Sighting in Bressey-sur-Tille, April 16, 2017

In the middle of the night, at around 1:45 a.m., a witness noticed a yellow light at low altitude and watched it first with the naked eye, then through binoculars. It first seemed to hold still, then moved, and was finally lost from view behind trees. According to the witness, the observation lasted about twenty minutes. They also noted two red lights that did not blink. No other witness account was collected.

The investigation settled on the hypothesis of confusion with an aircraft on approach to Dijon-Bourgogne airport, possibly a military aircraft such as a Transall C-160, seen from a distance with its landing lights on, heading for runway 17/35 and gradually drawing closer to the witness. Air base 102 was closed at the time, but some military aircraft still used it in 2017 for refuelling or exercises, and both the Transall C-160 and the Hercules C-130 were still in service. The apparent stillness followed by slow movement is explained by the aircraft's speed, its distance and its path, which first lay along the line of sight and then close to it. The duration fits if the aircraft was flying slowly, near its stall speed, and was initially very far away, several tens of kilometres. The yellow lights would correspond to landing lights and the red ones to beacon-type anti-collision lights, even though the witness did not mention any flashing. The lack of white strobe lights is possible on this type of aircraft. Some uncertainty remains about the number of lights, since the examples found for the C-160 show two landing lights and a single red anti-collision light.

GEIPAN classified the case as B: probable misidentification of an aircraft on approach to land.