Sighting in Saint-Jean-de-Maruéjols-et-Avéjan, April 14, 2015

At around 9:50 pm, a witness watched two flashing white points of light cross the sky fairly quickly for about a minute, moving from the south toward the south-west and then the west. The sky was very clear, with a light south to south-west wind. The witness heard no sound and filmed a video at the end of the sighting.

The investigation checked civil flight records for that time. In the direction of the west, three aircraft were about 80 km away, two of them very close to each other but at different altitudes, which could make them look superimposed. At that distance, contrails can still be seen at sunset, but strobe lights are not necessarily visible. Moreover, the motion the witness described was faster than that of airliners at high altitude. It was therefore more likely that the witness saw two military aircraft, roughly 4 to 8 km away. The area is often used for maneuvers, and Tuesday is a fairly favorable day for them.

The video clearly shows two light sources flashing once per second, typical of strobe lights. The lack of noise is not inconsistent with aircraft more than 4 km away. The red or green position lights were not seen: they are not necessarily switched on during military operations, and from a distance they are hard to make out next to the strobes. GEIPAN classified the case as B: probable sighting of two aircraft.