Japan Airlines Flight 1628 Incident

What Happened

On November 17, 1986, Japan Airlines Flight 1628, a Boeing 747-200F cargo aircraft carrying a load of French Beaujolais wine, was completing the Reykjavík-to-Anchorage leg of its journey from Paris to Tokyo. At approximately 5:11 PM local time, while cruising at 35,000 feet over northeastern Alaska, the three-man crew encountered something that would spark one of the most thoroughly documented UFO incidents in aviation history.

Captain Kenju Terauchi, a veteran pilot with over 10,000 hours of flight time, was the first to notice unusual lights ahead and to the left of the aircraft. Co-pilot Takanori Tamefuji and flight engineer Yoshio Tsukuba confirmed the sighting. What they initially took for military traffic quickly revealed itself as something far stranger.

According to Terauchi's subsequent report to the FAA, two smaller objects first appeared, closing rapidly on the aircraft. Each featured two rectangular arrays of what appeared to be glowing "nozzles or thrusters," though their bodies remained obscured by darkness. When these objects drew closest, Terauchi reported that the cockpit was illuminated by their glow and he could feel heat on his face through the aircraft's windows.

After several minutes, these two objects moved away—but something much larger took their place. Terauchi described seeing a massive silhouette against the distant lights of Fairbanks, estimating it to be the size of "two aircraft carriers." In his hand-drawn sketch submitted to the FAA, he depicted a walnut-shaped or cylindrical craft, which he referred to as a "mothership."

The encounter lasted approximately 50 minutes, during which the crew communicated repeatedly with FAA air traffic controllers in Anchorage. Concerned by the reports, controllers diverted a northbound United Airlines flight to investigate. When the United crew established visual contact with JAL 1628, they saw only the 747—no other objects were visible. A U.S. Air Force C-130 in the area likewise spotted the JAL aircraft but reported nothing else.

The objects apparently departed shortly after JAL 1628 requested and received permission to make a 360-degree turn. When the aircraft straightened out, the crew reported the objects had disappeared.

Witnesses and Evidence

The Flight Crew

• Captain Kenju Terauchi: The most vocal witness. He submitted detailed written reports, drew sketches of the objects, and gave extensive interviews. Notably, Terauchi expressed belief that the objects were extraterrestrial, stating in his FAA report that he hoped "we humans will meet them in the near future."
• Co-pilot Takanori Tamefuji: Confirmed seeing lights but was more cautious in his descriptions. When shown Terauchi's sketch of the walnut-shaped mothership and asked if this was what he saw, he replied: "I don't see anything like this but... if we can connect these lights it [would] be a big object." When asked if he could distinguish the lights from stars, he answered: "No."
• Flight Engineer Yoshio Tsukuba: Reported he "was not sure whether the object was a UFO or not."

The crew members' accounts, while agreeing on the basic fact of unusual lights, diverged significantly on details—particularly on the shape and size of the primary object. This divergence became more pronounced when they were interviewed separately in 1988.

Radar Evidence

The case's strength—and controversy—centers on the radar returns. FAA controllers at Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center reported seeing intermittent primary radar targets near JAL 1628. The military's Regional Operations Control Center (ROCC) at Elmendorf Air Force Base also reported tracking what appeared to be a "flight of two" with a primary target trailing the 747.

This radar evidence initially seemed to provide instrumental confirmation of the visual sighting. However, the FAA's subsequent investigation complicated the picture.

The FAA Investigation

Following intense media interest, the FAA conducted a formal inquiry. Radar data from the flight was sent to the FAA Technical Center in Atlantic City, New Jersey, for expert analysis. The conclusion: the apparent second radar target was not another aircraft but rather an "uncorrelated primary and beacon target return"—a technical phenomenon in which the primary radar reflection from an aircraft's surface fails to correlate exactly with the signal from its transponder, creating the impression of two separate targets.

The FAA's Paul Steucke stated publicly that this phenomenon "is not unusual" and explained the radar returns without requiring a second physical object. The investigation also noted that neither the United Airlines crew nor the USAF C-130 crew saw any objects near the JAL 747 when they achieved visual contact.

Official Investigations

The FAA released a comprehensive data package on March 5, 1987, including radar recordings, voice communications tapes, and interview transcripts. This unusual transparency made the case one of the most thoroughly documented UFO incidents in official records.

No formal military investigation was announced, though retired FAA official John Callahan later claimed that a briefing was held for CIA, FBI, and Reagan administration science officials shortly after the incident. According to Callahan, these officials instructed FAA staff that "this event never happened" and that they were confiscating the data. However, this account is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the FAA publicly released the complete data package two months later. Callahan has acknowledged that his initial hypothesis was that the crew might have seen a classified stealth aircraft, and he has consistently described the evidence as "inconclusive."

Captain Terauchi reported another UFO sighting on January 11, 1987, in approximately the same area. This second incident was investigated and attributed to village lights diffused by thin ice-crystal clouds—and Terauchi himself accepted this conventional explanation. Following the attention generated by the November incident, Japan Airlines removed Terauchi from flight duty for several years, though he was eventually reinstated.

Proposed Explanations

Planetary Misidentification

CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) issued a press release on January 22, 1987, announcing that "at least one extraterrestrial object was involved—the planet Jupiter—and possibly another, Mars." Philip Klass, CSICOP's UFO investigator, noted that Jupiter was extremely bright that evening at magnitude -2.6, positioned low on the horizon to the aircraft's left, while Mars was visible about 20 degrees to the right of Jupiter.

Klass observed that despite Jupiter's prominence, Terauchi never reported seeing the planet—only the UFO. This is a common pattern in UFO reports where bright celestial objects are misidentified: witnesses fail to notice the "real" planet because they believe they are already looking at it.

However, this explanation faced serious problems. The direction of the reported objects did not match Jupiter's position. The objects were described at the 11 o'clock position (about 30 degrees left of the aircraft's heading), while Jupiter was at an azimuth of approximately 140 degrees—roughly 70 degrees left. More critically, the radar returns and the reported behavior of the objects (approaching, stopping, pacing the aircraft) were inconsistent with a stationary planetary body.

Ice Crystal Reflections

After the planetary explanation proved untenable, Klass proposed an alternative in the Summer 1987 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. He suggested that moonlight reflecting from turbulent ice crystals in thin clouds could have generated "flame-colored lights." This would explain the undulating quality of the lights and their periodic disappearance and reappearance as cloud conditions changed. When the aircraft outflew the ice clouds, Terauchi would have searched the sky, spotted Jupiter, and mistaken it for the original object.

The airborne radar return, Klass suggested, was an echo from thin clouds of ice crystals.

Critics, including physicist Bruce Maccabee, rejected this hypothesis as "scientific garbage," arguing there is no physical basis for moonlight on ice crystals producing flame-colored lights bright enough to illuminate an aircraft cockpit. However, Klass's supporters note that Terauchi's January 1987 sighting in the same area was definitively attributed to a similar ice-crystal-diffusion phenomenon—demonstrating that the mechanism could produce UFO reports from this pilot in this airspace.

Split Radar Return

The FAA's official explanation for the radar evidence—that it represented a split signal from the 747 rather than a separate object—is technically plausible and well-documented as a radar phenomenon. However, critics note that controllers at the time interpreted the returns as a second aircraft, and military radar operators specifically described it as "in trail" of the 747—language suggesting a following object rather than a split return from the same aircraft.

Military or Classified Aircraft

John Callahan's initial hypothesis—that the crew encountered a classified stealth aircraft—cannot be entirely ruled out. The late 1980s were an active period for stealth aircraft development, and Alaska's airspace was strategically significant during the Cold War. However, no known aircraft from that era matches the described characteristics, particularly the reported size and the heat radiated toward the cockpit.

Current Status

The JAL 1628 incident remains one of the most ambiguous cases in the UFO literature—simultaneously well-documented and poorly resolved. The FAA's radar explanation is technically sound but contradicts the real-time assessments of trained controllers. The ice-crystal hypothesis explains some features but requires significant special pleading. The witnesses' accounts are credible in their consistency on the basic facts yet troubling in their divergence on crucial details.

Captain Terauchi's prior UFO beliefs and his subsequent second sighting (explained conventionally) raise questions about observer reliability. Yet the intermittent radar returns, however explainable, suggest something was registering on instruments. The United and USAF crews saw nothing—but they were looking at different times and from different angles.

The case is notable for the unusual transparency of the FAA's response. The complete data package—radar recordings, voice tapes, interview transcripts, internal memos—was released to the public, allowing unprecedented scrutiny. What that scrutiny reveals is a genuinely puzzling event that resists easy categorization.

Whether JAL 1628 encountered advanced technology, atmospheric phenomena, or a combination of misperceptions amplified by stress and expectation, the incident remains a benchmark case: exhaustively documented, officially investigated, and stubbornly unresolved.