[A35] DE BARTENHEIM (68) VERS MULHOUSE (68) 15.08.2024

The main witness, T1, and her husband, T2, were returning from a concert in Basel. She drove on the A35 while he slept beside her. Around 23:52, shortly before the Kembs/Sierentz exit, she saw 3 flashing red points through her open left window and a white point she took for a star. The lights formed an almost equilateral triangle, with intermittent flashes. She woke her husband, who said he saw the lights and thought they were an aircraft. At her request, still half asleep, he filmed the red lights, then put down his phone and returned to sleep. T1 continued watching. The initially steady red lights appeared to shrink and recede towards Sierentz. After taking the Kembs/Sierentz exit, she got out at 23:55 and saw no lights in the sky. She estimated a total duration of about 3 minutes. GEIPAN assesses the evidential strength as moderate. Two witnesses are mentioned, but the several-minute video shows the UAP distinctly for only a few seconds. Its definition of evidential strength concerns the quantity of reliable, objectively supported information collected for an account. The investigation established 2 separate, fairly similar phenomena that probably contributed to T1’s confusion: an aircraft in the area and windscreen reflections (see the investigation report). Air-traffic plots show a military aircraft in the viewing direction, following the motorway in the witnesses’ direction of travel. T1 noted that roadside trees sometimes hid the UAP. The aircraft could not be individually identified, but its zigzag motion, a military-type IFF code and disappearance from the plots near and aligned with Luxeuil airbase support the hypothesis. Its high altitude and distance, together with the car’s motorway noise, explain the lack of perceived sound. The video’s appearance and apparent movement suggest reflections, already considered by the Gendarmerie, especially since it was filmed towards the windscreen. Video analysis definitively identified their source as lights on an electric-window control panel. GEIPAN classifies the directly observed UAP B, probable military aircraft, and the video UAP A, reflections of lights inside the car.