Klass and Haines inquiries and FAA responses

UFO sighting by pilot confirmed h rucl nr •
locate th e JAL airliner. The United crew,
looking ahead a nd to its left, readily
spotted JAL, silhouetted against a still
fa intly light sky, but could not see any
lumi nous object in its vicinity. Shortly
befo re the two a ircraft passed, Terauchi
was asked again to give the UFO's posi-
li on, a nd he reported th a t it was "just
ahead of United"-which would place the
bright lig ht to the so uth east. Despite the
fact that t he bri g ht light seemed to
Tera uc hi to be directly ahead of the
United jet liner, its crew sa w nothing.
In the south eas terly direction, where
Tera uchi was the n loo king, was the very
bright (-2. 6 magn itud e) pla net Jupiter,
which was lo w in th e s ky (a bout 12
J egrees) at an az im uth of a bout 14 3
degrees re lat ive to t rue north . From
ferauchi's va ntage point, Jup iter would
a ppear to be just ahead of United #69.
But the bright p lane t would have bee n
ta r to the right o f United's flight pa th,
a nd its crew wou ld have bee n look ing to
:heir left at JAL # 1628. Neve r on ce d id
r erauchi report the " U F O's" po sition
relative to a "ve ry b rig h t star," i.e.,
J upiter.
Also in the area a t the ti me was a
USAF C- 130 transport a ircra ft tha t was
westbound for Elmendorf AFB, flying
south of JAL #1628. When the C-130
pilot overheard the FAA communications
with JAL, he too offered to try to spot
the reported UFO when the USAF a ir-
craft passed near the 747. The USAF
crew readily spotted the JAL 747 but
reported seeing no other object in its
vicinity. The C-130 crew would not have
noticed Jupiter, which was to th eir far
left, because they were looking at the JAL
747 to their right.
While it is commendable that the
FAA's Alaskan Region decided to con-
duct tape-recorded interviews with the
three JAL crew members in early J a nu-
ary, following inquiries by Japanese news
media in late December, in retrospect it
is regrettable that the FAA did not think
to ta pe-record discussions with the crew
immedia tely after fli ght # 1628 land ed in
Ancho rage on November 17, when recol-
lect ions we re still fres h. However, whe n
crew mem bers we re interviewed separ-
. a tely in J a nuary, some significant differ-
ences emerged , providing useful insights.
F or exa mple, it now a ppears that the
No ve mber 17 incide nt in vol ved two dif-
ferent "types of U FOs, " o r tri gger-
mechan isms. As descr ib ed by fli g ht
engineer Yoshio Tsukuba (through an
interpreter) during his January 15 inter-
view with FAA officials, the initial UFO
was observed for about five to ten
minutes al roughly an 11 o'clock position
before it disappeared. This is confirmed
by the FAA radio communications tran-
script, which shows the pilot reported
the UFO disappearance at 0223: 13 GMT,
roughly four minutes after it was first
reported. Crew members had been ob-
serving it for several minutes prior to the
initial report.
The second UFO, which Tsukuba
characterized as "absolutely different"
was visible much further to the left ("nine
o'clock") for about 30 or 40 minutes.
Tsukuba described the initial UFO as a
"cluster of lights . .. undulating," which
were "different from town lights." Unlike
the pilot, Tsukuba said he was una ble to
describe any pa rticular shape for either
UFO. The flight engineer said that, when
he was first interviewed by the FAA
immediately following the incident, he
"wa s not sure whether the object was a
UFO or not. My mind has not cha nged
since then."
During FAA interviews in Janua ry,
copilot Takanori Tamefuji, who was fly-
ing the 747 at the time of the initial sight-
ing, confirmed the flight engineer's recol-
lections that the UFO first sighted was
"completely different" from the one la ter
seen further to the left. Tam e fuji
described what at first appeared to be
"two small a ircraft" slightly below his
own altitude. Whe n the copilot was asked
if he could distinguish th ese lights "as
being different" from a star, he re plied :
"No." (The pla net Ma rs would have bee n
visible to th e cre w a bout 19 d egrees to
the right of Jupite r, but it would not
have been nearly as bright.)
When a s ket c h ma d e by C a pt a in
Tera uchi, showing a gia nt wa ln ut-sh a ped
U FO, was sho wn to the copilo t a nd he
was as ked if this was what he had seen,
he re plied : " I do n't see a nything li ke this
but . . . if we ca n co nnect these light s it
[would] be a big object, but ah .. ."
There are a number of ambiguities in
the report that Captain Terauchi sub-
mitted to the FAA on January 2, and in
his subsequent interview with an FAA
representative, despite the presence of an
interpreter. Terauchi generally character-
ized the initial amber-white lights as re-
sembling the ex haust of jet or rocket
engines. In his report, written in Japa nese
and later translated, Terauchi said that a
few minutes after first observing the lights
ahead and to the left, "most une x pectedly
two spaceships stopped in front of our
face, shooting off lights. The inside cock-
pit shined [sic] brightly and I felt warm
in the face." Neither of the other crew
members reported such effects.
All three crew members a greed that
the 747's weather rad a r displayed an echo
at a bearing that roughly corresponded
to that of the initial lig hts at a range of
about eight miles. The radar display uses
color to show the strength of the echo to
alert the crew to the potential intensit y
of thunderstorm turbulence a hea d . A
red-colored echo indica tes an especia ll y
strong radar echo and a green color
shows the weakest. All three crew mem-
bers agree that th e "UFO blip" was green.
This is especia lly curious if the visu al
UFO was a gia nt craft only a few miles
a head, which should have produced an
extremely strong (red) return . Flight
engineer Tsu k uba chara cterized it as "not
a dot, but strea mli ke ." This is con fi rmed
by a sketch dra wn by the pilot a ft er la nd-
ing on November 17. It sugges ts th a t th e
g reen "blip/strea m" was a n echo from
thin clouds of ice crysta ls-li ke those that
prompted T e ra uch i to mi sta ke vill age
lights for U FO s on J a nuary 11.
On th e night of No ve mber 17, there
was a nea rly full moon th a t would have
bee n ap pro xim ately 12 degrees a bo ve the
h orizo n a t the ti me of th e initia l UFO
sighting a nd a lmost d irect ly behi nd the
JAL 747's direc tion of fli gh t. T his raises
the possibil ity tha t bright moo nl ight re-
flect ing off turb ul ent clouds of ice crystals