Sighting in Paris, January 27, 2012

A driver and their passenger were travelling on the A13 motorway towards Caen. Between 4:30 and 5:15 pm, they noticed a silent, cylindrical, shiny silver object in the sky. It was first stationary, then moved off at very high speed along an east-west path. It then vanished, leaving a plume of cloud behind it. GEIPAN received only one witness report.

The investigation considered an aircraft or a cylindrical thermal balloon, grey or transparent, that might briefly have reflected the sun. To tell these possibilities apart, GEIPAN asked the French Air Force for radar recordings. Only one track was recorded in the area, but its quality made it unusable and it did not match the account. The witness also gave inconsistent directions: in the questionnaire the object came from the east, while in an email exchange on 22 March 2012 it came from the north-west. The time is known only to within about half an hour, too wide a margin to compare with aircraft movements, and the exact location along the motorway journey is similarly imprecise. Aircraft do not show up on the radar. No solid element was left to confirm or rule out any hypothesis, so GEIPAN classified the case as C, for lack of reliable information.