Sighting in Gaillac, December 5, 2015

A driver and their child saw a stationary, yellow-orange light in the sky for about one minute, as bright as Venus. They heard no particular noise. The witness looked away for a moment, and when they looked back, the light was gone.

The investigation went through several possible explanations. A sunlit satellite was ruled out, since a check on Calsky showed no candidate satellite. Sunlight reflecting off an aircraft was also unlikely: at that hour, with the sun less than 7° below the horizon, a plane would have had to be above 15,000 m to still be in sunlight. However, Flightradar showed that an aircraft taking off from Carcassonne was passing exactly along the witnesses' line of sight at that moment.

GEIPAN concluded that the witnesses saw the headlights of that aircraft, flight RYR 1761, head-on. It probably took off with its lights on, and the pilot then switched them off once at a sufficient altitude, or else the witnesses moved out of the cone of light. Because the plane was facing them and they were themselves moving in their vehicle, the light seemed motionless for a minute. Once the headlights were off, the much weaker navigation lights, against a sky that was still somewhat bright, could have escaped the notice of witnesses who were looking for a powerful light. The case was classified A.