Red lights in Landes, France

GEIPAN continues to publish all of its archives on its public website www.geipan.fr. Among its publications are old cases classified at the time (A, B, C or D) which are now being re-examined, with the sole aim of being more relevant in the conclusions. Thanks to new technical means (software) and the investigation experience acquired over all these recent years, this re-examination sometimes leads to new remarks or even a change of classification. This observation case, previously classified D and named [MER] LAT 44.76, LON -4.32 (INT) 03.07.1990, is part of a set of cases recently re-examined. This case concerns the observation of an unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) by a witness who was at sea off the Spanish coast on his sailboat, on July 3, 1990, around 10:30 PM. The witness at the helm observed for a little over 30 seconds the movements of a luminous oval object with a red light on one side and a green-blue light on the other. No particular noise was heard, no disturbance on the sailboat was noticed (engine running and boat navigation lights on). The witness went to the Gendarmerie brigade office on July 20, 1990. The witness very probably observed an airplane preparing to land at night with its landing lights on at a Spanish airport (see the investigation report). The presence of red, blue-green and white (or white-yellow) colored lights noted by the witness is perfectly characteristic of an aeronautical misidentification. The red and (blue-)green lights are indeed the navigation lights. It would moreover be more likely an airplane than a helicopter because the main bright light, "like a light bulb" and drawing a horizontal oval, would correspond well to two landing lights of an airliner, close to each other and aligned horizontally, as observed at a distance. The observation distance must be discussed in relation to the concomitant visibility of several types of lights whose power and range are different. The red and green navigation lights, here clearly observed by the witness, have a much more limited range than that of the landing lights, but also than the white anti-collision lights, whose characteristic flashing is visible from very far away, but which were at no time observed by the witness. International aviation regulations require that navigation lights be on in all circumstances, unlike anti-collision lights, which may be turned off in certain particular conditions such as the presence of fog, very heavy rain, or when crossing a cloud in IMC flight, risking disturbing the pilot by reflection of light on suspended water droplets. It seems logical to favor the hypothesis of an airplane located a few kilometers from the witness rather than a hundred kilometers away, which would have made the navigation lights totally invisible. The absence of anti-collision lights would therefore be attributable to weather conditions conducive to their temporary extinction, conditions which it is impossible to confirm or deny. The landing lights, although seeming to have been on (under the hypothesis of landing at a coastal Spanish airport) well before landing, can be on in other circumstances (congested airspace, low altitude of the aircraft, or change of flight level) which could apply in the present case. These landing lights have a limited horizontal and vertical field, which explains why the witness did not see them illuminating the ocean. The beams of these lights can be invisible because that depends on the presence or absence of suspended particles in the atmosphere between the witness and the UAP. The maneuvers of this aircraft, as reconstructed from the witness's statements, are compatible with those that an airliner approaching an airport could perform (loops, turns), although these maneuvers would in that case have been performed far from the Spanish coast. It is not possible, 30 years later, to have traffic recordings that could consolidate or refute such an aircraft hypothesis. Finally, the absence of perceived noise is not decisive for the hypothesis since the noise of the boat's engine (reported by the witness) could have masked a possible aircraft engine noise, which moreover could also have been attenuated by a wind opposing its propagation. The consistency is weak, with little exploitable data, but is sufficient to validate the hypothesis given its good probability. Consequently, GEIPAN classifies the case as A: very probable observation of an airplane.