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This FAA file, released through the National Archives and The Black Vault, collects 1987 newspaper clippings about Japan Air Lines Flight 1628. Capt. Kenju Terauchi reported that lights and a huge walnut-shaped object followed his 747 cargo jet over Alaska on November 17, 1986. The articles quote FAA spokesman Paul Steucke saying the radar returns were a split image and military clutter, and report Philip Klass's explanation that Terauchi saw Jupiter and Mars. Terauchi's second sighting in January was attributed to village lights reflecting off ice crystals.
II u. uL iMniiiifuu lu. amiiiii Denver downrBf^s, 2^;sfn OT luiinnuu wiHL r* Hit hard by floods, musher determine UfMtyles, PageF-1 ews VOL. Xm. NO. 12 48 PAGES ANCHOFWGE. ALASKA. MONOAY. JANUARY f2. 1987 JAL pilot sees lights In the sky Object doesn't show on military, FAA radar By DON HUNTER Daily News reporter For the second time in two months, a Japan Air Lines pilot has reported seeing an unknown object flying near his airplane over barren inte rior Alaska. Capt. Kenjyu Terauchi re ported the second sighting at about 7:30 a.m. Sunday morn ing, as he, a co-pilot and a fli^t ^gineer flew at about 37,000 feet, said Paul Steucke, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. As on the night of Terauchi's first report in November, he was flying cargo in a Boeing 747 from London to a refuel ing stop in Anchorage. There are more differences than similarities between the two reports, however. Unlike last time, the lights Terauchi saw Sunday morn ing did not show up on mili- ta^ or FAA radar screens. The pilot himself told FAA investigators there was "no similarity** between the flash ing amber and white lights he saw Sunday and the massive^ flying object, that Terauchi reported trailed his aircraft for hundreds of miles on Nov. 17, Steucke said. As on the first sighting, Terauchi was accompanied by a co-pilot and a flight engi neer. They were not the same crew members, Steucke said. Steucke said the cargo plane's co-pilot was flying the plane at the time of the sight ing Sunday morning. The co- aircraft's flight engineer, who sits farther back in the cc«k- pit, "indicated he was uncer tain whether he saw any lights at all," Steucke said. • "We ask^ httt^ point-blank if this was like the Nov. 17 sighting and he said, 'no, no, See Back Page, SIQHTINO January 12,1967 SIGHTING: Lights In sky I Continued from Page A-1 | there's no similarity between the two,'" Steuck^said.^... "terauchi repbr^ed seeing the lights twice Sdhday morn ing, once for a pmod of about 20 minutes and once for about 10 minutes. In both cases, he said the lights approached from the front of the 747, went underneath the aircraft and reappeared behind it, Steucke said. Terauchi radioed word of the sighting to an air traffic controller in Anchorage. "His statement to the con troller was 'irregular lights, looke like a spaceship,*" Steucke said; Controllers and their super visors Immediately checked radar screens "to see if there were any objects around the JAL aircraft," Steucke said. "There were none, and that was confirmed" by military radar, he said. Steucke said FAA officials and experienced pilots specu late that Sunday's sighting could have been caused by a\ weather phenomenon called "bounce light effect." Both times Terauchi report ed seeing the lights Sunday, the airplane was flying over villages, Steucke said. "The ground temperatxire in the area was about minus- 23 and there was. a tempera ture inversion at 23,500 feet," he said. "Temperature inver sions in cold' climates, with to create a bounce light ef- .fect." Light from the villages could have reflected off ice crystals in the inversion and appeared to be hovering in cdd-air, Steucke said. As the plane approached and passed over the villages, the reflect ed light would have appeared to go under the aircx^ and reappeared behind it, as Ter- auc^ described the lights he saw Sunday, Steucke said. Steucke said the boimce- light theory is only specula tion, not an agency finding. '"Hiose of us involved in this talked about it," he said. "People who are experienced at flying mentioned that it is not an infrequent occur rence." On Nov. 17, Terauchi re ported that two brightly lit objects and a much larger thW object — roughly twice the size of an aircr^ carrier — trailed the JAL plane for more than 300 miles as it' crossed into Alaska from Ice land. Terauchi said the objects changed altitude with him >and paced the jet for nearly an hour. In Anchorage, air traffic controllers monitoring the JAL plane's progress saw what appeared to be the radar tracks of another flying ob ject in the air space near Terauchi's plane. Both incidents are under investigation, Steucke said. Terauchi could not be
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