Restricted Area
Indianapolis Center is depicted in the second scene of Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977), in which an air traffic controller provides information and guidance to pilots of two passenger jets (Trans World Airlines, Allegheny Airlines and a fictional "Air East") who are en route through the ZID flight information region to avoid collisions with each other or with an unidentified "aircraft" that appears to have extremely bright anti-collision lights and is "exhibiting some non-ballistic motion." A supervisor orders another controller to "get on the horn with the 45th Recon Wing to find out if there is a test flight mission in "Restricted Area 2508." (The actual 45th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron was based at Bergstrom Air Force Base in the mid-1970s, but was inactivated not long before the film's pre-production. The real Restricted Area 2508 is located in Southern California.) The scene concluded with a senior supervisor instructing the controller to ask the TWA and Air East pilots if they wish to officially report a UFO. Both pilots declined.