UFO shuts airport. Really.

EAST China's Hangzhou City shut down its Xiaoshan airport for one hour late Wednesday night after radar detected the hovering of ... something.

Airport officials called it an unidentified flying object.

The UFO showed up on the airport's radar at around 9pm. The airport authority immediately notified passengers to stop boarding and grounded all flights about to take off, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.

The object forced many incoming flights to land in neighboring airports in cities of Ningbo and Wuxi. It also caused about four hours delay for flights taking off.

The UFO looked like a twinkling spot and disappeared very soon, Xinhua quoted a passenger on board an incoming plane who claimed he witnessed the object.

The Xiaoshan airport has resumed normal operations, its spokesman said. He refused to provide more details, saying an investigation was still going on.

An airport worker said the UFO was only visible to radars at the airport and none of the passengers or workers on the runway could have seen it with the naked eye.

But just hours before the airport shut down, many residents in Hangzhou said they witnessed a glowing object hovering in the afternoon sky and moving weirdly.

The object, glowing in golden light, was moving slowly toward the ground dragging a comet-like tail, said a city bus driver surnamed Yu. It changed track after moving downwards for about six minutes.

"The thing suddenly ran westwards fast, like it was escaping from something," Yu said.

Hangzhou meteorological authorities said what these people reported might have been sunlight reflected from regular airplanes.

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