Sheffield UFO: More readers say they saw flying white shape and suggest what it could have been

“It’s a blurred!” “It’s a plane!” It’s... well, it might actually just be a plane.

Thousands of The Star’s readers this week watched a video of a ‘UFO’ flying over the Arbourthorne area shared with us by a Sheffield mum.

Jennifer Dunstan captured the clip of the white shape streaking above the Steel City at around 6pm on May 6, and noted how she couldn’t identify it when looking through a flight tracking app.

But since the clip went live, some of The Star’s readers say they also saw the airborne object that day - and others have had some good guesses as to what it might have been.

Reader Tom James set the groundwork for discussion on The Star’s Facebook page, writing: “Can we all just be reminded and UFO isn't an alien craft. It’s anything in the air that we can’t currently identify.”

“We know,” replied Malcolm Wood. “Because no alien worth its salt would travel billions of miles to visit Sheffield.”

“Next there will be pterodactyls up at Redmires,” wrote reader Jonathan Slater.

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Several readers say they also saw the ‘UFO’ on May 6.

Reader Tom M Hill wrote: “Me and my wife saw this from Shireoaks! We were on our way back from Langsett on Monday and as we came into village we spotted it and wondered what it was.”

However, the most striking theory, posited by readers such as Craig Ashby, Josephine Rowe, Shannon Bingley and Ade Wild, is that the shape wasn’t any ordinary plane, but an Airbus Beluga.

The bulky specialised aircraft - formally known as a the Airbus A300-600ST - was introduced in 1995 for shipping parts of other aeroplanes, while the even larger BelugaXL was released in 2019/20. They are known to be a strange sight at first as they are twice as bulky as a regular plane and, true to name, resemble a beluga whale or a dolphin.

Several readers said they are a regular enough sight above Chapeltown and other parts of Sheffield, and in 2021, Sheffield resident Sam Wragg captured a stunning photo of one in flight over Doncaster and Barnsley.

There are five Airbus Belugas in operation. However, several trackers exist online to record sightings of the wonky looking planes, and none The Star could find registered a sighting in the UK on May 6, but several were spotted in Europe.