JAL 1986

Opening

At about 5:11 p.m. on 17 November 1986, Japan Air Lines cargo flight 1628, a Boeing 747 flying from Paris to Tokyo by way of Reykjavík and Anchorage, was over eastern Alaska at 35,000 feet when its captain, Kenju Terauchi, saw lights ahead. Two smaller objects, he said, moved alongside and then close in front of the jet, lighting up the cockpit.

Later a much bigger shape appeared, which he described as walnut-shaped and twice the size of an aircraft carrier. The objects stayed with the 747 for about 400 miles. Anchorage air traffic control reported radar returns near the jet. Later reviews put them down to clutter and a split image of the 747.

Timeline

17 November 1986, 5:11 p.mTerauchi sees lights to the left and ahead. He asks Anchorage about traffic. There is none known.

The next half hourThe two smaller objects move in close, then hold position. Terauchi's onboard weather radar shows a target ahead. Anchorage control reports returns on its radar and offers turns and a descent. The crew says the objects stay with them.

Toward AnchorageA huge silhouette is seen against the lights of Fairbanks behind them. A United Airlines 747 and a US Air Force C-130 are asked to look and see nothing unusual.

About 6:20 p.mJAL 1628 lands safely at Anchorage. FAA officials interview the crew that night and find them normal, professional and rational, with no drugs or alcohol involved.

Late December 1986Terauchi tells two Kyodo News journalists, and the story goes worldwide. Japan Air Lines grounds him for talking to the press.

March 1987The FAA concludes it cannot confirm the event. The military radar return is called clutter, and the FAA's own extra target a coincidental split image of the 747.

Key figures

Kenju Terauchi, a veteran JAL captain, gave the detailed account and the drawings. His co-pilot Takanori Tamefuji and flight engineer Yoshio Tsukuda confirmed seeing lights.

John Callahan, head of the FAA's accidents and investigations division in Washington, later said he briefed officials including CIA representatives on the radar data, and was told the meeting never happened. Philip Klass argued the crew saw Jupiter and Mars.

Physical and documentary trail

The trail: the crew interviews, Terauchi's sketches, air traffic control voice tapes and transcripts, FAA radar printouts, the military radar record, and the FAA's 1987 report.

Still missing: any photograph, and agreement on the radar. The FAA first said its radar had seen something, then decided it hadn't.

It was a very big one, two times bigger than an aircraft carrier.

Things you might not know

• It was a wine run. The 747 was carrying Beaujolais from Paris to Japan.
• The cockpit lit up. Terauchi said the light from the two smaller objects was bright enough that he could feel warmth on his face.
• The FAA called him a "repeater". Terauchi reported two earlier sightings and two more in January 1987. One of the later ones was put down to village lights through ice-crystal cloud.
• He paid for talking. After the Kyodo interview, Terauchi was taken off flying duties and given a desk job.
• The FAA man says the CIA took the tapes. Callahan said he kept copies of the radar data anyway and produced them years later.

Competing explanations

Planets and village lights. Klass's reading: Jupiter, low on the horizon, and Mars could look like lights at the jet's own height, and the extra radar targets were clutter and a split return. This struggles with the objects moving close in front of the jet.

An unknown craft. Three experienced crew, the captain's detailed drawings, the onboard radar, and ground radar returns that controllers took seriously at the time.

Later life of the case

JAL 1628 is one of the best-known airline UFO cases. Callahan's testimony at the 2001 Disclosure Project press conference gave it a second life, and it still comes up in congressional UAP discussions about pilot reporting.

Finding

A sober, experienced crew watched lights pace their 747 for hundreds of miles, and the FAA itself found them credible. The radar evidence that seemed to back them was later explained away, and nobody else saw the giant object. What the crew saw at close range has never been identified.

What still will not resolve: what the radar really showed that evening, and what Callahan's copies of the data would show if analysed in public.