Sighting in Locminé, September 22, 2013

Around 6:45 pm on a Sunday, several people were travelling in a car when something in the sky caught their attention and they could not account for it. The witness described a silvery spherical shape that turned into a bright, elongated white shape. It seemed motionless. It then split in two and vanished instantly.

The investigation relied on radar data. These showed a high-altitude aircraft leaving a contrail, matching what the witness had described. They also showed a lower aircraft, with no contrail, flying away from the witness almost along their line of sight, which explained why it seemed to be standing still. That aircraft turned left between 18:48 and 18:51 (radar times are in universal time). The reflection of the sun on the plane then changed and disappeared, which could give the impression that the object itself had vanished.

The witness's first impression, a reflection of the sun on an aircraft, turned out to be the right explanation. GEIPAN classified the case as A: fully explained.