Sighting in Plaisir, April 12, 2015

A witness was on a terrace between 1:30 and 2:15 pm, watching aircraft flying high in the sky. They then noticed a dark object shaped like a flattened lens moving very fast at low altitude along a straight path. The object then vanished from view, hidden by the landscape. The witness estimated the sighting at about 30 seconds. It is the only testimony that was collected.

The GEIPAN asked military air traffic control for a radar record of the traffic and plotted it on a map, with an accuracy of about 500 m. It showed fairly heavy traffic of small aircraft flying under visual flight rules. One track, running from east to west, fitted the observation well: the aircraft passed over the area around 2:10 pm local time, slowly climbing from 400 to 500 m at roughly 160 km/h. Its passage in front of the witness lasted less than a minute.

According to the investigation, this probably small aircraft looked farther away to the witness, and therefore faster than it really was. The witness was looking south, toward the sun's position at that hour, so against the light the aircraft inevitably looked black, and its wings, seen edge-on at a low angle, may have been invisible. The GEIPAN classified the case B, a probable small aircraft flying under visual flight rules at low altitude. Because the time of the sighting is uncertain, the case was not classed A.