GEIPAN Case 2009-07-02361 — RIXHEIM (68) 26.07.2009

Brief

On the night of 26-27 July 2009, a witness in Rixheim (Haut-Rhin, France) reported a white luminous point moving linearly south-to-north at 25-35° elevation before abruptly changing direction and accelerating after the observer briefly looked away. GEIPAN head Yvan Blanc formally contacted LFSB air-traffic control under the CNES/DGAC cooperation protocol, requesting multi-radar data for the 23:30-00:00 UTC window. LFSB's review of system ELVIRA found no multi-radar track over Rixheim in that period, and METAR records confirmed CAVOK (unrestricted visibility) throughout, eliminating weather as a confounding factor. The case was classified GEIPAN D1: slightly unusual but ultimately unexplained.

Metadata

Agency

GEIPAN / CNES

Release

2007-03-22

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

3 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED (GEIPAN D1)

Programs

GEIPAN, ELVIRA

Tags

white luminous point, direction change, acceleration, S-N trajectory, radar negative, France, Rixheim, 2009, GEIPAN, CAVOK conditions

Key points

• LFSB's INCA incident log records the event at 21:46 UTC (23:46 CEST) on 26 July 2009, a roughly 86-minute discrepancy from the witness-reported 22:20 local time cited in the case description.p.1
• The witness independently contacted Basel-Mulhouse Airport claiming to act on GEIPAN's behalf before GEIPAN had authorized any such contact — GEIPAN director Yvan Blanc explicitly corrected this in writing.p.1
• GEIPAN's formal radar request was submitted under the standing CNES/DGAC cooperation protocol, with DGAC's David Comby copied on the correspondence.p.1
• LFSB reviewed ELVIRA multi-radar data for the 23:30-00:00 window and found zero radar returns over Rixheim.p.2
• Three consecutive METARs (22:00, 22:30, 23:00 UTC) all reported CAVOK and wind speeds of 2-3 knots, ruling out atmospheric obscuration or turbulence as explanations for the observation.p.2
• The event was logged by LFSB under event type '14 - Autres activités' with a QS severity code — indicating no threat to airspace safety was assessed.p.1
• GEIPAN's public-transparency mandate requires full anonymization of witness and operational data before publication on cnes-geipan.fr; this internal document predates that anonymization.p.1

Verbatim

• Demande de travaux émanant du GEIPAN (Groupe d'Etudes et d'Information sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non identifiés)

  p.1

• Le témoin de cette observation est assez 'actif' et il a contacté dernièrement M. de l'aéroport de Bâle-Mulhouse pour une demande de trace radar, en se proclamant mandaté par le Geipan, ce qui n'est pas le cas.

  p.1

• Pour les besoins de l'enquête, le GEIPAN souhaiterait disposer des traces radar autour de la date de cette observation, et/ou tout autre élément pouvant nous servir pour notre enquête

  p.1

• Après relecture ELVIRA , aucune trace multiradar sur Rixheim dans le créneau horaire 23h30 => 00h00.

  p.2

• METAR LFSB 262200Z 21003KT CAVOK 13/12 Q1018 NOSIG=

  p.2

Most interesting

• The witness took unauthorized initiative by contacting the airport directly under GEIPAN's name — suggesting a high degree of personal investment in obtaining official confirmation.
• GEIPAN's classification D1 means the case is 'peu étrange' (slightly unusual) but remains without a conventional explanation, placing it in the lowest tier of GEIPAN's anomaly scale.
• The radar negative result is itself informative: CAVOK conditions and an operational multi-radar system over an active TMA meant that any aircraft-sized or large reflective object should have appeared on ELVIRA.
• The LFSB event type logged was 'Autres activités' (Other activities), confirming that air-traffic control treated the inquiry as an administrative external request rather than a safety event.
• The cooperation protocol between CNES and DGAC that enabled this radar request is the same institutional channel that allows GEIPAN to systematically access French civil aviation data for UAP investigations.
• Three METAR snapshots bracketing the observation window all showed CAVOK — the highest-visibility meteorological category — making misidentification due to atmospheric phenomena less likely.