Sighting in Villefranche-sur-Mer, July 23, 2021

At 10:14, a mother and her daughter who were at the beach noticed a dark object passing silently across a clear sky. It was "slightly oval" in shape and seemed to have "legs". It moved slowly in a horizontal direction, then appeared to hover in place before climbing and vanishing into the sky. One of the two witnesses had time to film it on a mobile phone. Only one witness statement was collected. The witness described a black, slightly oval object with "legs", or something like a spider with its legs folded in.

The video points to a festive or mylar balloon. The witness's information on the direction of the horizontal movement was not precise enough to compare with the wind, and given the video, a specific weather request (Météo-France's AROME model) was not considered worthwhile. The small horizontal movement and the marked vertical movement are consistent with this type of balloon. Because the remaining strangeness was low, the wind analysis was not taken further. GEIPAN classified the case as B: a probable misidentification of a helium-filled festive balloon or a mylar balloon.