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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…
"'Page 11 ..
Again, we beaan communicating with the Anchorage Center. We eaid
that we could see a light in the 10 o'clock position at the same
altitude and wondered if they could see anything in their radar.
The Anchoraae Center replied that they see nothing in their
radar. I thought it would be impossible to find anything on an
aircraft radar if a large ground radar did not show anything but
I judged the distance of the object visually and it was not very
far. I set the diaital weather radar distance in 20 miles, radar
anale to horizon. There it was, on the screen,
and a round object had appeared in seven or
a larae, sreen, \
!
eiaht miles ( 13 ~
i
kilometers to 15 kilometers) away, where the direction of the
object was. We reported to the Anchorage Center that our aircraft
radar caught the object within seven or eight miles in 10 o'clock ·
position. We asked if they could catch it on the around radar
but did not seem they could at all. Normally it appears in red
when an aircraft radar catches another aircraft. I wonder if the
metal used in the spaceship is different from ours. While we
were communicating with the Anchorage Center, the two pale white
lights gradually moved to the left side and to left diaaonally
back 30 dearees as if they understood our conversation and then
when they were beside our aircraft they totally disappeared from
our radar.
[Personal statement concerning JAL Flight 1628 sighting of
unidentified air traffic, Nov. 17, 1986. Written by Capt.
Kenju Terauchi; translated by Sayoko Milnoto, FAA Alaskan
Region, Airway Facilities Division. Received ~y 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.