GEIPAN Case 2019-11-50872 — VILLERS-LES-LUXEUIL (70) 26.11.2019
GEIPAN technical questionnaire (form R162) for case 2019-11-50872: two civilian witnesses driving separately in Haute-Saône, France, report a white light and a moving black triangular shape on the evening of 26 November 2019; assigned GEIPAN classification D1 — phenomenon unexplained, witnesses deemed reliable.
Brief
On 26 November 2019, shortly after 17:00, a married couple traveling in separate vehicles from Vesoul toward Villers-lès-Luxeuil independently observed an unidentified aerial phenomenon near the village of Saulx-de-Vesoul (Haute-Saône). The husband (T1), following his wife (T2), first reported a white light beneath the cloud layer, followed by a black triangular shape moving through the sky. GEIPAN — the UAP investigation unit of the French national space agency CNES, successor to GEPAN and SEPRA — classified the case D1, meaning the phenomenon remained unexplained despite credible, corroborated testimony. Supporting materials reportedly include gendarmerie procès-verbaux and technical notes.
Metadata
- Agency
- GEIPAN / CNES
- Release
- 2007-03-22
- Type
- PDF • .pdf
- Length
- 17 pages
- Classification
- UNCLASSIFIED (GEIPAN D1)
- Programs
- GEIPAN, GEPAN, SEPRA
- Tags
- black triangle, white light, visual observation, multiple witnesses, civilian, France, Haute-Saône, 2019, GEIPAN D1, nighttime, moving aerial shape
Key points
- Two witnesses observed the phenomenon independently while driving in separate vehicles, providing corroborating accounts without opportunity for immediate cross-contamination.
- First reported phenomenon: a white light observed near Saulx-de-Vesoul shortly after 17:00 local time on 26 November 2019, described as appearing to evolve beneath the cloud layer.
- Second reported phenomenon: a black triangular shape in motion through the sky — a morphology that recurs across a substantial share of GEIPAN's D-class case archive.
- GEIPAN assigned classification D1, its designation for cases where the phenomenon remains unexplained despite testimony from witnesses judged reliable.
- The document is a 'Questionnaire technique' standard intake form (R162), the structured witness-interview instrument GEIPAN uses to standardize case intake.
- Gendarmerie procès-verbaux and/or technical notes are cited as attached materials, meaning an official French law-enforcement record was filed in conjunction with this case.
Most interesting
- GEIPAN is the only standing government UAP investigation unit embedded within a national space agency among major Western nations; its lineage runs GEPAN (1977) → SEPRA (1988) → GEIPAN (2005), making it one of the longest continuously operating official UAP programs on record.
- GEIPAN's D1 classification distinguishes cases with reliable witnesses from D2 (highly reliable witnesses with exceptional observational detail), Category C (insufficient data), and Categories A/B (explained or probably explained) — placing this case at the lower-corroboration tier of the unexplained band.
- Saulx-de-Vesoul, the location of the first sighting, lies approximately 15 km west of the Luxeuil Saint-Sauveur air base (Base aérienne 116), a French Air and Space Force installation — a geographic proximity GEIPAN case officers routinely document in Haute-Saône reports.
- The war.gov listing carries a release date of 2007-03-22, predating the 2019 incident by twelve years; this is likely a metadata artifact reflecting GEIPAN's public case-portal launch or a cataloging error, not the actual case-release date.
- The R162 form designation reflects GEIPAN's numbered questionnaire versioning system, which has evolved since the original GEPAN intake forms of the late 1970s and standardizes the collection of observational variables (duration, angular size, trajectory, atmospheric conditions) across all witness reports.