Sighting in La Chapelle-Saint-Florent, July 21, 1997

Two witnesses saw a dark craft pass over their house for three or four minutes, sometime between 10:45 pm and 11:15 pm. It moved from the southwest to the northeast, had coloured lights on either side, and made a dull sound. The witnesses described it as a circular, elongated object with no wings. One of them compared the noise to that of a small aircraft.

Their accounts differed. One witness spoke of white lights, the other of red ones. When the second witness still saw red lights, the first no longer saw any.

GEIPAN re-examined the case, which had originally been classified D. It concluded that the witnesses most likely saw a small touring aircraft on approach to land with its landing lights on, during a night flight, possibly heading for Ancenis airfield. The sound and the duration fit this explanation. The shape they described was probably a perceptual illusion, since the sky was very dark and the object was visible only by its lights. The arrangement of the lights matches an aircraft approaching head-on at low height. The differing colours could be explained by the beams being seen from the side at the end of the pass, or by differences in the witnesses' eyesight. However, the absence of anti-collision lights as the aircraft passed overhead remains hard to explain. Clouds at 1,500 m may have hidden them, but the witnesses mentioned no clouds, even though the moon was full.

The case has only moderate consistency: angular measurements are missing, and the gendarmerie did not try to clarify the contradictions between the witnesses. It is classified B, on the borderline of being unusable.