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If there is one group of people who don’t immediately shout ‘UFO’ every time there is a strange light in the sky, it is pilots.

After all, it’s very much their job to know what kind of thing are up in the air and to keep a cool head.

So, it is no surprise that there has been a lot of interest in reports by pilots from Air Midwest, a flight training and aviation service company, of a unidentified flying object over Gloucestershire.

While stressing they are not saying the UFO is part of an alien scouting party, or the initial stage of an Earth invasion, they have been baffled by what they saw.

And they would very much like to hear from people what the orange-coloured objects were.

Described as ‘unidentified nocturnal lights’, the company said they were seen south of Gloucester on Thursday between 8.15pm and 8.45pm.

What did they see?

This is how they reported the sighting, which happened as two of their aircraft were conducting night navigation exercises.

“At approximately 8.15pm one of our aircraft was tracking south towards Gloucester at 7,000ft after leaving the Birmingham air traffic zone.

“At the same time one of our other aircraft was also tracking south towards Gloucester at 4,000ft when both aircraft observed one red and one orange lights in the the sky south of Gloucester.

“Our aircraft approached the lights on an interception track but were unable to gain on the objects as they appeared to move further south of Gloucester as our aircraft approached.

“We were unable to identify the lights.”

The company, based in Wolverhampton, stressed that the lights “defied our normal expectation of standard aircraft or meteorological activity”.

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It has ruled out hot air balloons and said they have not come across any explanation of what the objects could be.

And it said it would welcome any explanation for what the pilots, with more than 25,000 flying hours between them, actually say.

Pilot describes his close encounter I observed initially two large square orange lights. One on top of each but slightly off set, however, there was a gap in height between them. The top ‘orb’ was constantly orange. The lower one occasionally flicked white but majority of time was orange. In addition to that on two occasions I observed five orange lights but that was momentary. I initially observed them when leaving Birmingham control zone. I thought they were just south of Gloucester and definitely a lot higher then us. We then climbed 5000 ft and they seemed level at that height and stationary. As we approached Gloucester, it became apparent they were now further south maybe beyond Bristol even as far as Weston-super-Mare but directly south of Gloucester[shire] airport. On our return leg up to EGBO (our home base) by Worcester we climbed 7,000 ft and commenced a turn to observe the lights. At this point they seemed lower than us in the same place and stationary. I have no idea what these objects were. Night glow balloons? But unlikely as these do not move very fast at all. So what they were? We have no idea. An interesting event.

After the pilots shared their experiences on social media, others people also reported seeing strange lights.

One person said on Facebook: "We saw that UFO while we were driving along the M5 bright light and VERY STRANGE movements

"It looked like a fighter jet diving for low level it dropped very quickly while performing a series of tight turns then it just hovered."

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Another person reported seeing it in Caerleon, near Newport in Wales, saying: "I saw this! I was in Caerleon and I noticed that there was nothing on radar and the fact that it was moving at a very fast pace."

While another person reported seeing something similar, but further south on the M3.

Do you know what the lights were? You can contact us at citizen.news@glosmedia.co.uk, in the comments below, or via our social media channels.