THE UAP MAP
Air France Airbus A320-111 F-GFKG, the aircraft later associated with Flight AF3532
COULOMMIERS · FRANCE · 28 JANUARY 1994 · AF3532

Two pilots saw a huge changing form.The radar match is the disputed part.

Air France Flight AF3532 reported a large reddish-brown phenomenon near Coulommiers while cruising from Nice to London. French military radar recorded an unidentified 50-second track in the same broad time and airspace. GEIPAN’s live case page now displays classification D after a 16 June 2026 update, while older cached pages and part of GEIPAN’s own narrative still say D1. The visual/radar correlation remains the central unresolved issue.

AUTHENTIC F-GFKG · AIRBUS A320-111 · INCIDENT AIRFRAME IDENTIFICATION · PHOTO TAKEN 2004
13:14visual sighting begins
~1 MINcrew visual duration
~50 SECmilitary radar track
DGEIPAN live classification · updated Jun 2026
PRIMARY EVIDENCE FIRST

Three witnesses, a live ATC call, and a later military-radar record.

CAPT. JEAN-CHARLES DUBOC

Gigantic evolving lens

Duboc first thought he was looking at another aircraft in a bank, then described a huge dark reddish-brown lens-like form with indistinct edges.

F/O VALÉRIE CHAUFFOUR

Variable geometry

Chauffour agreed that the object was very large and anomalous, but later described its apparent shape-change differently — disc toward chevron rather than exactly Duboc’s evolving lens.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT

First to notice it

An unnamed flight attendant in the cockpit first pointed out the object, initially suggesting a weather balloon. No independent later interview with this witness has been located.

FLIGHT CONDITIONS

The cockpit was operating in exceptionally good visibility.

Duboc later preserved the flight’s OCTAVE data: FL390, outside temperature about −59°C, north-westerly wind around 101 knots, ground speed about 350 knots and visibility reported at roughly 150 nautical miles / 200–300 km above an altocumulus deck. The aircraft carried 24 passengers; none is on record as having observed the phenomenon.

THE EVENT

The real-time report is stronger than the later paperwork.

13:14

Object noticed near Coulommiers

AF3532 — Air France Airbus A320-111 F-GFKG — is cruising near FL390 in excellent visibility when the chief steward points out an object to the left of the aircraft.

Crew accounts / later investigation
SECONDS

Both pilots observe

Duboc and Chauffour watch a large reddish-brown phenomenon that appears to change form while remaining broadly stationary relative to their view.

Crew statements
~1 MIN

Object fades

The object becomes increasingly transparent and disappears rather than simply accelerating away, according to the captain’s later account.

Duboc account
LIVE

Reims Control notified

Duboc radios the unusual traffic to Reims during the flight. No corresponding filed aircraft is identified in the sector.

Aviation reporting chain
LATER

Military track retrieved

French investigators identify an unidentified Cinq-Mars-la-Pile radar track of roughly 50 seconds in the same general period and region.

French air-defence / SEPRA material
THE THREE-YEAR GAP

The sighting was reported live. The written UFO report was not.

One of the most important distinctions in AF3532 is temporal. Duboc did not remain silent during the encounter: he notified air traffic control in real time. What he delayed was the formal written UFO report.

Roughly three years later, after further public discussion of UFO cases, Duboc filed a written statement through the French gendarmerie. That delay has evidential consequences. Exact angular size, distance, shape transitions and sequence details become more vulnerable to memory drift.

So the case should not be reduced either to “reported immediately” or “reported three years later.” Both statements are true about different parts of the evidential chain.

THE CODA CHRONOLOGY

The command-chain record preserves the sighting within minutes.

13:16Z

AF3532 sighting enters CODA chronology

The chronology says the crew reported a one-minute observation at about 13:14Z near Coulommiers, with the event passed into the air-defence information chain within minutes.

CODA chronology · official document
13:20Z

Dark “bell” description

Additional information describes a dark object with a bell-like form, estimated 10–20 nautical miles from the aircraft and about 2,000 feet lower.

CODA chronology
13:26Z

Shape-change information relayed

The chronology records the object on the aircraft’s left, with an estimated level near 370, changing into a brown/chestnut lens-like form. CODA also instructed that a report be filed with the Gendarmerie.

CODA chronology

The document itself contains transcription/administrative inconsistencies — it calls the aircraft an “Airbus 300” and refers to “three men,” despite the known A320 and female first officer. That is precisely why the chronology should be used for timing and command-chain provenance without treating every descriptive field as infallible.

NEAR-CONTEMPORARY OFFICIAL RECORD · STRONG FOR TIMING · NOT ERROR-FREE
THE RADAR PUZZLE

Cinq-Mars-la-Pile recorded a target. CODA did not “see the UFO.”

Popular retellings often say “CODA radar confirmed the object.” That wording is technically wrong. CODA at Taverny was the French air-defence command-and-control center. The radar return itself came from the Cinq-Mars-la-Pile detection center and was relayed through the air-defence system.

The track lasted about 50 seconds, matched no filed flight plan, and disappeared at approximately the same time as the visual phenomenon. That coincidence is the strongest reason the case became famous.

But the match is disputed. Patrick Gross’s technical review notes that surviving diagrams place the radar target on geometry that may not correspond to the object the crew consistently described on the aircraft’s left side. Some published radar drawings are also secondary reconstructions rather than authenticated original military plots.

GEIPAN’s own current case narrative is unusually candid: investigators remained cautious about correlating the radar signature with the observed phenomenon, and the page explicitly says the radar trace is inconsistent with the visual object. That means the strongest government source itself does not support the simplistic phrase “radar confirmed the UFO.”

The safe conclusion is therefore: an unidentified military radar track existed at roughly the same time and in the same broad airspace; whether it was the object seen by the crew remains unresolved.

MULTI-SENSOR CLAIM · TEMPORAL/SPATIAL OVERLAP · GEIPAN ITSELF FLAGS CORRELATION PROBLEM
THE SIZE PROBLEM

“250 metres wide” is not a direct measurement.

Published estimates for the object range from roughly 200 metres to several hundred metres, with some retellings pushing much larger. Those values come from angular size combined with assumed range — not from radar-derived range to the visual object.

The difficulty is that the angular-size account itself drifted across later interviews. Different hand-at-arm’s-length comparisons imply materially different apparent sizes.

That does not erase the witnesses’ strong impression that the object was enormous. It means the correct public wording is “apparently very large” rather than treating any single metre figure as measured fact.

THE WEATHER-BALLOON CHECK

A real balloon crossed the route — at the wrong time.

A weather balloon was the cockpit’s first ordinary possibility and later became a formal investigative hypothesis. Météo-France archive work eventually confirmed that a balloon had indeed crossed the aircraft’s general flight path that day.

GEIPAN’s 2012 Météo-France recheck found that a radiosonde balloon did cross the aircraft’s trajectory — but about one hour before the observation. By the sighting time, the balloon should have burst and been descending far to the southeast of the aircraft. It therefore does not provide a direct match for the 13:14 observation.

That makes the balloon valuable as a tested hypothesis rather than a solution.

CONVENTIONAL HYPOTHESIS · REAL BALLOON / WRONG TIME FOR DIRECT MATCH
GEIPAN · UPDATED 2026

The current live classification is D — but the archive still carries D1 language.

GEIPAN’s live AF3532 case page now displays classification D and a case-update date of 16 June 2026. That is newer than the D1 status repeated by most competitor pages and by older GEIPAN search-index snapshots.

There is an archival wrinkle: the narrative text lower on the same GEIPAN page still says the case is classified D1 and explains that late testimony, the missing steward statement and the radar trace’s inconsistency with the visual object reduce the case’s consistency.

The UAP Map therefore does not silently choose whichever label sounds stronger. The current header is treated as the live status — D — while the older D1 wording is preserved as evidence that GEIPAN’s public case page is presently internally inconsistent following the 2026 update.

More important than the letter is GEIPAN’s substantive conclusion: the observation remains unexplained, while two residual possibilities are still mentioned but not established — an unknown atmospheric optical phenomenon or a flexible wind-borne object such as balloon material.

CURRENT OFFICIAL STATUS · HEADER D / UPDATED 16 JUN 2026 · LEGACY BODY TEXT STILL SAYS D1
THE TWO RESIDUAL ORDINARY/PHYSICAL LANES

GEIPAN itself leaves two possibilities open — cautiously.

ATMOSPHERIC OPTICS

Unknown optical phenomenon

GEIPAN says an as-yet unknown atmospheric optical effect can still be envisaged, but the available evidence does not allow the hypothesis to be consolidated.

FLEXIBLE OBJECT

Wind-borne envelope/material

A flexible object — for example balloon envelope material moving with the winds — remains another residual possibility. It is not identified with the known radiosonde that crossed earlier.

KNOWN AIRCRAFT

Poor fit to the visual chain

GEIPAN argues that if the visual phenomenon itself had been an ordinary aircraft, a matching radar trace should have existed. The unidentified radar target does not solve that problem because its geometry is inconsistent with the visual object.

COMETA

Influential — but not an official government commission.

The 1999 COMETA report gave AF3532 international prominence and treated it as one of its important French aviation cases. COMETA’s membership included senior retired military officers and engineers, but the committee itself was a private association rather than a formal French government investigative commission.

That distinction matters because many English-language summaries elevate COMETA’s judgments into official state conclusions. The strongest government status in this case comes instead from the aviation reporting chain, French defence involvement, SEPRA/GEIPAN investigation and GEIPAN’s D1 classification.

WHAT THE RECORD ESTABLISHES

The sighting is strong. The radar match is the hard part.

Strongly supported

  • Duboc and Chauffour both reported a large anomalous visual phenomenon.
  • An unnamed flight attendant first drew attention to it.
  • Duboc notified Reims Control during the flight.
  • A separate unidentified Cinq-Mars-la-Pile military radar track was later retrieved.
  • The radar track lasted roughly 50 seconds and had no filed flight-plan match.
  • GEIPAN’s live case header now lists D after a 16 June 2026 update; the case remains unexplained.

Not established

  • No photograph or video of the object exists.
  • No authenticated public raw radar dataset has been independently re-analysed here.
  • The radar target is not proven to be the same object seen visually.
  • The object’s physical size was not directly measured.
  • The delayed written report increases uncertainty in fine geometric details.
  • GEIPAN’s live D header and older D1 body text are currently internally inconsistent.
  • COMETA was not an official government commission.
SOURCE ROOM

Start with GEIPAN, then test the radar geometry.

GEIPAN — AF3532 live case pageCurrent official page: header classification D, updated 16 June 2026; body text retains older D1 wording and explicitly flags the radar-correlation inconsistency.CODA chronology — 28 January 1994Near-contemporaneous air-defence information chronology preserving 13:16Z / 13:20Z / 13:26Z reporting steps; contains minor administrative/transcription inconsistencies. Patrick Gross — radar-track technical reviewDetailed analysis of surviving radar diagrams, geometry conflicts and authenticity/provenance issues around published plots. OverClassified — modern competitor benchmarkExcellent on witness divergence, delayed reporting and radar geometry; currently still reflects the older D1 classification. UAP Globe — competitor benchmarkUseful modern overview and source navigator; public rating language not adopted. Wikimedia Commons — F-GFKG hero provenanceAir France Airbus A320-111 F-GFKG, construction number 021; photographed in 2004 by Dale Coleman; GFDL 1.2 with Wikimedia VRT permission.
THE UAP MAP

A real visual anomaly. A real radar anomaly. The difficult question is whether they were the same thing.

AF3532 deserves its reputation because two professional pilots reported a striking daylight phenomenon through a live aviation channel, and because French air-defence records later contained an unidentified radar track in the same general time and airspace.

The case becomes weaker when those two evidence streams are automatically fused. GEIPAN itself now says the radar trace is inconsistent with the object observed, the public raw radar record remains incomplete, and the famous giant-size estimates depend on uncertain range and angular-size reconstruction.

That does not make the sighting ordinary. It makes the unresolved question more precise: what did the crew see, and was the military track part of the same event or a coincidental unidentified target?