MANOSQUE (04) 01.07.2021

On Thursday, 1 July at about 20:45, a witness on his balcony in Manosque (04) saw 2 unidentified aerial phenomena cross paths in the sky. They were bright white and oval. The sighting lasted less than 1 minute, until they left his field of view. On 2 July, he sent GEIPAN a completed Technical Questionnaire, a panoramic photograph of the viewing location taken about 15 minutes after the event (Appendix 1), and a sketch (Appendix 2). No other accounts were received. On 19 August 2021, GEIPAN asked the French Air and Space Force's Air Defense Operations Planning and Control Center (CAPCODA) for a radar reconstruction, supplied on 28 September. The only hypothesis investigated was 2 airplanes crossing paths. The witness had spontaneously considered this himself: “I start looking at the sky precisely where I see what I initially take to be two airplanes.” Despite having only 1 witness and no photographs or video of the UAPs, GEIPAN considered the account well substantiated. Under its criteria, substantiation means the amount of reliable, objectively established information collected. The perceived strangeness arose because the objects seemed very close together—the witness even feared a collision—and he could not distinguish wings. CAPCODA's radar reconstruction was difficult to interpret because of its unsuitable scale and poorly legible information. Supplementary analysis using Globe.adsbexchange confirmed 2 aircraft crossing simultaneously at 18:47 UTC along the witness's south-southeast line of sight. From his position, they could appear to share a path: - RYR576A was at 40,000 ft (12,192 m), with a horizontal distance of 39,735 m from the witness, measured on the map as a ground projection (Appendix 3). - IBE32EM was at 36,975 ft (11,270 m), with a horizontal distance of 51,768 m measured in the same way (Appendix 4). RYR576A's elevation was about 17°, calculated as arctan(12192/39735), and IBE32EM's about 12°, calculated as arctan(11270/51768). The difference of only about 5° could create an illusion of converging paths or a possible collision. In fact, the aircraft were at different altitudes on independent paths (Appendix 5). These elevations were considerably lower than the witness's estimates of 30°–45°, consistent with the common tendency to overestimate low elevation angles. The low viewing angles and great distances made visual identification difficult; at that distance, the wings could visually merge with the fuselage's horizontal plane. The reported brilliant white color matched the aircraft's white fuselages reflecting sunlight. Their great distance, described in the analysis as over 40 km, probably prevented precise recognition of their shapes, while solar reflections could distort the perceived structures. The apparent curvature of the paths could also be a perspective effect related to the aircraft's distance and the observer's position. GEIPAN classified the case A as an observation of 2 airliners.