Sighting in Toulouse, August 24, 2011

At about 3:32 a.m., a lone witness was looking at the stars through a window when a dark, triangular shape suddenly passed by without a sound, heading toward the south of the city. The witness was struck by the lighting on the underside of the object: several orange, glowing rectangles arranged like ramps all around the craft. By their account, the sighting lasted about 5 seconds, after which the urban landscape hid the object from view. No other witness account was collected.

GEIPAN found no hypothesis that was sufficiently probable. The shape and path could suggest a military or business aircraft, but the lights did not match any known configuration. The lack of a radar trace was hard to explain by a very low altitude, since the witness would then have heard noise, even from behind a window. During the re-examination of the file, the witness declined to be contacted by the investigator, and had also not acted on the original request to file a statement with the gendarmerie. The information rested mainly on a sketch, with no photo and a single witness. This refusal, given without explanation, weakened the perceived reliability. The case, previously rated D, was therefore reclassified as C: unusable for lack of reliable information.