Sighting in Douarnenez, November 18, 2012

At about 8:30 pm, the witness noticed a light in the sky, first with the naked eye and then through binoculars. It stayed motionless and flickered green and red; its centre looked dark and its brightness varied. The witness watched it for a long time, toward the south-east. They moved to another spot, showed it to several people nearby, and then phoned the gendarmerie. A patrol went to the scene and saw the phenomenon too.

The gendarmes alerted the western en-route air navigation centre near Brest. The air traffic controller wrote a report stating that neither the crew of an aircraft approaching Quimper nor the controller had noticed anything unusual, that no military personnel were on duty in the area that evening, and that the primary radars at Lanvéoc and Landivisiau had detected nothing. A door-to-door inquiry produced only one account. The wind was light and from the west, and the air was very humid. No very bright star lay in that part of the sky, but Jupiter was due east.

GEIPAN classified the case as B: a probable Sécurité Civile helicopter, seen at night from a long way off while approaching Quimper Pluguffan airport, which lay in line with the direction of the sighting. The account was brief, imprecise and without a photo, and came from a single witness, so it was rated of average quality and rather weak consistency. The phenomenon, easy to characterise in both appearance and behaviour, was judged only slightly strange.