Sighting in Magescq, February 22, 2022

At midday, a driver was travelling with their daughter along a long straight stretch of a departmental road. The two witnesses saw something appear on their left that the driver described as an aircraft wing together with part of a fuselage. It passed in front of them at a fairly slow speed, partly hidden by pine trees at first, then crossed the road level with them and disappeared behind them on the right. It was flying so low that the driver first thought a plane was about to crash. The sighting lasted only 5 to 10 seconds, the field of view was restricted, and no photo was taken.

The GEIPAN investigation concluded that the witnesses had seen a military aircraft. A reconstruction of air traffic by the CAPCODA (the French Air Force's air planning, operations command and air defence centre) confirmed that a military aircraft was flying by sight at low altitude, about 300 metres. Its route and timing matched those of the phenomenon exactly. The aircraft was making a series of turns along the witnesses' line of sight, which explains the unusual shape they perceived, with a vertical wing above the fuselage. The aircraft's angular height also matched what the witnesses reported. The case was classified A.