CERGY (95) 26.11.2020

At sunset on 26 November 2020, a woman in Cergy (95) took photographs through the window of her fifth-floor apartment. She saw strangely shaped, vertical clouds and zoomed in to identify them. First she saw a large patch, a second 1 minute later and a third another 2 minutes later. The French summary describes a white-gray vapor trail. She thought a meteorite was entering the atmosphere. Only 1 account was collected. GEIPAN assesses the case as having low unusualness and good evidential strength, with a single witness but several photographs, and identifies an airliner contrail; see the investigation report. Several elements led it to reject the witness's preferred meteorite explanation. The UAP remained visible for at least 3 minutes, whereas the source describes a natural atmospheric entry involving a fireball and meteorite fall as lasting only a few seconds. No meteorite fall or fireball passage was recorded in France at the time. GEIPAN considers the photographs entirely typical of an aircraft contrail, particularly from a twin-engine jet: it is double and colored consistently with scattered sunlight. A Flightradar24 reconstruction identified flight AF718, a twin-engine Boeing 777 from Paris to Dakar that had just reached cruising altitude and was receding southwest in the UAP's direction. The case is classified as A: observation of an airliner condensation trail.