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

Brief

On the night of 26 July 2009, a civilian witness in Rixheim, Alsace, reported a white luminous point moving south-to-north for 7-8 seconds at 25-35 degrees elevation before vanishing when he momentarily looked away. GEIPAN director Yvan Blanc formally requested radar data from Basel-Mulhouse airport (LFSB) under the standing CNES/DGAC protocol, noting the witness had already approached the airport independently and falsely claimed a GEIPAN mandate. The airport's review of the ELVIRA multi-radar system returned no tracks over Rixheim between 23:30 and 00:00 UTC, under CAVOK conditions throughout. The case carries GEIPAN classification D1 — officially unexplained but judged low-anomaly.

Metadata

Agency

GEIPAN / CNES

Release

2007-03-22

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

3 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED (GEIPAN public release; internal case classification D1)

Programs

GEIPAN, CNES/DGAC protocol, ELVIRA

Tags

luminous point, south-north trajectory, direction change, acceleration, radar negative, Rixheim FR, Alsace, 2009, GEIPAN D1

Key points

• GEIPAN director Yvan Blanc formally requested radar data from LFSB under the CNES/DGAC protocol, citing an ongoing investigation into the Rixheim observation.p.1
• The witness had independently approached Basel-Mulhouse airport and falsely claimed a GEIPAN mandate; Blanc's letter explicitly corrects this — 'ce qui n'est pas le cas.'p.1
• GEIPAN's letter identifies the observation time as 23h46mn local (21:46 UTC) on the night of 26-27 July 2009.p.1
• The INCA event type is logged as '14 - Autres activités / QS 01. Demande de travaux externe' — an external work request, not a standard aviation safety occurrence.p.1
• The INCA record was processed 21 September 2009, nearly two months after the observation date.p.1
• The ELVIRA multi-radar review found no tracks over Rixheim in the 23:30-00:00 UTC window.p.2
• Three successive METAR reports from LFSB (22:00, 22:30, 23:00 UTC) confirm CAVOK conditions and light winds throughout the observation period, ruling out atmospheric obscuration.p.2

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

• Je vous contacte donc dans le cadre d'une enquête en cours concernant une observation au dessus de Rixheim (68) dans la nuit du 26 au 27 juillet 2009 à 23h46mn.

  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 , d'où l'objet de ce mail.

  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 approached Basel-Mulhouse airport independently and misrepresented himself as acting under GEIPAN's authority — a procedural breach significant enough that the GEIPAN director addressed it explicitly in the formal data request.
• ELVIRA is France's civil-aviation multi-radar fusion system; a negative result means no corroborating return was detected across multiple overlapping radar feeds simultaneously, not merely on a single antenna.
• The CNES/DGAC protocol authorizing GEIPAN to request radar data from civil aviation was itself undergoing revision at the time Blanc sent the letter — he notes 'une mise à jour est en cours' (an update is underway).
• Three METAR readings spanning the observation window all report CAVOK, eliminating cloud cover, precipitation, and poor visibility as explanations for the luminous point's disappearance.
• The INCA timestamp places the event at 21:46 UTC (23:46 local), while the description blurb places the witness's stated start time at 22:20 local — a roughly 90-minute discrepancy that may reflect the difference between initial observation and the formal INCA log entry.
• GEIPAN publishes all investigations after anonymizing witness and sensitive details; the LFSB correspondence reproduced in this file is part of that public-record commitment.