Sky above Paris, Flightradar24.(photo)

[StevieFae]

Another poster advised if no fly over Paris/France due to the Olympic Opening Ceremony.

I had a look. Quite clear skies but two unknown planes circling. Anyone know why?

That’s some flight patterns - French air force

Yeah, french Air Force. I've never seen anything like that before op, thanks!

Overwatch for security, will probably be off and on throughout the Games

My people! I was also looking at this in awe

It's a tanker which also has radar

You should have watched the threads over Blenheim during the concert last week. The sky was solid. ( police and RAF helicopters)

Wow.

Air Force plane - anti-terrorism.

Thanks all, really interesting. I really appreciate your extra information about the circling planes which, I think had taken off from Marseille.

My ‘investigation’ started when I was thinking how wonderful it would be to have been on a flight over the Eiffel Tower during the laser show.

You wouldn't want to be a pilot flying near that many lasers.

@StevieFae

Sorry a bit tardy in spotting this thread but on the basis of better late than never and for those still interested: The A332 in your opening post was a tanker ( I think there were two airborne at one point), positioned to give fuel when required to the several fighters the French Air Force had also put up on the night of the opening ceremony - those fighter aircraft didn’t show up on Flightradar.

There was another aircraft on task doing the radar oversight - that was an E3 AWACS command and control aircraft that you might have spotted positioned out to the west of Paris for several hours.

Thank you for updating. I’m the only flightradar geek in my family, so great to share here. 😆

Seems more regular aircraft tonight even with the light show. Fascinating to be on the flight just going in from LHR

The light show isn’t really a problem…these days it’s quite common to fly fairly close to places where light shows, including lasers are going on….the big problem is the sods who deliberately aim quite high powered lasers at aircraft, not the stuff used in most displays.

The big airspace closure for the opening ceremony was down to the number of heads of state on the ground that evening and the fact it was day one. After that the the restrictions got wound down very quickly but there was a small restricted zone kept in place over central Paris up until midnight last night, there will be similar for the paralympics.