Sighting in Vertus, September 7, 2012

At around 9 p.m., a group of four people was looking at the dark sky when a point of light came slowly and silently toward them. The object then changed course, and the witnesses made out a dark, rounded shape. Only one account was collected. The light was low on the horizon, which suggested an aircraft flying at low altitude.

The GEIPAN asked the military air traffic control for information. Radar tracks show a low-flying aircraft following a winding path between 9:23 and 9:25 p.m. (universal time), in the direction the witness was looking, between Morangis and Brugny. It came from the west, in an area with no airfield, and was a helicopter. However, these tracks do not match the sighting, which took place between 9:00 and 9:10 p.m. and during which the object moved away toward the west. They do show that there was air activity in the area. Similar activity may have occurred about twenty minutes earlier, at an altitude too low for radar to detect, and the radar recordings only begin at 9:00 p.m. The lack of noise is not surprising for a helicopter about 10 km away.

The GEIPAN classified the case as category B, a probable helicopter. Because the phenomenon was not very strange, no field investigation was considered necessary.