An audio recording of a pilot who saw an unidentified flying object 17 years ago in Shanghai was revealed at the weekend.

The tape was recorded in the cockpit of flight 3556 from Shanghai to Ji'nan, Shandong Province at 6:15 pm on March 18, 1991. Numerous people in Shanghai reported seeing the UFO fly over the city's northwest, and it was seen by witnesses in Wuxi, neighboring Jiangsu Province.

The dialogue between the pilot and control tower was released at a UFO forum on Saturday in Shanghai, the Nanjing-based Jinling Evening News reported.

From 6:12 pm to 6:26 pm, the UFO followed the flight, varying its form, velocity and altitude, the tape revealed. Flight controllers urged the pilot to change routes several times to avoid colliding with it, according to the newspaper.

The control tower saw the orange flying object first but no trace of the UFO was recorded by airport radar, the newspaper said.

"I saw an unidentified flying object 7 nautical miles away in front of me after taking off. I was heading to 280 degrees and the object was like a ball of fire, about 3 to 5 meters long," said the pilot on tape.

"It was flying fast toward the northeast and flew further away after I swung to the left. It then turned around and headed toward 100 degrees south, and lowered its altitude.

"I tried to avoid it while it changed its route to the north, when it transformed itself into a long black object and again lowered altitude before rising. It then appeared as a black rectangle and a round ball flying first to the northeast, then the northwest, before rising again."

Nineteen UFOs have been seen in China since 1971, Wang Sichao, a researcher at Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, said at the forum.

(Shanghai Daily June 30, 2008)