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Package compiled for FAA managers

FAA via National Archives / The Black Vault · 122 pages · text from the file's own layer

This package was compiled by the FAA Alaskan Region Public Affairs Office in Anchorage and sent to FAA managers with a memo from Paul Steucke dated March 5, 1987. It gathers material on the November 17, 1986 sighting by the crew of Japan Air Lines flight 1628: a news release, pilot and controller transcripts, crew interviews and radar analysis. The FAA concluded that it could not confirm the event. It attributed the second radar target to a split, uncorrelated return from the JAL Boeing 747 and planned no further investigation.

  • p. 39 …Alaska time when we reported our location to Edmonton Center from above Single Point, Canada (68…
~poge s~
Anchorage Center when we reach above Pottat(sp?) where Alaska
Territorial Air begins. Pottat locates approximately 480 miles,
approximately 890 kilometers, North-northeast of Anchorage, 67
degrees 56 minutes North Latitude, 141 degrees West Longitude.
We began the communication with the Anchorage Center about
5:05 p.m. The flight course we had acknowledged was Jet 529,
direct to Ft. Yukon and Jet 125 via Nenana, Talkeetna, Chaiger
(sp?), and to Anchorage. The Anchorage Center ordered us to fly
direct to Talkeetna, provided us transponder codes and placed us
on a radar scope at the same time. The strange phenomenon
happened immediately.after we began left rotation, following the
order of taking the direct flight courae.
There was an unidentifiable light ahead of the rotation. We
set the course toward Talkeetna and began level flight. Then we
saw lights that looked like aircraft lights, 30 degrees left
front, 2,00p feet (600 meters) below us, moving exactly in the
same direction and with the same speed as we were. We were at
the altitude of 35,000 feet (10,600 . meters), flying speed was
900 kilometer per hour to 910 kilometer per hour.
[Personal statement concerning JAL Flight 1628 sighting of
unidentified air traffic, Nov. 17, 1986. Written by Capt.
Kenju Terauchi; translated by Sayoko Mimoto, FAA Alaskan
Region, Airway Facilities Division. Received by FAA 1/2/87]

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Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 122 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.