Pilots and passengers were left confused by what they claim was a “flying man” speeding past their plane at 1000m above the Cheshire countryside.

The man, dubbed the “Superman of Macclesfield” did not appear on radar but was seen by many aboard the Airbus 320 as it came in to land at Manchester Airport at around 13:30 on 13 June this year.

The pilots reported first seeing the “flying man” a few hundred metres in front of them at the 11 o’clock position, around 75m above them, and it proceeded to pass down the left side of the plane only around 100m from the wing, according to a report from the Airprox Board, which records near misses in the skies.

The pilot and first officer reported the sighting to air traffic control, and thought the man was a paraglider but saw no signs of a canopy. Further investigations with other nearby airports failed to turn up any paragliders, parachutists, balloonists in the area at the time.

The mystery as to what the man or object was may never be solved, but commentators have proposed that it may have been a superman-shaped balloon or even a life-size remote-controlled superman robot.

The Airprox Board concluded:

“It was unfortunate that there was really no information that could lead to identifying the unknown object. This was frustrating to both the Board and the pilots concerned who had clearly seen something or someone but there was no way of corroborating what they had reported.
…
“Given the uncertainty over a paramotor, the information that the after-cast had apparently precluded the unknown object being a paraglider and, with no evidence of parachuting or ballooning in the area either, the Board simply had to conclude that there was not enough data to determine the cause of the Airprox; therefore the risk was classified as Category D, insufficient information.”