Sighting in Allauch, July 31, 1994

At around 2:30 p.m., in broad daylight, several witnesses saw a cylindrical object in the sky, accompanied by two round shapes of metallic color. One of them made out two protrusions from which flashing lights came. The object moved silently at a fairly high altitude, going in all directions; it spun on itself, swayed constantly and was likened to a dead leaf, while still keeping a general heading. Two of the witnesses reported what they had seen to the gendarmerie.

The GEIPAN investigation, which re-examined this case originally classified D, favors the hypothesis of a novelty balloon tossed about by the wind. Witness no. 1 gave enough geographic landmarks to reconstruct a trajectory running roughly south to north, which matches the winds recorded by the Marseille-Observatoire station. The movements described are typical of a light object pushed along by a weak wind. The flashing could be explained by a balloon made partly of a highly reflective material such as Mylar: as it turned, it would have reflected the sun's rays in a random way. It may have escaped from the Cassis area, which lies further along the trajectory to the south and where many summer leisure activities take place.

No other testimony was collected, even though the sighting occurred in full daylight, on a summer Saturday, in an inhabited area. The two accounts are very brief and come from people connected to each other (friends), which limits their reliability. GEIPAN therefore classified the case as B: probable balloon.