American actor and licensed private pilot who, while flying his own aircraft into Phoenix on the evening of March 13, 1997, radioed air traffic control to report a V-shaped formation of lights, making him the general-aviation pilot on record for the Phoenix Lights sighting. He said publicly in 2020 that he had forgotten making the report until seeing a television segment about the event years later.
Kurt Russell is an American actor who holds a private pilot's license. On the evening of March 13, 1997, he was flying his own plane into Phoenix, Arizona, with his son Oliver, when he saw a formation of lights in a uniform V-shape passing overhead and radioed air traffic control to report it, making him the only general-aviation pilot known to have called in the sighting that night. Russell has said he did not think much of the incident afterward and largely forgot about it. Years later, while watching a television program with his partner Goldie Hawn about the Phoenix Lights, which noted that only one pilot had officially reported the sighting to air traffic control, Russell realized the report had been his. He has since discussed the account publicly in interviews, describing it as an unresolved memory rather than a claim about the object's origin.