Time Magazine, in a rather late-in-the-game and not-at-all-close-to-being-a-timely article, reinforces that more than two-week-old private plane theory out of China.

China continues to insist that it was likely a defiant illegally flying billionaire pilot that caused airport officials to shut down Xiaoshan Airport on July 7th.

Time Magazine, in partnership with CNN (who were also quick to call the July 7th incident a hoax), published this semi-informative and not-at-all timely article on Monday.

After today, perhaps it is time to finally let this China UFO incident go. It depends on any additional future explanations that are likely come out of China that make absolutely no sense to most people.

None of these articles from the mainstream media care to question why experienced airport officials would shut down an airport over a commonly spotted private plane, which they initially labeled a UFO.

This is what we want to know. This is the one piece of information they keep avoiding:

What exactly happened in and around that airport that caused all this fuss in the first place?

Note that ‘UFO’ does not automatically mean that aliens from outer space were involved. It simply means that the object is unidentified. Despite the supposition that it was a private plane, it still remains a ‘UFO’, like it or not.

Missile, rocket, plane, meteorite, fairy, Chupacabra, or whatever it was , it is a still a UFO until it is absolutely identified as something concrete.

After the July 7th incident, airport officials were not able to explain what it was that caused them to order the shut down of the airport. UFO experts from Shanghai and Beijing stepped in after a while and surmised that the object was a private plane.

There’s a problem, though. The experts have not yet positively identified that alleged plane, nor have they found the alleged person who piloted that alleged plane.

The key word used in all of these explanations is the word: likely. This overused word is highlighted below in the following blurb from Time’s article:

“But when amateur pictures of the craft were splashed across Chinese newspapers the following morning, experts quickly determined that Hangzhou was not under threat of an imminent alien invasion. Rather, the flying object was identified as most likely being another example of an increasingly common nuisance in China’s airspace: off-the-grid, short-hop flights by local private-plane owners.”

Read the rest of the article on Time’s website here.

Although I am still very curious about this, as well as the never-mentioned-again UFO sighting in Chongqing (that took place a week after the Xiaoshan Airport shutdown), I will likely let this go after today. It simply depends on any additional information that China is likely (or not likely) to release in the future.

While I was enjoying a nice cup of coffee in my motel room in beautiful La Jolla, California, I had a good chuckle over the latest “China UFO” news.

So, now I have to share.

Remember last month when we heard about that UFO sighting in China? You know, the sighting on July 7th that caused that hour-long shutdown of the Xiaoshan Airport in China. The one that also coincided with the anniversary of the Roswell incident.

Yes, that’s the one.

Since the airport authorities in Hangzhou couldn’t come up with an answer other than a UFO, a team of UFO experts from Shanghai stepped in to investigate the matter a week later. Then, also a week later, the mainstream media decided to start covering the “UFO in China” news, since some of them didn’t think that bloggers were capable of covering the story.

We all thought that the case was closed when the experts concluded that it was just a private plane that shut down the airport.

This private plane theory did not satisfy UFO enthusiasts (or anyone else). We all had a good chuckle over that explanation, but we did manage to move on with our lives.

So, not leaving well enough alone, and to further support the private plane explanation from the UFO experts, the media in China then released a news story about those pesky private plane flying billionaires. They said that those billionaires fly all over the place in their private planes without first filing flight plans. While the billionaires have caused flights to be diverted in the past, they’ve never managed to shut down an airport.

Well, they didn’t until July, they said.

It was a more creative explanation and it didn’t insult our intelligence too badly. At least it wasn’t another weather balloon that shut down the airport.

It wasn’t just us in the United States who felt that something just wasn’t right about that private plane explanation. The explanation also didn’t satisfy critical thinkers in China. So, the debate continues.

UFO researcher, Professor Wang, has a theory about that private plane. If you recall, Professor Wang recently predicted more UFO sightings to come in 2011 and 2012. So, professor Wang weighed in about the private plane theory.

As reported by Chinanews.com.cn:

According to Wang Sichao, a researcher from the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the UFO that encroached on the airspace of Xiaoshan airport in Hangzhou flew at a height of one kilometer from the ground. It might be some special aircraft, such as a plane, or some rapid, noiseless or low-noise aircraft.

Wang also believes that the UFO was unlikely to be some typical domestic plane or overseas plane. Also, it could not be cruise missile or rocket fragments.

So, are those billionaires now buying unusual private planes that can be mistaken for UFOs? We’ll keep monitoring the news out of China and see what they come up with.

Kudos to Professor Wang that he continues to search for answers related to this incident, since he also knows that the private plane theory isn’t quite convincing enough. So, the special plane theory could explain why airport officials thought that the plane could be a UFO, and caused an airport shutdown because of it.

Of course, we still haven’t heard anything new about that UFO sighting in Chongqing that occurred a week after the Xiaoshan airport incident.

At least some people have grown tired of keeping a lid on things, or having to come up with lame explanations to satisfy the critical thinkers. For example, we recently learned that Winston Churchill once ordered a UFO “cover up”.  Also, according to the Associated Press yesterday, Brazil’s air force has been ordered to document UFO sightings and to make the data available to the public.

In fact, they are just going to disclose all of it in Brazil: “All past and future data — whether written reports, photos or video — will be processed by the air force and then housed in the National Archives in Rio de Janeiro.”

According to China Daily, the incident on July 7th that caused the Xiaoshan Airport to shutdown is not that uncommon in China.

Billionaire private plane owners like Xu Weijie violate flight regulations all the time.

The fines that Xu pays for flying one of his eleven private planes illegally doesn’t make a dent in his enormous pocketbook.

China’s rich would rather pay a fine than go through the painstakingly complex process for a single flight, causing much frustration for everyone else.

Xu’s flying has caused many flights to be diverted or delayed. This past April is a good case in point. Xu’s trip to a tourism resort in Zhejang caused flights to be diverted or delayed at two Shanghai airports: Pudong and Honqiao.

Xu has been ‘punished’ for his actions, which is merely a slap on the hand. On one of his trips, his plane was temporarily taken over by local civil aviation administration (it’s okay, he has ten more planes) and he was fined the equivalent of $4,300 (USD).

Xu’s not alone in the sky. There are many more of these these defiant billionaires. China Daily reports that there are 200 planes owned by billionaires who regularly fly illegally.

There are two types of private plane owners they say, those who report to the aviation departments and those who don’t.

Xu’s excuse for illegal flying: “China’s laws only regulate public planes and military planes, and there are no specific rules regarding private planes.”

On July 7th, Hangzhou’s Xiaoshan International Airport was shut down with 20 flights diverted due to an illegally flying private plane.

That does explain the incident. Sort of.

If airports in China are regularly inconvenienced by flying billionaires, then why would Xiaoshan airport officials and the Chinese media deem the object a ‘UFO’? Additionally, why would it take a team of UFO experts to finally identify the object that shut down an entire airport as a private plane?

Who knows.

We wanted an explanation and we got one. It’s a good one.

At least it wasn’t a “weather balloon” this time.