AIROUX (11) 08.03.2015

On 8 March 2015 at about 18:45, a witness, T1, walking with his daughter saw a red oval shape in the sky with black rods resembling feet. It landed in a field, rolled to its far end and rose into the air. He then saw it land in front of his home’s garage. His wife, T2, was in the kitchen and was surprised to see a red oval shape hop around the shed and stop in front of a tractor. She approached but, frightened, immediately ran to fetch her neighbour. The two women reportedly saw the object make successive jumps in a wheat field, take off and disappear toward Castelnaudary. Two witnesses gave gendarmerie statements. When the third witness, the neighbour, was interviewed, she said only that she had seen a distant orange shape in the sky and gave no further detail. No ground traces were found. The gendarmerie report provides accounts from the husband, T1, and wife, T2. GEIPAN finds the initial descriptions compatible with a powered paraglider landing and taking off: a paramotor is a paraglider with an engine on the pilot’s back. Attached videos show paramotor take-offs without wind, and thus also in any direction relative to a light wind (see the no-wind take-off technique). Its canopy can have the reported red oval appearance. A paramotor pilot can walk, run, take off, land again and finally take off as T2 described, arriving in one direction and leaving in another. It could appear to have “more than two legs”—3 or 4 as T2 described—if it carried both an instructor and a student. A paramotor is noisy. However, at the closest stage for T2, the UAP was on the ground and “walking,” when its engine could be off. T2 gave no airborne distance, while T1’s closest reported distance was 300 m. On 10 March, 2 days after the observation, a video was posted online of a paramotor pilot over Souilhanels (11), a few kilometres away. That video is no longer available, but GEIPAN considers the report evidence that take-offs and landings around Airoux were possible, by that pilot or another. A GEIPAN field investigation 2 years later could not validate the hypothesis. Newly recorded accounts and reconstruction differed substantially from the statements made 1 day after the event (see “Reconstruction and differences from the official report”): - Both witnesses now described closest positions too near for a paramotor to go unrecognized or unheard. For T2, part of the ground phase was a few metres in front of the kitchen. For T1, closest approach was 100 m while airborne above a pylon. - Explicit references to walking and legs had disappeared. - The duration differed. Taken alone, these new details conflict with the hypothesis, which the witnesses themselves reject. GEIPAN finds the differences between the two sets of information too large not to undermine reliability, even though its delay in investigating may have encouraged discrepancies. Contact with the daughter, who had been walking with T1, or T2’s neighbour might have clarified them. One did not follow up; the other had moved and could no longer be reached. GEIPAN concludes that no hypothesis is sufficiently probable, while the evidential substance is also insufficient to sustain an unexplained or inexplicable classification. The case is C: unassessable for lack of reliable information.