Klass and Haines inquiries and FAA responses

.... Anchorage Daily News Friday, January 30, 1987 B5
UFO expert says it was u ..•..•
..
Editor Philip Klass believes planet& were in the sight line of JAL pilot .· f· I
Daiy News staff and wire 88IVices
NEW YORK - A Japan Air Lines
pilot who claimed to have seen an uni-
dentified flying object alongside his air-
plane in the skies above Alaska last
November was actually seeing an unusu-
ally bright image of the planet Jupiter
and poaaibly Man, an investigator said
Tuesday.
Philip J. Kl.au said astronomical cal-
culations show that on Nov. 17, when the
pilot, Capt. Kenju Terauchi, claimed to
have seen the UFO, Jupiter was extreme-
ly bright and was visible precisely where
the pilot reported that he saw the UFO.
Man1 was just below and to the right
of Jupiter, and may explain the pilot's
initial report that he saw two lights,
Klass aaid.
Terauchi WednetdaY rejected Klass's
explanation.
"It wu not a weather phenomena,"
Tuauchi said. "Not a star. It moved with
you."
Terauchi said he did see Jupiter during
hil flight, but he said the planet was not
the UFO.
Kl.au, an editor with the magazine
Aviation Wilek and Space Technology
and a 10111-time investigator of claimed
UFO liahtin&s, said the pilot's claims
that the object followed him as he made
a 360-degree turn are contradicted by Claims of the Paranormal in Buffalo, v
what he told flight controllers at the N.Y., an organization of scientists who ... .
time. investigate claims of UFO sightings, ESP •
John Leyden, a spokesman for the occurrences and other ao-called paranor-
Federal Aviation Administration in mal phenomena.
Washington, quoted from a summary of Klass, who heads the organization's-
conversations between the pilot and UFO subcommittee, is the author of~
ground controllers in which the pilot "UFOs: The Public Deceived." He has ...
reported losing sight of the object after been investigating UFO si&htlnas for ;
completing his tum. more than 20 years. ·
The object reappeared a few moments "Jupiter was only 10 degrees above - ·
later, according to the~ FAA summary the horizon, making it appear to the pilot '
quoted by Leyden. to be roughly at his own 35,000-foot
· Terauchi was over Alaska enroute ' altitude," said Klass in his report. Mars:
from Europe, via lcela.nd, to Tokyo when · was visible closer to the horizon an4 to •
he reported sighting the object. the right of Jupiter, but was not u •
Paul Steucke, a spokesman for the bright, the report said. ,
FAA in Anchorage, said that Terauchi .. . ''This is not the tlrlt time that an.
told FAA officials in an interview that : experienced pilot has mistaken a briaht:
the object stayed with him as he turned. : • celestial body for a UFO, nor will it be '
Terauchi, in a Wednesday interview, said the last," Klass said.
he did lose sight of the object during part A United Airlines fll&ht and an Afr ·~
of the tum. Force C-130 cargo plane that were in •
Steucke said the FJ\A would be releas- Terauchi's vicinity at the time of the ~
ing the results of its own investigation in claimed sightin~ were asked to look for ~
mid-February. . the object, and neither reported seetna·it. -
According to Klass, who reviewed a . "I think that the Japanese pilot ehould ·
complete copy of the transcript, the pilot have been a little more skeptical when •
never reported seeing Jupiter or Mars, the United airliner and the Air Force
even though t~ey were-clearly visible. plane reported seeing nothing," Kl~ ~
~ass's report was lsaued by the Com- said Tuesday in a telephone interview~
mit*ee for the Scientific Investigation of from Colorado.