Sighting in Orly, October 8, 2000

At 17:04 UT, the pilot and co-pilot of an aircraft climbing toward Grenoble saw a dark, round object pass very quickly above the cockpit. They feared it would strike the tail assembly, but nothing happened. The sighting lasted only about a tenth of a second. The pilot filed an ASR (Air Safety Report), and the co-pilot was interviewed by phone and gave further details.

The investigation considered three possible misidentifications: a weather balloon, a drone or a bird. GEIPAN judged a bird the most likely. Several points support this: the date falls in a migration period, the location lies in an area of migratory corridors, a bird was among the co-pilot's own suggestions, and no radar detected the object. The dark color and the crew's impression that it was close, and therefore small, also fit. The altitude of 4,000 m does not seem to match the two migratory species considered, but it has been recorded outside France for the common crane. It could also have been a single bird of another migratory species, still to be determined.

Consistency is medium: there were two witnesses, but the sighting was so brief that they could not describe the object properly. It is nonetheless enough to support the hypothesis despite the remaining uncertainties. The case, first classed D, was re-examined and GEIPAN reclassified it as B: probable observation of a bird.