This article was published in the daily newspaper Le Journal de l'Ile, La Réunion, on October 15, 1999. The author is Philippe Le Claire.
Too many times in the French press, newspaper articles about UFO sightings are devoid of any useable information and end with an allusion to the "X-files fans chasing little green man." Here is a French speaking non-metropolitan newspaper with an interesting article on a UFO sighting by pilots between the islands of Madagascar and Reunion in 1999.
Éric Grignon, instructor at the Roland Garros aéro-club, Philippe Cadet, engineer with the DDE and Eric Lescaret, salesman, were quietly returning from a long flight above Madagascar — Diégo-Suarez, Tamatave, Gillot, which is 7 hours of flight — Wednesday, October 13, 1999, when, during the last part of their flight, above the Océan, between Grande île and Reunion, as they were flying visually — that is, they practised flight under night vision, in the light of the stars — on board their Cessna 172, a single-engined aircraft, a "star" more brilliant than the others drew their attention. They had taken off of Tamatave at 12:40Z, which is 16:40 at Reunion local time, referred to "Zoulou time" in the pilots jargon, and it was 15:15 universal time when the thing ocurred, at 110 nautical miles of Reunion, radial 134 of Gillot.
Eric Grignon, the flight instructor explains the context: "night had fallen because we had sunset on our back (note: West), the sky was quite dark. A luminous point drew our attention to our front-left, at position 11:00. We did not see it coming in because probably it was drowned among the stars. We sought a light which would indicate Reunion to us, and one of us said: "On the left, there is a light." But Reunion on our left, this was not possible, because of our course, there wasn't any doubt for we had a GPS in addition to the remainder... It is its luminosity which led us to notice it..." For Philippe Cadet, also a pilot, who was seated in the back, "the luminous spot was extremely brilliant, and its size was about three times that of Venus..."
Three men started to wonder about the nature of this as they watched it through the plexiglass of their cockpit. "A ship? You know, at night, in the plane, the lights of a ship above the sea, with optical illusions, it can be misleading. But this could not have been the cause, as the luminous spot moved. We started to think seriously!"
When the three men started to note notable displacements, they really worried. Philippe Cadet explains: "Eric thought that it was a "traffic," a plane, so he called the control tower at Gillot..." Éric Grignon thus contacts Gillot on VHF and announces: "an aircraft in my fronz left," at such approximate distance, "whose trajectory appears converging..." In the air, specially in VFR flight, one cannot be allowed to take the least collision risk. The control tower at Gillot answers and ensures the India Tango crew that there is no flight in their sector. The only aircraft in the Reunion-Madagascar airspace, at this time there, is an Air Austral flight who is extremely far away from their path...
Moderately reassured, the three men decide to proceed in the most rationally possible way and to eliminate all the fallacious assumptions. "It was perhaps a luminous parasitize effect, a reflection through the plexiglass..."
Eric Grignon takes the control and perfectly stabilizes the plane on its three axes. The crew carries out summary manual triangulation and notes in the first time that the luminous point does not move... "At the moment we were reassured and then... bam, it started... this was not an optical illusion, nor the effect of relative motion! It lasted 45 minutes, until we started our descent and that the cloud layer hid the thing from us... the first cloud layer was at 5.000 feet..."
Eric Grignon, certain that he was confronted with an unidentified aircraft calls the tower again and confirms his initial observation. Gillot checks out and then informs the Air Austral flight that something abnormal is occurring. The commander of the 737 confirms that he heard and that he will pay attention...
From this moment, the India Tango crew will benefit of a rare display, "a little like when dolphins accompany a ship... In our case it was this luminous spot which was ahead of us and which played with us!"
According to Eric Grignon, "it was difficult to estimate the distance and the size of the craft, in the night, due to lack of references; either the craft was distant and then its speed and amplor of displacements are remarkable, or it was small and very close, and the extraordinary character of its displacements explains better..."
These displacements constitute the astonishing character of the sighting: "It carried out instantaneous changes of trajectory, at the horizontal level. However a turn of this width, 180°, takes at least a good minute, but here it was done in less than a second! At the beginning the movements were perfomed particularly on the horizontel level, then the displacements became vertical... incredible rates of rise! And the same in the other direction!"
For who know a little bit about the realities of aerial displacement air, it is obvious that such maneuevers do not belong to the field of possibilities offered by contemporary technology. The hardware does not stand the load factors that result in such changes of trajectories, as for the pilots, let's not even mention... In stunt planes, the best in the world only rarely attempts manoeuvers beyond +10, - 10, where one passes out. In jets, the load factors sustained by pilots equipped with G-suit are still less, seldom more than 7 G, although the time spent under effort is longer, in the case of high speed turns for example.
The three men in the Cessna witnessed a high extraordinary stunt-flying display on 80 nautical miles, that is to say approximately 160 km.
Eric Grignon has no doubt about the "foreign" nature of the craft: "I am sure that this was not an airliner! If it was, can you imagine the consequences on the passengers! A jet fighter? What would he be doing there? And then again, a jet fighter does not jokingly burn oil for the pleasure. And there, to perform a hundredth of what we saw, a jet would quickly have burnt all his oil!
Same testimony on behalf of Philippe Cadet who from his back seat did not lose a bit of the show. "It made evolutions from right-hand side to the left, quite quickly, then it skewed on a trajectory bringing it farther away from us... and it came back. We saw it going up at an impossible speed... There was not one sign of a propulsion system, nor of position lights; neither variation of intensity of the light, a white color, constant... it was unbelievable! At one time Eric told me "Look at that!" The craft plunged vertiginously at a fantastic speed, and then wam, it went up in the opposite direction just as quickly!"
Beyond the display that they were enjoying, the three pilots were a little bit anxious. Alone above the ocean on board of a small single-engined plane! "We were afraid it may come too close... who knows, the possible radiation of the craft could have deprived us of electric power, and then, we would have had a nice bath. But nothing of the sort happened, the craft appeared to play with us, while keeping a respectful distance... It was there, it observed us, and showed it to us, as when you swing a plane's wing to signal yourself to other planes..."
When the aéro-club of Roland Garros Cessna 172 started his descent, it went through the cloud layer which hung in the sky at 5.300 feet... "We lost sight of it at 4.500 feet... I hoped that the control tower would see it and visually confirm the presence of our guiding friend, but the clouds hid it from their sight..."
Yesterday in Gillot, the India Tango crew told its adventure to whoever wanted to hear it. This is understandable, such an event does not occur every day. But their "story" will remain in the records of local aeronautics, as it was officially reported as flight incident, and in parallel, explained to the investigators of the Gendarmerie Nationale [police corp attached to the French military].
In the staffs of the four French air zones, military safety regularly receives surveys carried out by the Gendarmerie into all the reported observations. If ufology is not yet an exact science, its object of study has been taken seriously by the State and National Defense [of France].
