Sighting in Châteauneuf-Villevieille, January 24, 2016

Around 12:45 on a Sunday, a witness noticed a luminous, egg-shaped craft crossing the sky from west to east. It eventually shrank to a grey dot on the horizon. The witness heard no particular noise during the sighting.

Investigators checked civilian air traffic on Flightradar, which relies on so-called "secondary" radar data. Two unusual aircraft were in the area: a Beech 200 flying many circles at about 8,000 m above the col de Braus, and an Écureuil helicopter at roughly 1,000 m, about 10 km from the witness, which the radar picked up only intermittently. On the 12:57 local-time record, the two aircraft were very close together, as the witness had described, and the plane then made a sharp change of direction.

Such air activity was unusual for a sparsely populated area. At that moment, special stage no. 16 of the Monte-Carlo automobile rally was under way and was being broadcast live on television. The helicopter most likely shot the footage and sent it to the plane, which relayed it to the central TV control room; the GEIPAN did not try to identify the operators. The wind, light and first from the north-west, then from the south, was unfavourable for carrying sound, and at about 10 km the helicopter could no longer be heard. The witness probably saw only sunlight reflecting off the aircraft without making out any details, hence the egg shape. The GEIPAN classified the case A: a helicopter flying over a stage of the Monte-Carlo rally.