Sighting in Drôme, March 29, 2019

During a commercial flight from Lille to Nice, the pilot contacted air traffic control to report wake turbulence and asked whether a "heavy" aircraft might be flying about 1,000 feet below. The pilot explained that an aircraft of that kind had crossed their path from right to left a few minutes earlier. Its lights had struck them as rather unusual, and both crew members had seen them from the cockpit. The pilot put their heading at 060°.

The object also showed up on the onboard TCAS, which placed it ahead of the aircraft, roughly 10 to 15 nm (20 to 30 kilometres) away and 1,000 feet (300 metres) lower. However, no aircraft matching that path and altitude appeared on the radars of the Aix-en-Provence control centre. The case rests solely on the exchanges between the aircraft and air traffic control; the pilot was not interviewed and no other testimony was collected.

The analysis found that the day's atmospheric conditions did not favour the persistence of wake turbulence, so the turbulence was not necessarily linked to the object's passage. It probably contributed to the sense of strangeness the pilot felt. The object the crew saw most likely matched the TCAS contact. It would then have carried a transponder, which should also have made it visible to air traffic control radar, and that is an inconsistency. With no description of the lights, it is not known why they seemed unusual. A GEIPAN pilot expert confirmed this analysis. GEIPAN classified the case as C because of insufficient usable information.