Sighting in Saint-Pierre, October 22, 1981

At about 8:30 a.m., a driver and their passenger noticed a white light hanging motionless at low altitude, in the direction of the rising sun, and could not explain it. The first witness described a line with a round shape beneath it, fainter and harder to make out; the second described a rectangle. The driver stopped the car and thought of getting out the theodolite kept in the back to look at it more closely, but both witnesses felt as if they were "paralysed" inside the vehicle.

They compared the object to a "neon tube" and watched it for about five minutes. According to the first witness it faded away gradually, while the second said it vanished almost instantly. Despite an article in the local press, no other witness came forward.

The investigation concluded that the witnesses may have seen an aircraft contrail lit by a low sun behind it. When conditions for contrail formation and persistence change along a flight path, a contrail can be reduced to a single fixed, lingering fragment. The round shape could have been a local widening of the trail or a separate patch of cloud. However, the description lacks precision (angular position and size, relative placement of the two shapes), and the two witnesses, who were not independent, disagreed on some points, with no follow-up questions to clarify. The contrail explanation remains plausible but is too weakly supported. The case, previously classed D, is therefore classed C: insufficient reliable information.