Documents / Hearing transcript
This FAA compilation, released through The Black Vault, covers an incident on January 29, 1987 involving Alaska Airlines Flight 53. The Boeing 737 was flying from Nome to Anchorage when its crew saw a fast-moving target on their weather radar about 60 miles west of McGrath, Alaska. The file includes an incident record, a certified controller transcript, the FAA's crew interview statement and a news release. Anchorage Center's radar data showed no such aircraft, and the USAF reported no military traffic in the area.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
CONTACT: PAUL STEUCKE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 6, 1987 (REVISED FEB.21,1987) #86-06 (#87-09) UNKNOWN TRAFFIC SIGHTED BY ALASKA AIRLINES CREW ON ONBOARD WEATHER RADAR The Alaska Airlines flight crew of a Boeing 737 aircraft, flight #53, enroute from Nome to Anchorage, Alaska, on January 29, 1987, reported to the FAA Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center, the sighting of unidentified air traffic on their onboard weather radar system. The incident occured at about 6:39 pm, 60 miles west of the community of McGrath, which is approximately 200 miles northwest of Anchorage. The aircraft was flying at 35,000 feet altitude at night, the weather was clear. Both pilots noticed the target on their weather radar scope and looked to see if there was any "traffic" in front of them. At no time did either crewmember see anything outside the aircraft. The Captain asked the FAA air traffic controller in Anchorage if there was "any traffic in this-ah-area, do you---headed towards Anchorage?". The FAA controllers at the air route control center in Anchorage reported a piper navajo at twelve thousand outbound from Anchorage towards McGrath, and a Beech estimated to be over McGrath at 4:04 pm, but nothing else. The Alaska Airlines Captain responded, "Okay, we're just curious. Up at about our altitude (35,000) ah..headed that direction--thanks----You haven't had any UFO reports lately...huh?". The controller responded, "Well I was just getting ready to ask you about that ...ah...could you tell me ...ah...the position of that aircraft." The area is not within radar coverage of the FAA air route traffic control center. Control of aircraft in the area is done by the center with the use of radio contact. The controller on duty checked with the USAF, Alaskan Air Command, and was told that they did not have military aircraft operating in that area at that time.
Hearing transcript, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 9 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.