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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.
“Japan Air Lines Flight 1628”7 pages
NASA worker tracks UFO reports by pilots as; I • vS ( : By HAL BERNTON Daily News business reporter The mysterious flashing lights sighted by the crew of a Japan Air Lines cargo jet last November aren't the only strange things pilots have seen through their cockpit windows. In the past 20 years, more than 3,000 sightings of UFOs have been reported by pilots, according to Richard Hninpg a NASA scientist wno traces UFO sightings by pilots in his spare time. "Some .«f them are vefy spectacular and very signM> cant from the standpoint of getting a better idea on how to characterize the phenome na." said Haines. He said the sightings are reported by military, civilian and commercial pilots who fly both national and interna tional routes. UFO reports from Alaska pilots are rela tively rare. The sightings tend to occar in cycles that peak about ev ery five years, Haines said. For the past two years, sight ings have been in a trough. Haines said many of the reports fall into two main See Back Page, SIGKnNOS I I Dr. Richard Haines, 415-941-0958, Ames Research Center, Iteffett. Field,. SIGHTINGS: UFO reports Continued from PageA-1 categories. category involves UFOs that suddenly appear within view of the cockpit and then disappear very rap idly. *The airplane is flying along essentially rninriing 0^ business. Then some thing comes up and does bar rel rolls around the airplane." Many other reports, includ ing the Nov. 17 sighting by the JAL crew, involve UFOs that tail aircraft for periods ranging .from a minute to more than two hours. Haines' Interest in UFOs results from his more two decades sp^t working in NASA's man-in-space pro- pam. In the early 1860s, as he began studying visual optics in space, he encountered reports from pilots who claimed to have seen UFOs. "X thought I could explain all these strange phenomena as nothing-more than strange ilghting," said Haines. who now studies ""human factors to space" at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. "But I had to look at the data as an open-minded scien tist and pretty soon realized that we are facing something totally different." NASA currently doesn't in vestigate any UFO sightings. But Haines, working out of his Los Altos, Calif., home on his own time, has clipped newspapers, interviewed pi lots and talked with control lers to amass reports of more than 3,000 sightings. '. Haines said he hopes to fly to Anchorage to investigate the Nov. 17 sighting by Capt. Kenju Terauchi, pilot of a JAL cargo plane en route from Iceland to an Anchorage refueling stop. The report was made public in late Decem ber. Terauchi, a 47-year-old pi lot with 20 years of experi ence, told United Press Inter national that two small brightly lit objects and one enormous object — the size of two aircraft carriers — fol lowed his jumbo jet for 400 miles. National Aeronautics and Space Administration IWV5/\ Amas Research Canter Moffett Field. CA 94035 Mall Stop 239-3 (415) 694-5719 (FTS) 464-5719 Richard F. Haines, Ph.D. Chief, Space Human Factors Office Aerospace Human Factors Research Division Terauchi first sighted the lights shortly after the plane entered Alaska airspace. At flrst, the lights were directly to front of the plane, and Terauchi feared a midair col lision, said Paul Steucke, Alaska spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administra tion. Terauchi then obtained permission from an air traffic controller to try and evade the UFOs with several turns and drops in altitude. He fi nally lost the UFOs about 00 miles northwest of Anchor age, according to Steucke. Ihe FAA controller who monitored the JAL plane, Flight 1628, reported tracking the UFOs several times on radar, as near as five miles from the aircraft. "The traffic (UFO) stayed .with JH628 through turns and descents,"- said the controller in a state ment released by the FAA. Ihe identity of the controller, however, has not been re leased. The Military Regional Operations Control Center re ported picking up the UFO on radar about eight miles from the plane. The military center then lost track of the UFO for 11 minutes, then picked up "a flight of two," according to a flight chronology released by the FAA. It picked up the UFOs as they dropped back 'and to the ri^t of the plane, then lost radar contact. More recently, Steucke has said that neither ^e military nor the FAA puts any faith in the early radar sightings. Steucke said that the FAA controller mistakenly inter preted a split-image of the cargo plane as a UFO and that the the military now reports its radar images were simply "clutter."
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