An account in Loire-Atlantique, France

On May 8, 2008, GEIPAN received by email a short description of two observations that took place on Tuesday April 29 in the evening by a motorist (W1) and his passenger (W2). At the entrance to the hamlet of La Chalousière, in the municipality of Vallet (44), they noted the presence at low altitude of a luminous phenomenon made up of two lights. Just after dropping his colleague off at her home, W1 quickly made a second observation of the slow movement at very low altitude of a lit shape with colored lights. No particular noise was heard during the two observations. W1 reported his two observations in a questionnaire on January 8, 2009. No other testimony was collected. Given the objective elements analyzed, namely: - Object apparently motionless, in the same way as an airplane approaching the witnesses on an axis close to or identical to their axis of movement, - Presence of two or three powerful lights, similar to aircraft landing lights, - Dark night and cloud cover layered on two levels, not allowing the outlines of the aircraft to be clearly distinguished on the one hand and hiding it at times on the other hand (according to the Nantes bulletin of METAR SCT012 and BKN055, presence of scattered clouds (3/8 to 4/8) at the ceiling located at 1200 feet (350m) and very cloudy sky (5/8 to 7/8) at 5500 feet (1700m), We can conclude that this observation probably concerns only one or two aircraft in the approach phase to Nantes-Atlantique airport with landing lights on. This case is to be classified as "C" due to lack of precise information on the exact time (around 9pm or 10pm), the precise locations of observation (especially for the second observation) and the directions of observation of the witnesses.