UFO Observed by
JAL 1628’s Flight Crew
Date: November 17, 1986
Location: Alaska, United States
Japan Airlines Flight 1628 was a cargo aircraft carrying French wine, en route to Tokyo from Paris, with stops in Keflavik in Iceland and Anchorage in Alaska. On board the Boeing 747 aircraft was Captain Kenju Terauchi, copilot Takanori Tamefuji, and flight engineer Yoshio Tsukuba.
It was around 17:10 when the Boeing was flying over northeastern Alaska at an altitude of thirty-five thousand feet. It was just after sunset; the sky was clear, and it was a smooth flight under an almost full moon. Although the conditions were optimal for a flight, things did not go as the crew members were expecting. Just two thousand feet below the aircraft, Terauchi noticed a set of lights that he could not identify nor track on his radar. Given that they were flying close to Elmendorf Air Force Base, the captain assumed that it was a military aircraft patrolling the sky, so he did not think much of it.
Several minutes later, the lights were still in the sky, traveling the same route as the Boeing. The lights had remained on the left side and had not changed direction or altitude. At the Anchorage Air Traffic Control Center, the radio operator could not locate anything on the radar except for the Boeing. The operator also confirmed with the Air Force Base that there were no military aircraft in the vicinity. Although nothing was showing up on the radar at Anchorage, the radio operator at Elmendorf’s Regional Operational Control Center started getting a strong primary return on radar, confirming Terauchi’s sighting.
The only clouds in the sky were thin spotty ones below the aircraft; above the aircraft the sky was clear, and the lights were distinctly visible. Tamefuji and Tsukuba had also noted that the lights were now straight ahead, and it was at that moment that they noticed that there were two sets of distinct lights joined together. Rectangular in shape, the lights were maneuvering erratically, moving from a horizontal to a vertical position. To confirm that the sighting was not a result of a reflection, the cockpit lights were turned to dark, but the lights remained visible, lighting up the entire sky. The witness reports provided by the crew members described the lights as having no definite shape; they were simply lights arranged in a rectangular shape, similar to lights on a passenger plane. The numerous lights were flashing in front of the aircraft, just one thousand feet ahead. In an attempt to capture the objects on camera, Terauchi grabbed the camera he had with him, but it failed to focus on the lights. Even when trying to focus the camera in manual mode, the camera would not focus on the UFOs.
After approximately eight minutes, the two lights became extremely bright, as though they were shooting off bright flares. In his witness report, Terauchi stated that “the inside of the cockpit shined brightly, and I felt warm in the face.” 46 The light emitted from the objects was so intense that the captain could feel the warmth on his face, which came to an end after a few seconds. The two rectangular lights then transitioned into small circular orbs and proceeded to move toward the aircraft’s side, mirroring every move and turn. On several occasions Terauchi tried to communicate with Anchorage Air Traffic Control, but the communication was being interrupted, presumably due to the objects’ close proximity.
The bright spherical lights started moving toward the rear side of the aircraft, slightly below the horizon. Well behind the aircraft, the pilots started losing sight of the lights and after a short moment, a third object appeared above the horizon. The third object was significantly brighter than the city lights and much more intense. Terauchi described the object as being the “mothership” as the two other lights proceeded to fly toward it. It was not until this point in the encounter that Terauchi and his colleagues started fearing for their safety. They were now sharing the sky with three unidentified and, most definitely, extraterrestrial aircraft. For this reason, Terauchi contacted Anchorage and requested a change in course and also requested immediate permission for landing. Although this was approved, the lights remained visible in the same location, even though the Boeing had made an angular turn, meaning that the lights were paralleling the same maneuvers relative to the aircraft’s position in space.
Running low on fuel, Terauchi did not have the time for excess flying and was able to make a safe landing at Talkeetna. The three objects maintained their distance and the air force base even offered for a military aircraft to be scrambled and escort the cargo, however, Terauchi declined the offer after hearing about Thomas Mantell’s death as he was chasing a UFO (see Chapter 31). After fifty minutes, the three objects disappeared from the sky and out of view.
“The thing was flying as if there was no such thing as gravity. It sped up, then stopped, then flew at our speed, in our direction, so that to us it looked like it was standing still. The next instant it changed course. There’s no way a jumbo could fly like that. If we tried, it’d break apart in mid-air. In other words, the flying object had overcome gravity.” 47
The Investigation
Within a few hours after the aircraft landed, the Federal Aviation Administration launched an investigation and interviewed the crew members separately. It was not until March 5, 1987, four months after the sighting, that a report was issued stating that the radar readings were a split radar, caused by the primary signal from the Boeing reflecting off the aircraft’s surface, resulting into two separate radar targets. The report, however, failed to acknowledge the visual sighting that all three crew members had mentioned in their witness reports.
“FAA’s Regional Public Affairs Officer Paul Steucke pointed out that FAA normally does not investigate UFO sightings but pursued the JAL incident in its role as the operator of the air traffic control system. He said the agency’s objective was to determine if there was an unreported aircraft in the vicinity of the JAL flight that could present a safety hazard.
“As part of the inquiry, Steucke said, radar data of the JAL flight track was reviewed by FAA experts at the agency’s Technical Center in Atlantic City, N.J., using identical equipment. They determined that a second radar target near the JAL flight at the time of the reported sighting was not another aircraft but rather a split radar return from the JAL Boeing 747.
“Technically, this is known as an ‘uncorrelated primary and beacon target return.’ It means that the primary radar signal reflected off the aircraft’s surface did not correlate exactly with the pulse emitted by the aircraft’s radar beacon transponder. This phenomenon is not unusual and gives the impression of two separate radar targets.” 48
Interplanetary Aircrafts or Planets?
Although the report issued by the FAA did not acknowledge the visual sightings, it did not dispute or invalidate their encounter, either. Having said this, UFO skeptic Philip Klass provided an explanation himself before the transcripts of the witness interviews were made available. Klass stated that the lights were simply a bright Jupiter or Mars.
Foolishly enough, since Klass did not wait for the witness recordings to be released, he did not take into account the position of the UFOs in space. He also did not take into consideration the pictorial information provided, or the maneuverability described by Terauchi and Tamefuji. At the time of the sighting, Jupiter and Mars were on the opposite side of the sky. Even if they were in the same location, the UFOs maneuvered in ways that neither Jupiter nor Mars can.
Conclusion
Was the sighting a genuine encounter with extraterrestrial aircraft or was it simply a hoax? Although the three witnesses were independently interviewed, their statements and descriptions corroborated with one another’s. Moreover, Terauchi had well over ten thousand flight hours; would a highly experienced pilot report something he did not deem to be unnatural, possibly tarnishing his credibility?
46. Kenju Terauchi, “Meeting the Future,” translated by Sakoyo Mimoto, FAA Alaskan Region Airway Facilities Division, January 2, 1987, https://documents .theblackvault.com/documents/ufos/jal1628/733667-001-007.pdf.
47. Shukan Shincho, “JAL Pilot’s UFO Story Surfaces After 20 Years,” Japan Today, December 8, 2006.
48. Federal Aviation Administration, “FAA Releases Documents on Reported UFO Sighting Last November,” U.S. Department of Transportation press release, February 4, 1987, http://www.nicap.org/docs/861117_flight1628.pdf.