Sighting in Saint-Ambroix, January 18, 2017

At around 10:10 a.m., a witness looking out of a window saw two streaks of grey smoke in a clear sky, appearing and disappearing intermittently. The sighting lasted about 15 seconds. The witness was intrigued, as the marks did not look like ordinary aircraft contrails. They also reported that the phenomenon made no sound and that there was no outside noise. This was the only account collected.

The investigation considered the sighting only mildly strange. Intermittent trails are fairly typical of military aircraft. The lack of sound can be explained in several ways: the aircraft may have been flying high and without afterburner, which normally produces a lot of noise, and any sound may have been drowned out by the town's activity. The observation took place in the middle of a town of more than 3,000 inhabitants, close to a major road that was formerly a national highway, on a Wednesday morning. The idea of a fragmented daytime fireball was ruled out: the two trails were too far apart, the witness had noticed accelerations, and such an event is normally seen by many people. The accelerations instead suggest two aircraft maneuvering.

The phenomenon was not formally identified, but the description leaves little doubt that it was a misidentification. Military radars were consulted too late to confirm or rule out this explanation. GEIPAN classified the case as B: probable sighting of military aircraft trails.