On the evening of November 11, 1979, Spanish airline TAE Charter Flight JK-297, a Sud Aviation Caravelle carrying 109 passengers and six crew from Salzburg, Austria to Tenerife with a scheduled stop at Palma de Mallorca, was cruising at 24,000 feet over the Mediterranean approximately 50 miles east of Valencia when the crew observed a set of unusually bright red lights approaching their aircraft on a collision course. Captain Francisco Javier Lerdo de Tejada reported the sighting to Barcelona ATC and attempted evasive manoeuvres. The lights followed the Caravelle through two altitude changes and closed to within 1,500 metres.
Captain Lerdo de Tejada declared an emergency and requested diversion to the nearest airport. Barcelona ATC cleared an emergency landing at Manises Airport outside Valencia. During the descent, the lights continued to shadow the aircraft; passengers in the left-side cabin independently observed them through their windows. At approximately 11:42 PM, the Caravelle landed safely at Manises, where the crew and ground controllers continued to observe the lights hovering approximately 20 kilometres east of the airport for an additional 30 minutes. Two Spanish Air Force Mirage F1 interceptors were scrambled from Los Llanos Air Base in Albacete to investigate. Captain Fernando Cámara, piloting the lead Mirage, visually and via onboard radar confirmed a bright elongated object at 26,000 feet that rapidly climbed and accelerated, pulling away from his pursuit at speeds he estimated above Mach 2.5.
The Manises incident is the most significant documented airliner-UFO encounter in Spanish aviation history and one of the best-documented in Europe. The Spanish Air Force's formal case file, declassified in 1994 under Minister of Defense Julián García Vargas, confirmed the scramble, the visual and radar observations, and the pilot's pursuit. Captain Cámara, whose identity was also declassified, subsequently wrote and spoke publicly about the encounter. The Manises case is Spain's equivalent to Brazil's Official UFO Night and the JAL 1628 incident — a formally-investigated and governmental-acknowledged aerial engagement that has never received a conventional explanation.