SAINT-PRIEST-TAURION (87) 03.09.2025

On 3 September 2025, a witness in a garden in Saint-Priest-Taurion (87) was watching buzzards fly. At about 16:07, the witness noticed what initially seemed to be a white aircraft coming from the northeast. It entered cloud, vanished for a few seconds and reappeared traveling the opposite way, without an apparent turn. The witness photographed it with a smartphone. The observation lasted about 15 seconds, with no sound heard. Radar data supplied by the Air Defense Operations Planning and Control Center (CAPCODA; Appendix 1) showed a Piper P24 Comanche (Appendix 2) visible from the witness's position at the sighting time, flying at 4,000 ft, approximately 1,200 m. The radar track initially ran northwest to southeast, then looped into a northeast-to-southwest direction at 14:07. Between 14:07 and 14:09 it was irregular, probably because of the unsettled weather reported by the witness, including strong wind and clouds. The source gives these radar times separately from the 16:07 sighting time without specifying their time bases. This unusual path, combined with cloud-limited visibility, explains the witness's sense of strangeness. Evidential support is good despite only 1 account, supported by photographs/video as stated in the assessment and the CAPCODA reconstruction. GEIPAN defines evidential consistency as the amount of information in an account considered reliable and objectively supported. GEIPAN classifies the case A: light aircraft.