Sighting in Uzein, December 13, 2022

At about 5:50 p.m., the main witness, who was on duty in the control tower at Pau-Pyrénées airport, saw an object from the tower's terrace. It was dark, roughly round, and carried a point of light. It followed a straight, steady path from east to west. The light went out as the object passed north of the tower. A colleague also saw it, and it eventually vanished at the horizon toward the northwest.

The witness informed the Centre de Détection et de Contrôle at Mont-de-Marsan, which confirmed there was no low-altitude aircraft, and also the Gendarmerie des Transports Aériens in Pau. A second object, identical to the first, then appeared in the same spot and followed the same path, while an Air France flight was on final approach to runway 31. Neither the crew, contacted by the tower, nor the gendarmes present saw it. Its light, slightly more yellow than the first one's, disappeared in the same way north of the tower. Two colleagues of the main witness also watched it.

The investigation concluded that both objects were carried by the wind, at first considered to be either balloons or sky lanterns. Several points favored lanterns: movement in the direction of the prevailing wind, the steady path, the oval or rounded shape, a white and then yellow light at the base whose disappearance matched the candle burning out, and one witness's view that they were Japanese lanterns. Calculations gave a distance of about 300 m, passing about 65 m from the witnesses at 5 m/s. Twilight kept the main witness from clearly identifying the objects. The sighting took place on a Tuesday, an unusual day for a release, but a private individual releasing two lanterns ahead of Christmas was plausible. GEIPAN classified the case as A: two sky lanterns.