Sighting in Sainte-Léocadie, September 19, 1981

A witness had pulled over at the side of the road when they noticed, above the mountain range, a luminous object made up of several lights set side by side, alternating between white and red. It seemed to be stationary. The witness later watched it again from home, where it moved away and disappeared from view. Only one account was collected.

The account contained several errors, made both by the witness and by the gendarmes who had investigated, mainly concerning the place of observation and the object's position relative to the landscape. A second review of the file corrected them. It showed that the object's appearance and movement match a helicopter flying over Spanish territory, in an area consistent with the navigation records gathered during the investigation. The case is not very robust, in particular because the object's apparent size is poorly known, but it is enough to support this explanation. GEIPAN classified the case as B: probable sighting of a helicopter. The file, originally classified D, had wrongly been grouped with two other, unrelated sightings made in the same region, which had made it look very strange.