GEIPAN Case 1994-01-01345 — « AF3532 » [AERO AFR] COULOMMIERS (77) 28.01.1994

Brief

At 13:14 on 28 January 1994, the chief steward aboard an Air France Airbus A320-11 operating flight AF3532 on the Nice-to-London route, while present on the flight deck, alerted the captain to an unidentified phenomenon observed to the left of the aircraft as it overflew the Coulommiers area of Seine-et-Marne. Ground radar control independently confirmed a contact, and the phenomenon then vanished instantaneously. GEIPAN — the UAP investigation unit of the French national space agency CNES, operating at that time as SEPRA — assigned the case its D1 designation, meaning unexplained, moderately consistent, with marked strangeness. The investigation file includes gendarmerie procès-verbaux and technical notes.

Metadata

Agency

GEIPAN / CNES

Release

2007-03-22

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

1 pages

Classification

D1 (GEIPAN internal case classification — publicly released)

Programs

GEIPAN, SEPRA, GEPAN

Tags

instantaneous-disappearance, radar-confirmation, civil-aviation, D1-unexplained, Coulommiers, Seine-et-Marne, 1994, AF3532, A320, multi-witness

Key points

• Air France flight AF3532, an Airbus A320-11 on the Nice-to-London route, was the platform from which the phenomenon was observed.
• The event occurred at 13:14 on 28 January 1994, while the aircraft overflew Coulommiers, Seine-et-Marne (département 77).
• The chief steward was present on the flight deck at the time of observation and was first to alert the captain.
• Ground radar control confirmed the contact independently of the flight crew's visual report.
• The phenomenon disappeared instantaneously — a characteristic that contributed directly to the elevated strangeness rating.
• GEIPAN assigned classification D1: 'cas inexpliqué moyennement consistant avec un caractère d'étrangeté marqué' — unexplained, moderately consistent, with marked strangeness.
• The investigation was conducted by CNES's UAP unit under its SEPRA designation (the predecessor name to GEIPAN, successor to GEPAN).
• Attached materials include gendarmerie procès-verbaux, indicating sworn law-enforcement witness statements were collected on the ground.

Most interesting

• GEIPAN's D1 classification is its highest 'unexplained' tier — reserved for cases that resist conventional explanation even after full investigation, as distinct from D2 (unexplained but insufficiently documented) or lower strangeness categories.
• The simultaneous confirmation by ground radar makes this a dual-channel case: independent radar track plus multi-witness cockpit testimony, a combination that GEIPAN treats as significantly more probative than visual-only reports.
• GEIPAN (in its successive forms: GEPAN from 1977, SEPRA from 1988, GEIPAN from 2005) is the only official UAP investigation unit of a major spacefaring nation to publish its full case database to the public — the AF3532 file was released as part of that 2007 public disclosure.
• The instantaneous disappearance noted in the summary is one of the specific traits that distinguishes GEIPAN's D1 tier from cases involving gradual departure or loss-of-radar-contact at range.
• The presence of gendarmerie procès-verbaux in the file indicates that ground-based law enforcement was involved in collecting statements, extending the witness chain beyond the aircraft crew.