On the evening of 17 November 1986, a Japan Airlines cargo jet was crossing Alaska in the dark when its crew saw something that did not belong in the sky with them. The flight was routine, the weather was clear, and the three men in the cockpit were experienced professionals. What followed lasted nearly fifty minutes, involved air traffic controllers and military radar, and ended with the United States Federal Aviation Administration investigating the case for three months. The FAA’s final answer — that it could not confirm what the crew had seen — satisfied almost nobody.
Japan Air Lines Flight 1628 was a Boeing 747-200F freighter flying from Paris to Narita International Airport near Tokyo, by way of Reykjavik, Iceland, and Anchorage, Alaska. Its cargo was Beaujolais wine, the year’s new vintage, on its way to Japan. On the Reykjavik-to-Anchorage leg, the aircraft was on autopilot, cruising at 35,000 feet and about 565 miles per hour over eastern Alaska. In the cockpit were Captain Kenju Terauchi, a former fighter pilot with more than 10,000 hours of flight experience, First Officer Takanori Tamefuji, and Flight Engineer Yoshio Tsukuba.
At about 5:11 p.m. local time, roughly 100 miles northeast of Fort Yukon, Captain Terauchi noticed two lights to the far left of the aircraft, some 2,000 feet below its altitude. He assumed they were military aircraft. But the lights did not behave like other traffic. They kept pace with the 747, and a few minutes later, at about 5:18 or 5:19 p.m., they moved abruptly to a position in front of the aircraft, one above the other in a stacked configuration. Terauchi switched on the cockpit’s colour weather radar, which is designed to detect weather rather than other aircraft. The screen showed a green target — a colour usually associated with light rain, not the red return expected from a solid reflective object.
Radar, and Two Aircraft Sent to Look
First Officer Tamefuji radioed Anchorage air traffic control to ask whether any other aircraft were nearby. Controllers at Anchorage, and at a nearby military radar station, reported weak signals in the vicinity of the 747. As the flight passed over Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Terauchi said he noticed a dark silhouette looming behind his aircraft — a shape he would later describe as enormous. He asked air traffic control for permission to fly a complete circle and descend to 31,000 feet. According to Terauchi, the object followed him through both manoeuvres.
Anchorage asked a United Airlines flight and a military C-130 transport in the area to change course, intercept the Japanese 747, and confirm the sighting. Both aircraft flew close enough to see JAL 1628’s navigation lights alone in the night sky. By the time they arrived, at about 5:51 p.m., the unidentified objects had disappeared. The encounter had lasted nearly fifty minutes, ending in the vicinity of Denali, then known as Mount McKinley. JAL 1628 landed safely in Anchorage at 6:20 p.m.
In his official FAA report, Captain Terauchi stated that the object was a UFO. In December 1986 he gave interviews to two Kyodo News journalists; Japan Airlines soon grounded him for talking to the press and moved him to a desk job.
The Giant Object, and the Investigation
In the weeks after the flight, Terauchi’s account grew. In a longer interview in early January 1987, he described a third object: an enormous silhouette, which he judged to be “two times bigger than an aircraft carrier,” seen against the lights of towns on the ground. He drew it for the FAA as a flattened body with bulges above and below. It is important to be clear about this detail: the giant object was seen only by Terauchi, from the left-hand seat, which gave him the only unobstructed view to that side. The other two crew members reported the two smaller lights, not the giant silhouette.
The FAA’s Alaskan Region consulted John Callahan, the FAA Division Chief of the Accidents and Investigations branch, and conducted a three-month investigation. The FAA reviewed the saved radar tape at its technical centre in Atlantic City. Its conclusion was that the second radar return beside the flight was a split image of the 747 itself: the echo off the fuselage and the transponder’s reply did not quite line up, and showed on screen as two dots. On 5 March 1987, at a press conference, FAA spokesman Paul Steucke announced that the agency was “unable to confirm” the event, while adding that, as far as the FAA knew, the crew were people of integrity who had reported what they saw accurately.
Sceptics offered other explanations. In January 1987, Philip J. Klass of the sceptics’ group CSICOP proposed that the lights were the planets Jupiter and Mars. That proposal was disputed: astronomer Walter Webb pointed out that when the sighting began, the lights were about thirty degrees to the left of the aircraft’s heading, while Jupiter was more than seventy degrees away, and the planet explanation did not cover the twelve minutes of lights ahead of the aircraft.
Aftermath
JAL Flight 1628 remains one of the most discussed pilot UFO cases in history, largely because of the combination of witnesses: three professional aircrew, air traffic controllers, and military radar operators, all reporting something near the same aircraft on the same evening. It is also a case that shows how an investigation can narrow rather than settle a mystery. The FAA accepted the crew’s honesty and could not confirm their sighting. The radar returns had a plausible technical explanation. The giant object rests on one man’s testimony. What is certain is that, for nearly fifty minutes over Alaska, a veteran airline captain and his crew believed they were being followed by something they could not identify — and no one has yet proved them wrong, or right.
What Is Documented — and What Is Not
Documented: On 17 November 1986, Japan Air Lines Flight 1628, a Boeing 747-200F cargo aircraft flying from Paris to Narita via Reykjavik and Anchorage with a cargo of Beaujolais wine, was cruising at 35,000 feet over eastern Alaska when its three-man crew — Captain Kenju Terauchi, First Officer Takanori Tamefuji and Flight Engineer Yoshio Tsukuba — reported unidentified lights pacing the aircraft for about fifty minutes. Anchorage air traffic control and a military radar station reported weak returns near the aircraft. A United Airlines flight and a military C-130 sent to intercept saw only JAL 1628. The FAA investigated for three months and announced on 5 March 1987 that it was unable to confirm the sighting. JAL grounded Terauchi for speaking to the press and moved him to a desk job.
Not documented / unverified: The giant object “two times bigger than an aircraft carrier” was described only by Captain Terauchi, not by the other two crew members, and rests on his testimony and a sketch made about six weeks later. The FAA concluded the second radar return was a split image of the 747 itself; that technical explanation is the agency’s finding, not a proven fact. The Jupiter-and-Mars explanation proposed by Philip Klass was disputed on positional grounds by astronomer Walter Webb. No photograph or independent recording of the objects exists. The case is unresolved.