UFO Encounter on an Airline Flight approx. 20 minutes northwest of Chicago.

My family and I were enroute on a Northwest flight from Miami to St.Paul, MN when we experianced our UFO encounter about 20 minutes northwest of Chicago near the Illinois/Wisconsicn border. It was a clear night, no cloud cover. My middle brother and I were sittimg on the left hand side of the airplane just behind the wing area. I first noticed what appeared to be a rocket with a short fire trail coming from the left and from behind us. I immediately got my brother's attention and as the rocket got closer to us it became larger and the fire trail behind it grew longer. After watching this happen for about a minute the rocket was approaching towards us faster and faster. After watching this for 20 seconds we both got our father's attention who was sitting a few isles in front of us on the other side of the plane. He got out of his seat and came over and we showed him the rocket. He then called my mom, my youngest brother, and a family friend of ours to come over to our side of the plane and look out the window in order to see this object too. By the time they all got out of their seats and saw the object, approximately 45 seconds of time had elapsed since the beginning when I first saw it. By this time the rocket appeared much larger and was located just a hundred feet from the end of the wing. Instantaneously, the rocket fizzled out and changed shape into a "typical flying saucer." The saucer remained just off the end of the wing tip and then several white lights appeared in the middle of the craft; they looked similar to small windows. The craft then expelled a bunch of white sparkling lights and fire trails (simliar to sparklers) and then emitted all kinds of different colored lights that flew in all directions. Then the craft  literally disinegrated before our eyes and vanished, but I should note that it streaked away from the airplane while it vanished. The whole sequence of events lasted over a minute. Furthermore, we immediately questioned the flight attendants about it and one or two of them said! they sa w the craft too. Shortly thereafter they inquired the pilots about the event. They told us that the pilots responded to them by saying that they had personally not seen the craft or the event, but that they were contact by 2 or 3 other commercial aircraft flying nearby who reported they saw an unidentified aircraft flying close to our airplane. They wanted to know what was going on. Our pilots said they never saw the object(s).
Date is approximate.  PD