At 10,000 meters above Paris, a dark red disc which turns black, whose edges become blurred and which suddenly disappears… A strange phenomenon observed in 1994 on board a plane by three members of crew, on which the UFO office, the very serious Geipan, looked into. “Sensitive Affairs” returns on November 5 to this disturbing case.
In its November 5, 2023 issue, “Sensitive Affairs” focuses on UFOs, these unidentified flying objects that fascinate as much as they worry. The magazine notably returns to an astonishing case, a disturbing case to the point of having attracted the attention of the Geipan (Study and Information Group on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena), also called “the UFO office”.
It is January 28, 1994. At 12:06 p.m., an Air France Airbus A320 took off from Nice for London, with 24 passengers on board. At the controls of the plane, Jean-Charles Duboc, a 43-year-old experienced pilot (now deceased). With him in the cockpit, a young co-pilot. The navigation conditions are good, the visibility excellent, the flight is going well…
An object 200 to 300 meters in diameter
But at 1:14 p.m., while the plane was flying over the town of Coulommiers (Seine-et-Marne), the chief steward, present in the cockpit, saw an object on the left of the aircraft. It doesn’t look like a weather balloon, let alone another plane… It seems huge. The crew estimates its distance at around forty kilometers, its diameter at 200, perhaps 300 meters. As for its appearance… first red, bell-shaped, it turns black and takes the shape of a disc… then disappears.
Contacted, the Reims air navigation control center affirms that no flight plan has been filed near their position, then warns CODA, the Air Defense Operations Center. It is he who monitors French airspace and must identify any aircraft that flies over the country. The latter sends to the pilot the obligation to go and report to the gendarmerie. But – for fear of ridicule? – the crew will never report.
A synchronous trace on radar screens
However, the military radars were very panicked on January 28, 1994. They recorded the trace of an unidentified object for 50 seconds, at the very moment when the pilots observed this strange phenomenon. And the most surprising thing is that it disappeared simultaneously in sight of the crew and the radar screens… Jean-Charles Duboc did not learn it until 1997, three years later. He then decides to break his silence, and the Geipan investigation can begin.
The UFO office begins by ruling out the hypotheses of the weather balloon, the tourist plane or other flying artifact (to which “the characteristics of aeronautical developments do not correspond”). It remains that the“we have a material object, that’s for sure…” Here is the conclusion of the investigator, at the time :
“It is a UFO, an unidentified flying object. I have classified it as the most remarkable UFO case recorded since the creation of Geipan.”
Jean-Jacques Velasco, head of Geipan from 1983 to 2004in “Sensitive matters”
Extract from “The shock files of the UFO office”, a document to be seen on Sunday November 5, 2023 in “Sensitive Affairs”, a co-production of France Télévisions, France Inter and the INA, adapted from a France Inter program.