Pilot Riccardo Marano was about to land at Caselle Airport, Turin Italy, in a Piper Navajo, when the controller notified him that there was a UFO about 400 meters (1,320 feet) above the runway. He looked and saw a luminous, multicolored ball of light changing from violet to blue to dark red. "When I got closer and had a better view," he said, "the object at once made off, flying in a most irregular fashion, maneuvering in a way I have seen no plane do, making fantastic lateral deviations, and sudden vast jumps to and fro, as if it enjoyed playing hide-and-seek. Its speed was as high as 900 km per hour [540 mph]." Col. Rustichelli, commandant of the Caselle military airfield, said he had seen the UFO on his own radar screen. "It was something solid, lit up, like a plane on my radar." Commander Tranquillo, pilot of an Alitalia Air Line DC-9 en route from Turin to Rome, called to the control tower: "I see a shining thing giving out intermittent flashes of light, four miles from me. I dare not approach. I give way." Commander Mezzalami in another Alitalia DC-9 said: "I was able to observe the object - - - notified by the control tower just as I was about to touch down. I had a good view of it....I can offer no theories as to its significance, and can only say that it was something very strange indeed.