Last updated: June 27, 2026
On the night of July 31, 1995, a Boeing 727 operated by Aerolíneas Argentinas was approaching San Carlos de Bariloche when Commander Jorge Polanco — commanding Flight 674 — reported a blinding light that trailed the aircraft for 17 minutes over the Patagonian Andes. Argentine Air Force jets were scrambled. Air traffic controllers tracked the object on radar. Simultaneously, the city of Bariloche experienced a widespread power outage. The story dominated Argentine newspapers for days—and then faded from international memory for three decades.
Today, it’s back. The Bariloche encounter now appears in the Pentagon’s declassified UAP intelligence files, a development that Argentine researchers and Spanish-language media have been covering with notable intensity. For English-speaking audiences who follow UAP disclosure, this is a landmark case most have never heard of—and it reveals a broader truth: Latin America’s disclosure history is far older, and far more documented, than the American conversation typically acknowledges.
What Happened Over Bariloche on July 31, 1995
The incident unfolded at approximately 9:52 PM local time as Flight 674 approached the Bariloche airport in the Río Negro province of Argentina. Commander Jorge Polanco and his crew reported an extremely bright light—later described as resembling an inverted saucer with green lights at the extremes and an orange light in the center—that appeared to track their aircraft over the Andean ridge for 17 minutes.
The object was observed not just by the airline crew but by multiple witnesses on the ground, and by pilots of a Gendarmería Nacional Cheyenne aircraft that was already airborne in the area. Radar operators confirmed an unidentified target in the same airspace. During the encounter, the city of Bariloche experienced a widespread power outage—a detail that has been repeatedly noted by researchers as a significant associated anomaly.
Unable to land safely, Commander Polanco performed an escape maneuver, raising the aircraft to 10,000 feet. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the object accelerated and vanished. No wreckage, no signal, no conventional explanation was ever produced.
How Argentina Officially Responded
What distinguishes the Bariloche case from countless UFO reports is the institutional response it triggered. Argentina took it seriously at the official level. The CEFAE—the Comisión de Estudio de Fenómenos Aeroespaciales, the Argentine Air Force’s dedicated office for aerospace phenomenon research—opened a formal investigation.
CEFAE, formalized in 1999 partly in response to the volume of credible cases like Bariloche, represents something remarkable: a functioning government body designed specifically to study unidentified aerial phenomena, predating the Pentagon’s AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) by more than two decades.
Argentine authorities never produced a conventional explanation for the Bariloche encounter. It remains officially unexplained to this day.
Why It Is Appearing in Pentagon-Referenced Files Now
The current wave of U.S. UAP disclosure—accelerated by the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, AARO reports from 2023 and 2024, and the ODNI declassified assessments—has created enormous pressure on researchers worldwide to cross-reference international cases against the emerging American framework.
The Bariloche incident surfaces in this context because it meets the evidentiary criteria researchers now apply: military witnesses, radar confirmation, multiple independent observers, a simultaneous electromagnetic effect (the power outage), and a formal government investigation with no concluded explanation. The case also appears in the French COMETA Report (1999)—an independent study by senior French officials and scientists now included in declassified material circulating in UAP research communities.
As Infobae reported in May 2026, Commander Polanco’s own account—”it followed us for 17 minutes”—has now been formally incorporated into materials cited by U.S. UAP researchers connected to the Pentagon’s declassification process. UFO researcher Carlos Ferguson described it as “one of the most important cases in the world.”
Argentina’s Long History With Transparent UAP Reporting
The Bariloche case did not happen in isolation. Argentina has one of the most documented UFO disclosure histories in the Western Hemisphere—a fact largely invisible to English-speaking audiences.
In 2011, the Argentine Air Force formally reopened its UFO research commission. CEFAE has published case files and accepted reports from commercial airline pilots on an ongoing basis. Argentina’s approach has been consistently more transparent than that of most nations, including the United States prior to 2017.
Other significant Argentine cases from the same era include the 1986 sighting over Villa Carlos Paz, multiple encounters logged by Aerolíneas Argentinas crews throughout the 1990s, and radar-confirmed events near the Patagonian coast. The Bariloche case is arguably the most prominent—but it is not singular.
What Spanish-Language Media Is Reporting Right Now
While the English-language UAP media ecosystem has largely overlooked this case, Argentine and broader Latin American outlets have been covering it with renewed intensity. Infobae ran the story in May 2026 specifically in its U.S. section, framing the Bariloche case as an Argentine incident now formally recognized within the U.S. declassification process. Perfil published a detailed account of how the Aerolíneas Argentinas flight appears in the U.S. declassified UAP archives. La Nación, one of Argentina’s most authoritative newspapers, covered the case in its international section. El Destape also examined what the Aerolíneas Argentinas flight’s appearance in the U.S. declassified files actually means.
The coverage frames Bariloche not as historical curiosity but as active evidence: proof that Argentina was investigating UAP phenomena at an official level years before U.S. congressional hearings made the term mainstream. The Spanish-language conversation about this case is sophisticated, technically grounded, and ongoing. The English-language conversation is essentially nonexistent.
The Bigger Picture: Latin America’s Parallel Disclosure Story
The significance of the Bariloche incident goes beyond Argentina. It represents a pattern recognizable across Latin America: credible, multi-witness, officially investigated UAP events that exist almost entirely outside the English-language disclosure conversation.
Brazil’s famous 1986 “Official Night of UFOs”—when the Brazilian Air Force scrambled multiple jets to pursue unidentified objects and the event was confirmed in declassified military files—is the most prominent regional parallel. Peru has maintained DIFAA (Departamento de Investigación de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos) since 2013. Mexico’s 2004 infrared footage captured by its Air Force remains one of the most debated pieces of UAP video evidence ever released by any government.
The Bariloche case connects all of these threads. It confirms that the U.S. disclosure conversation—important as it is—represents only one strand of a global story that Latin American governments began telling decades ago.
A 31-Year-Old Case With New Relevance
The 1995 Bariloche UFO incident is three decades old. It has never been explained. It now appears in the research landscape being built around Pentagon-linked declassified files. And it is being actively reported—in Spanish—by major Argentine and Latin American publications that most English-speaking UAP researchers never read.
That gap is exactly what UAP Disclosure Reads exists to close. As the global disclosure conversation accelerates, the cases documented by Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, and their neighbors deserve the same serious attention given to Nimitz, GOFAST, and Gimbal. The evidence has always been there. It just wasn’t in English.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happened during the 1995 Bariloche UFO incident?
On July 31, 1995, Aerolíneas Argentinas Flight 674 was trailed by a blinding luminous object for 17 minutes over the Patagonian Andes near Bariloche. Argentine Air Force jets were scrambled, air traffic controllers tracked the object on radar, and the city of Bariloche simultaneously experienced a widespread power outage.
Is the 1995 Bariloche incident in the Pentagon’s declassified files?
Yes. The Bariloche encounter appears in the Pentagon’s declassified UAP intelligence files published through the PURSUE portal in 2026 — marking the first official U.S. government acknowledgment of this South American case that had previously been documented only in Argentine news and aviation records.
Who was Commander Jorge Polanco?
Jorge Polanco was the pilot in command of Aerolíneas Argentinas Flight 674 on July 31, 1995. He filed an official report with Argentine civil aviation authorities describing how an unidentified luminous object trailed his Boeing 727 for 17 minutes over the Andes.
Why did Bariloche experience a power outage during the UFO sighting?
The widespread power outage that affected Bariloche simultaneously with the aerial encounter remains unexplained. Researchers have noted this correlation as potentially significant, as similar electromagnetic effects coinciding with UAP activity have been documented in other cases worldwide.
