Flap

A flap is ufology's word for a wave: a concentrated burst of sighting reports clustered in one region or time window, well above the area's usual background rate. Flaps are largely self-amplifying — a few early reports draw press coverage, coverage sends more people outside looking up, and the resulting skywatching produces still more reports, a feedback loop skeptics point to as strong evidence that at least some flaps are social contagion rather than a genuine spike in aerial activity. The word itself is older aviation and military slang for a sudden crisis or commotion, adopted into ufology because that is exactly what a flap feels like on the ground — newspapers, radio call-ins, and official switchboards lighting up within days. The Washington, D.C. flap of July 1952, when radar and visual sightings stacked up over the capital two weekends running, is the case that put the word into permanent use; the 1954 French wave, the 1965-67 U.S. wave, 1973's nationwide flap, and the 2024 New Jersey drone flap are its later, larger descendants. Investigators now distinguish "flaps" (media-driven regional bursts) from statistically detected space-time report clusters in the raw data, which don't always coincide.