Kuki-Zo and the Meitei communities across the state.

Manipur police has stated that as many as 175 people were killed, 1,108 others injured while 32 are missing in the ongoing ethnic strife which started on May 3.