Sighting in Athis-Mons, July 30, 2016

At around 7:15 pm, the witness was sitting in a car stopped at a red light on the RN7, very close to Paris-Orly airport. They were heading north toward the junction leading to the petrol station of a nearby shopping centre. In the clear sky to their left, they noticed a very bright round shape, which they compared to a ping-pong ball held at arm's length. It seemed to hang motionless for about a minute, then moved slowly before vanishing very quickly in a straight line. The witness said there were aircraft in the area during the sighting, and described an extremely bright object with no visible wings and no flashing lights.

According to the investigation, the questionnaire and sketch show that the witness was looking west, toward the area west of the runways. An aircraft arriving from the west toward Orly, before lining up for its final approach, could therefore appear almost exactly in their line of sight. Seen head-on, powerful landing lights look like a single very bright point that hides the shape of the aircraft, and the wings and navigation lights are hard to make out. Along that axis the apparent movement is very small, which gives an impression of stillness. As soon as the viewing angle changes, the angular movement suddenly becomes larger and can be perceived as a sharp acceleration. The north-west wind of 9 to 15 km/h remained consistent with an approach toward the east.

Without usable radar data, the aircraft could not be precisely identified. GEIPAN noted that the immediate surroundings of Orly are constantly monitored by air safety services. It classified the case as B: probably an aircraft on approach to Orly, whose landing lights were seen almost along its flight path.