British Airways Pilots Report 50FT Near-Miss With Mysterious Object 'Size of Four Toasters' Over Surrey

A British Airways Boeing 777 passenger airliner narrowly avoided a high-speed collision with an unidentified metallic object over Surrey, and was assigned the highest possible risk classification by national flight investigators.

Published in safety filings by the UK Airprox Board on 16 September, weeks before it attracted wider attention in October. It was the only Category A case among 13 reports involving drones, balloons, model aircraft and unidentified objects reviewed in September.

The finding was serious, but it did not identify the object. That distinction matters when the encounter is described as a UFO sighting. The Board separately assessed 21 aircraft-to-aircraft reports, including another Category A case.

The flight crew reported that a shiny, silver object, approximately the size of four toasters, passed rapidly in the opposite direction, tracking at an estimated altitude of 50 feet above the right wing before disappearing from sight.

Despite extensive forensic checks across regional surveillance feeds, NATS Safety Investigations confirmed that air traffic control radar failed to log any matching contact, leaving detectives without electronic confirmation of the object's identity or origin.

Categorising the event as a Category A incident in which chance played a major role in averting disaster, the board singled out the encounter as the sole maximum-hazard report among thirteen non-aircraft aerial events examined during autumn safety reviews, underscoring persistent concerns about untraced airborne hazards across southern England's congested skies.

Why the British Airways Near-Miss Received a Category A Rating

At 12.08pm UTC, the aircraft was climbing through 5,800ft, roughly four nautical miles north-east of Guildford. The pilot said something shiny and silver passed rapidly in the opposite direction, close to the right wing. They initially believed it was likely to be a medium-sized drone.

An air traffic controller recorded the pilot's description of an apparently metallic, reflective object. Asked about its dimensions, the pilot said it was about the 'size of four toasters'. The comparison was striking, but it was an eyewitness estimate made during a fleeting encounter.

The unusual measurement also drew jokes online. In a 25 October Reddit discussion, one commenter wrote, 'It was 4 toasters in a trench coat'. Others questioned how reliably a pilot could estimate an object's size at speed.

The official report records 50ft of vertical separation, as estimated by the pilot, with no horizontal separation supplied. It does not establish a measured closest distance between the Boeing 777 and the unknown object. The reported position, speed and apparent dimensions could not be independently confirmed.

NATS Safety Investigations reviewed radar information from the time of the sighting. No matching contact appeared. That left investigators without radar confirmation, rather than proving the object was invisible to radar or had an extraordinary origin.

The Board placed the incident in Category A. It concluded that chance had played a major part and/or that a definite collision risk had existed. That was a formal assessment of danger, not a finding that a collision was certain.

British Airways said such incidents are taken seriously and reported to authorities so they can investigate. A spokesperson told The Independent that the crew did not have to take evasive action and the flight completed its journey as planned. The Airprox record itself does not identify the airline, total passengers, destination, or Boeing 777 variant.

How the British Airways Case Compared With Another Heathrow Sighting

Three days earlier, on 21 June, an Airbus A320 crew reported a large object near Kensal Town in west London. The first officer saw it to the right of the aircraft, moving west several hundred feet below as the A320 climbed. The crew considered it a possible large drone, but investigators could not determine its identity.

Controllers recorded three other reports of possible drones within 30 minutes of that earlier sighting. Radar checks found no corresponding contact. The Board assigned the A320 encounter to Category D because there was insufficient information to make a sound judgement of collision risk.

In its group of 13 drone and object reports, the Board assigned two cases to Category B, seven to Category C, and three to Category D. Only the Boeing 777 incident received Category A. Those different assessments reflect the available evidence and perceived danger, not proof of what any unidentified object actually was.

One Category B case involved a military training aircraft at RAF Cranwell, where a drone was reported inside the airfield's visual circuit. Investigators said the drone had been operated illegally, although its operator was not traced. That identification was not established in the British Airways case.

The reports do not establish a connection between the Heathrow encounters, identify an operator for the Surrey object or show that aviation rules were broken. The official finding remains that the Boeing 777 faced a serious assessed risk from something investigators could not identify.