“Cactus 564” was an American West flight that initially began in Tampa, Florida the final part of the journey was from Dallas into Las Vegas which was the ultimate destination of Flight 564. On the night of May 25th 1995 Flight 564 a Boeing 757 under the command of Captain Eugene Tollefson and First Officer John Waller, was passing near Bovina, Texas just across the state line from Clovis, New Mexico at around 9:25pm. The lead flight attendant in the cabin of the aircraft was watching lightning flashes in the night sky as there were heavy thunderstorms to the northeast.

This flight attendant was the first one to notice a line of regularly flashing lights in the sky to the north just below the aircraft the First Officer then saw them also and they observed a horizontal row of eight strobe lights, flashing on and off in sequence from left to the right. The lights in question were as bright as aircraft landing lights, were at an altitude of around 30,000 to 35,000 feet and were a bright white colour with a tinge of blue. Captain Tollefson rose from his seat to take a look at the phenomena and he saw the left to right sequencing lights also. As the lightning flashed behind the strange lights it silhouetted what appeared to be a large, dark cigar shaped object that was estimated as being between 300 and 500 feet in length.

After five minutes of observing the object, Flight 564 called Albuquerque Air Traffic Control to report the bizarre craft here is part of the conversation from the official transcript -

AW-564: "Cactus 564...off to our 3:00, got some strobes out there. Could you tell us what it is?"

ABQ: "Uh, Uh..I'll tell you what, that's some, uh..right now ...I don't know what it is right now. That is a restricted area that is used by the military out there during the day time."

AW-564: "Yeah...it's pretty odd."

ABQ: "Hold on ...let me see if anybody else knows around here."

AW-564: "Cactus 564..can you paint that object at all on your radar

ABQ: "Cactus 564...No I don't, and in talkin' to 3 or 4 guys
around here no one knows what that is, never heard about
that."

AW-564: "Cactus 564...nobody's painting it at all?"

ABQ: "Cactus 564 say again?"

AW-564: "I said there's nothing on their radars on the other centers
at all on that (garbled) clear area, ...that object that's
up in the air?

ABQ: "Uh?..it's up in the air?"

AW-564: "A-FFIRMATIVE!!"

The Air Traffic Controller clearly notes that the object was positioned over a restricted military area called “Tieband.” It is not shown in the above piece of the transcript but the controller continued on to say that the description of the craft sounded similar to that of tethered aerostat except for the large number of strobes. However this theory was tossed aside after the Air Traffic Controller contacted many different sites that would know if an aerostat of any other military aircraft were in the air that night and all sites said it was no an aerostat or any military aircraft they knew were in the air that night. The controller also contacted other aircraft but no other pilots witnessed what Flight 564 saw. The controller also contacted NORAD who reported nothing unusual on there radar screens.

No explanation has ever been given for the event that Flight 564 witnessed.

Source - History Channel Documentary - "Black box UFO Sightings"