MONTAYRAL (47) 23.10.2015

Late on the afternoon of 23 October 2015, a witness drove to Fumel airfield in Montayral (47) to get some fresh air with his dog. He drove alongside the hangars and parked in a small area near survey markers. After opening the door and letting the dog out, he turned and saw “a black patch in black mist” in the sky. It appeared “high and far away,” with a kind of curved handle at the lower left, and remained completely still and silent. The sky was blue, with no mist. He had neither binoculars nor a camera. At one point he looked away for a few seconds; when he looked back he could not find it. Surprised, he expected other witnesses' accounts in the next day's press, apparently without result. No other statement was collected. Three factors, alone or together, oppose the hypotheses considered: immobility for 20 minutes, sudden disappearance, and a distant round shape with a protrusion. These conflict with a celestial object (appearance and disappearance), airplane (immobility), helicopter (appearance, lack of sound and radar detection), or an ophthalmic problem (immobility). Investigation focused on a balloon: an ordinary latex balloon would be too small, and a solar balloon implausible at this location with no explanation for disappearance. A hot-air balloon was then considered. That hypothesis is realistic for the location and sunny late afternoon. A size of 10–20 m implies a minimum distance of a few kilometers to give the impression of distance and blurred surroundings. However, there are 2 difficulties: - The protrusion did not point downward and is hard to explain as a basket. It was nevertheless not the witness's clearest detail: he noticed it only after 10 minutes of intense concentration and focusing. - More seriously, the rapid disappearance. He looked away and could not relocate the object. The interval is difficult to estimate, as is whether a hot-air balloon could descend out of sight in that time. Compatibility requires several unknowns, such as balloon size, or error margins in the witness's angular size/elevation estimates to be taken in favorable directions, as well as coinciding with the moment he looked away. The hot-air-balloon hypothesis is strongest but remains well below 50% probability and cannot be retained. Local hot-air-balloon pilots contacted during the investigation did not answer; this is not evidence against the hypothesis. There is a single account and no photograph. In this rural setting, nobody else may have seen the phenomenon. The witness is precise and credible. Given the strangeness, the information and credibility are just sufficient to validate unexplained status (see investigation report). GEIPAN classifies the case D1: an unexplained phenomenon of moderate strangeness. The case was submitted to GEIPAN's panel of experts.