The 'Basketball' at 13,000 Feet: Details Emerge on Mysterious Object Sighted by WestJet Pilots

On the evening of January 19, 2026, at approximately 8:45 PM local time, the flight crew of a WestJet Boeing 737 encountered a baffling sight. While cruising from Winnipeg to Calgary, the pilots observed an unidentified object hovering at an altitude of roughly 13,000 feet, which is nearly 4 kilometers above the ground. This incident remained out of the public eye until March 20, 2026, when an official report was released in the Transport Canada open database. The pilots specifically described the phenomenon as an "object the size of a basketball," noting that no other aircraft in the vicinity had reported seeing anything similar at that time.

The official documentation filed for this event was categorized under a broad spectrum of possibilities, including "Weather balloon, meteor, rocket, UFO." This classification highlights the fact that the aircraft's commanders were unable to identify the object using any standard aeronautical or meteorological explanations available to them. The ambiguity of the report underscores the mystery, as the object did not fit the typical profile of known aerial traffic or natural phenomena usually encountered during such a flight path.

Chris Rutkowski, a prominent Canadian ufologist, shared his insights with the media regarding the sparse details of the encounter. He emphasized that while the available information is limited, the very act of filing a report is significant. Rutkowski pointed out that the pilots' decision to document the incident suggests a level of professional concern that cannot be ignored. "We can only say that it was an unidentified object that caused enough concern for the pilots to file an incident report," Rutkowski stated. He further noted that with many passengers on board these commercial flights, such anomalies warrant a serious level of attention and investigation.

As of the current reporting, neither WestJet nor Transport Canada has provided additional details or clarified whether a formal investigation has reached any definitive conclusions. For researchers who study such aerial phenomena, reports from commercial aviation professionals are considered gold-standard evidence. Unlike amateur footage, which can often be misleading or of poor quality, reports from trained flight crews undergo a rigorous registration process and are viewed as highly reliable testimonies.

The specific altitude of 13,000 feet also complicates the search for a simple explanation, as it effectively rules out most consumer drones and small unmanned aerial vehicles that typically operate at much lower heights. This height suggests either a sophisticated piece of technology or a natural phenomenon occurring in a layer of the atmosphere where such objects are rarely seen without prior authorization or tracking by aviation authorities.

The incident leaves several pressing questions unanswered for the aviation community and the public alike. Was this a rare, unrecorded weather balloon, or perhaps a piece of space debris re-entering the atmosphere from orbit? Alternatively, could it be something entirely different that currently defies conventional explanation? Until more data is released, the "basketball-sized" object at 13,000 feet remains one of the more intriguing aerial mysteries of 2026, highlighting the ongoing challenges of identifying every object that shares our skies.