Stansted, one of the UK’s busiest airports, appears to be a new UFO hotspot following several near misses between planes and unidentified objects.

A Freedom of Information request has revealed the incidents, which include an invisible object triggering planes’ collision avoidance systems.

Last year, it was reported that a UFO reportedly came as close as 20 metres to a Ryanair plane after it took off from their airport.

The object did not register on the plane’s drone-monitoring equipment, but was spotted by the pilot.

The official report said the jet was travelling at more than 200mph and at a height of 4000ft.

‘The pilot saw an object which they describe as black, which passed within 20 metres of the aircraft,’ it said.

‘The plane was travelling at 230mph and the object was travelling from north to south.’

Another incident in the same year saw pilots reporting their collision avoidance systems detected an object about 500ft below them as they came into land.

An Essex police report, which was retrieved under the Freedom of Information Act, said: ‘Three aircraft reported an object was in their vicinity. Informant from tower reported that two planes have reported an object at about 500ft below them as they are coming into land on Runway 22, the closest being 20km away.

‘Approach (two-three miles out) when their TCAS (traffic collision avoidance system) alerted them to something at around 500ft. None of the pilots could see anything when they looked.’

Another incident reported in 2023, saw a report near the airport citing an ‘enormous cylindrical object flying very high in the sky’ and that it also had a ‘green luminescent glow’.

‘There was no sound, no smoke, no propulsion and it was observed for 10-20 seconds as it travelled very slowly and then faded away.’

In total, 27 reports of UFOs over Essex have been reported since 2018.