Sighting in Saint-Quentin, January 14, 2012

At around 21:35 one evening, the witness was out on a fifth-floor balcony when three small white points of light caught their attention. The lights seemed to mark out the corners of a dark, triangular mass. It crossed the sky very quickly from south to north and made no audible sound. The witness thought of an aircraft with its landing lights on.

Investigators checked the primary radar tracks of the aircraft that had flown over the area at that time. Only one airliner showed up, flying at high altitude at 21:48, a few kilometres west of the point directly above the town. It was heading from north to south, the opposite of the direction the witness described, so the aircraft picked up by radar did not match the sighting.

GEIPAN considered the case weakly consistent, since it rests on a single witness account, and of low strangeness, because the three lights moved steadily in a straight line. It was classed C owing to a lack of information. Further investigation would be unlikely to turn up anything new.