Sighting in Case-Pilote, October 25, 2019

At about 11 a.m., a witness on their terrace noticed a luminous object hovering over the sea, whose behavior seemed unusual to them. Their daughter and their spouse were with them. Intrigued, the witness first picked up binoculars, then a camera. For 12 minutes they followed the object's movements: stops, a spin on its own axis, and travel in a straight line. The object eventually climbed and vanished into the cloud cover. The witness attached photographs to their questionnaire.

The GEIPAN investigation showed that the phenomenon seen by the three witnesses was very probably a novelty Mylar balloon, drifting on the light wind present that day. It may have slipped away from its owner on one of the beaches southeast of the witnesses. This conclusion rests on several points: the novelty shape, the electric-blue color and strong brightness caused by the metallized surface reflecting sunlight, the presence of a stick used to hold the balloon, and movement in the direction of a prevailing wind that was nil to very weak, which explains the periods of standing still and the rotation around a vertical axis. Calculations of speeds, distances and sizes were consistent with this hypothesis. The investigation also noted that the balloon could have come from a beach west of Fort-de-France, and that the school holidays and mild temperatures made it likely that balloon sellers were walking the beaches. The case is classified A.