Sighting in Berthegon, February 13, 2019

At around 9 p.m., several people who were at home were startled by an intense humming noise. They saw a dark mass shaped like an inverted "V", with lights, pass by at low altitude. Each sighting lasted less than a minute. The object moved slowly along a straight path, then went out of the witnesses' view. The noise carried on for a few moments before fading away.

The on-site investigation made it possible to correct and clarify several details given in the witnesses' questionnaires, including the location, azimuth and time of the observation. The radar map provided by the CNOA clearly shows that low-altitude military traffic passed close to the witnesses at 20:07 UTC, i.e. 9:07 p.m. local time. Since the Transall C-160 aircraft had been replaced by the A400M, the witnesses most likely heard the passage of this much larger aircraft. GEIPAN classified the case as A: a misidentification of a military aircraft flying at low altitude.