Sighting in Vallet, April 29, 2008

One evening in April 2008, a driver and their passenger reached the entrance of a hamlet and noticed a luminous phenomenon at low altitude, made up of two lights. After dropping their colleague off at home, the driver made a second, brief observation: a shape lit with coloured lights was moving slowly at very low altitude. No particular noise was heard during either observation.

The GEIPAN received a short description by email a few days later, and the driver completed a questionnaire in January 2009. No other witness account was collected.

The analysis noted an object that seemed motionless, like an aircraft heading toward observers along an axis close to theirs, and two or three powerful lights resembling landing lights. The night was dark and the sky was cloudy on two levels, according to the Nantes weather report: scattered cloud at about 350 m and heavy cloud at about 1,700 m. The outline of an aircraft could therefore not be clearly seen, and at times it was hidden. The GEIPAN concluded that the witnesses had probably seen one or two aircraft on approach to Nantes-Atlantique airport with their landing lights on. The case is classified C because of missing details on the exact time (around 9 or 10 pm), the precise places of observation, especially for the second sighting, and the directions in which the witnesses were looking.