PARIS (75) 07.09.2015

On Sunday 6 September 2015 at about 23:30, a woman heard the distinctive engine noise of an aircraft that had flown over her Paris neighborhood at irregular nighttime intervals for several months. At midnight the noise returned. She switched off her radio and light and opened the window of her fourth-floor apartment. She saw 3 steady silver-colored lights and 1 flashing red light moving in a straight line. The object passed over the building opposite and was then hidden by the urban surroundings. The sighting recurred at 00:11 and 00:35, on 7 September, the date used in the case title. No other account was collected. GEIPAN finds nothing particularly unusual about this observation. The witness herself said she recognized the familiar noise and initially did not consider it necessary to get up from her chair. What differed that night was that she finally looked at its source and did not recognize it as an airplane or helicopter, while specifying that she could distinguish only lights, not the object's shape. Its repeated passes above the opposite building suggest a helicopter, whose nighttime lighting can vary with its type or mission. GEIPAN also reasons that a noisy, particularly unusual object repeatedly passing over a Paris neighborhood around midnight in summer would have generated other reports. It classifies the case B: probable observation of an aircraft.