Japan Airlines Flight 1628 UFO incident

Dossier du cas

What happened: Japan Air Lines cargo flight 1628, a Boeing 747 freighter traveling from Europe toward Anchorage and then Japan, was flying over eastern Alaska on November 17, 1986 when Captain Kenju Terauchi and his crew reported unusual lights near the aircraft. The reported encounter began near Fort Yukon and continued during air-traffic-control exchanges with Anchorage Center.

Witness accounts: Terauchi described lights and later a large object near the aircraft, while the crew provided post-flight statements and sketches. Public records also show an important limitation: the nearby aircraft vectored to help did not obtain independent visual confirmation, and the crew accounts do not all carry the same level of detail.

Timeline: Around 5:15 to 5:19 p.m. Alaska time, Terauchi reported odd lights on the left side of the aircraft northeast of Fairbanks. Controllers discussed radar returns, the crew made heading and altitude changes, and the flight eventually continued toward Anchorage. FAA interviews, transcripts and memoranda followed in late 1986 and early 1987.

Evidence analysis: The case is stronger than a casual sighting because it involves a professional flight crew, controlled airspace, air-traffic communications, controller statements and preserved FAA records. It remains limited because the public record does not produce a single calibrated sensor package proving the size, distance, altitude or independent motion of a second object.

Official response or institutional background: FAA material was compiled after the event, and later archival work located a much larger file in National Archives Record Group 237 than had long been publicly visible. The agency treated the episode as an aviation-safety and air-traffic matter rather than a scientific UFO investigation.

Possible explanations: Proposed explanations include bright planets, especially Jupiter in the relevant sky geometry, Mars, moonlit or ice-crystal cloud effects, radar split images or clutter, aircraft-related reflections, and a compound event in which several ordinary cues were interpreted together under unusual viewing conditions.

Skeptical notes: Philip J. Klass and later skeptical writers argued that parts of the report conflict with radio transcripts and that Jupiter, Mars or atmospheric effects could explain some observations. Those arguments do not erase the documentation, but they warn against treating later dramatic retellings as stronger than contemporaneous records.

Why this belongs in a UFO/UAP archive: JAL 1628 belongs here because it is one of the best-known pilot UAP cases with a substantial public paper trail. It is useful for comparing witness testimony, air-traffic handling, radar ambiguity, FOIA history, media amplification and later skeptical review.

Sources: This archive entry is based on The Black Vault's 2025 record summary and document archive, National Archives catalog identifier 733667, Skeptical Inquirer's discussion of Klass and alternative explanations, and Wikimedia Commons for the localized reconstruction image.