Sighting in Paris, January 13, 2015

A motorist driving on the Paris ring road at around 8:40 a.m. noticed a bright, white, elongated object in the sky. Through the windscreen, they took three photographs. The object first seemed motionless, then moved only very slightly. The witness lost sight of it when leaving the ring road. Only one witness account was collected, and the observation lasted more than ten minutes.

GEIPAN rated the strangeness of the case as low, mainly because of the impression that the object was motionless. The testimony was fairly consistent, and the photographs, taken at 8:42:37, 8:42:48 and 8:42:54, exactly at sunrise, were used in the analysis. The object's appearance and very slow movement match those of an airliner and its condensation trail seen at altitude while already lit by the rising sun, which is not yet visible from the ground. Depending on the weather conditions at the aircraft's altitude, a trail either forms or does not. Because of distance and perspective, a witness may take the trail for a single object, and the aircraft itself may not be visible. A trail can disappear quickly in some places and linger in others along the same path, so the length of the observation reflected a persistent piece of trail rather than the aircraft. The case was classified A: an aircraft and its condensation trail.