Sighting in Aulnay-sous-Bois, February 9, 1981

At around 2:45 pm, a witness saw an orange fireball in the sky, followed by a trail of grey smoke. The round object came down slowly and made no sound, then vanished into the landscape. A second fireball of the same kind then appeared.

The investigation found that earlier that day, at about 2:30 pm, firefighters at the nearby airport had fired parachute distress flares. These flares rise straight up to roughly 100 to 200 m, stay lit for about a minute, then drift gently back down and go out. GEIPAN concluded that the witness had most likely seen these distress flares, and classified the case B (probably identified).