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The Lights Beside Flight 1628
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# The Lights Beside Flight 1628
[View on uap.fun](<https://uap.fun/encounters/jal-flight-1628/>)
Case file 008 · 1986
Two banks of light beside a 747. A vast shadow over Alaska. Forty-five minutes of radio calls—and a radar record that refused to settle the story.
Not a real photo.
## At a glance
- **Date:** November 17, 1986
- **Location:** Eastern and central Alaska, north of Anchorage
- **Classification:** Commercial aviation radar-visual report
- **Record status:** Crew report unconfirmed by FAA review
- **Last updated:** September 16, 2026 at 4:10 PM CDT
- **Source review:** September 16, 2026 · Reviewed annually or when significant records emerge
## The story
### A freighter enters the Alaskan dark
On November 17, 1986, Japan Air Lines cargo Flight 1628 crossed eastern Alaska on the Reykjavík-to-Anchorage leg of a journey from Paris to Tokyo. The Boeing 747 carried a three-person cockpit crew: Capt. Kenju Terauchi, first officer Takanori Tamefuji, and flight engineer Yoshio Tsukuda. The air was clear and the aircraft cruised south at 35,000 feet. North of Fort Yukon, Terauchi noticed lights off the left side and below. He first took them for military traffic. They did not fall away. In his later written account, the quiet routine of a polar cargo flight became an encounter with lights that seemed to rise, close, and hold station beside the jet.
### Two fires move toward the windshield
Terauchi later described two luminous arrays, each with a dark middle and rows of yellow-white lights that reminded him of glowing exhausts. He said they moved in front of the cockpit, bright enough to illuminate the cabin, and that he felt warmth on his face. Those vivid details come largely from his written report and later interviews. The live radio record is sparer. At 2:19 UTC, the crew asked Anchorage Center about traffic and reported two targets about a mile ahead. Asked what they could identify, Terauchi answered that he could see white and yellow navigation or strobe lights. The difference matters: the transcript preserves what was said under pressure; the narrative preserves how the captain later made sense of it.
### A pale presence replaces the pair
According to Terauchi, the two close banks of light departed after several minutes. He then perceived a pale, enormous presence farther away on the left—a form he later likened to a walnut and described to reporters as larger than an aircraft carrier. The other crew members confirmed seeing lights, but the public FAA material does not show that they independently described the same vast silhouette. Terauchi’s scale estimate had no measured distance or solid edge to anchor it. Still, the impression governed the flight: an experienced captain believed something very large was pacing his aircraft over an empty winter landscape.
### The controller searches an uncertain screen
At 2:25 UTC, Anchorage Center told the crew that it had a radar hit about five miles behind the 747. Terauchi disagreed with that position and placed what he saw eleven o’clock, eight miles away. A military Regional Operations Command Center controller reported a primary return near the aircraft, then lost it about a minute later. Fairbanks Approach saw only the JAL target. The exchanges sound dramatic because controllers were treating unknown nearby traffic as a safety problem in real time. They do not amount to one clean, continuous radar track synchronized with every visual claim. Even the controller described some returns as surge or possibly erroneous while continuing to watch them.
### Descent, turn, disappearance
Terauchi requested a descent from flight level 350 to 310. When Anchorage asked whether the traffic was descending too, he answered that it was coming down “in formation.” He then requested a southwesterly heading, and the controller approved any deviation needed for safety. At 2:36 UTC, Anchorage asked the 747 to make a full right-hand circle and report what the traffic did. Roughly two minutes later, after the turn, the crew said it had disappeared. Military controllers then reported intermittent primary returns behind the aircraft, while Terauchi later regained lights off the left side. The sequence is less seamless than the familiar retelling in which one object visibly follows every maneuver.
### Other aircraft enter the search
Anchorage vectored United Airlines Flight 69 toward the freighter and told its crew where to look. At 2:51 UTC, the United pilot saw the JAL 747 silhouetted against the lighter sky and its contrail, but “sure” saw no other airplane nearby. A military C-130 using the call sign Totem 71 also turned toward the scene. By 2:53, Terauchi reported that he could no longer see the UFO. The C-130 then identified the JAL jet after its landing lights flashed and reported no nearby traffic. These negative observations happened near the end, after the most dramatic close-light phase, but they constrain claims that an enormous visible object remained continuously beside the aircraft.
### The crew lands into a paper trail
Flight 1628 landed at Anchorage at about 3:23 UTC. FAA security and flight-standards personnel interviewed all three crew members that evening. Their notes characterized the crew as normal, professional, rational, and uninfluenced by drugs or alcohol; they also recorded language difficulties during the interview. The FAA gathered controller statements, voice transcripts, flight-path charts, operations logs, radar data, simulations, crew drawings, and later interviews. Public fascination turned an air-traffic inquiry into one of the most extensive surviving government files attached to a civilian UFO report.
### The FAA closes the radar question
On March 5, 1987, the FAA released its file and said it could not confirm the event. Specialists at the FAA Technical Center replayed the radar data using equivalent equipment and concluded that the apparent nearby target was an uncorrelated primary and beacon return—a split image of the same 747 rather than a second aircraft. The agency also noted that the United crew saw nothing else. This finding addressed the FAA radar display and the safety of controlled airspace. The agency explicitly said it had not conducted a broader scientific study of stars, planets, magnetic effects, or perception, and it offered no final identification for what the crew saw outside.
The FAA’s March 5, 1987, release announced the JAL 1628 records and said the agency was unable to confirm the reported object. U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration; public domain in the United States. Scan preserved by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
[Image source](<https://nara-media.s3.amazonaws.com/seattle/rg-237/733667/box_1/733667-001-024/733667-001-024.pdf>)
### Planets, ice crystals, and memory
Philip J. Klass offered the most developed conventional interpretation. With astronomical assistance, he placed bright Jupiter low to the left of the southbound aircraft and argued that at least one persistent light could have been the planet. He also proposed moonlit turbulent ice crystals or thin cloud for changing flame-colored lights and a weather-radar echo. That reconstruction has limits: it does not neatly reproduce every array Terauchi described, and even later skeptical commentary questioned whether reflected moonlight could create the reported appearance. Its stronger points are evidentiary rather than theatrical—the absence of a confirmed independent radar target, disagreement between the live transcript and later retellings, and the other crews’ failure to see a companion object.
### What remains above Alaska
The encounter survives because neither the official closure nor the captain’s imagery consumes the whole record. The FAA file confirms that a professional crew reported unusual lights, controllers responded, course and altitude changes followed, intermittent returns appeared, and two other aircraft searched. It also records that Fairbanks saw no second target, the radar replay did not confirm separate traffic, and the intercepting crews saw only the 747. The most disciplined conclusion is therefore modest: the crew experienced a serious, prolonged airborne anomaly, but the public record does not establish a gigantic craft, extraordinary performance, or an extraterrestrial origin. Over Alaska, witness experience and instrument ambiguity crossed for less than an hour—and then separated again.
## The evidence
### A near-contemporaneous official record
The FAA package is unusually rich for a civilian encounter. It includes the controller transcript, a formal chronology, crew and personnel statements, operational logs, flight-path material, recorded radar data, simulations, and the agency’s release. These records establish who reported what to air traffic control and how controllers responded. They do not independently authenticate every dimension, motion, or interpretation in Terauchi’s later narrative.
### What the radar can and cannot carry
The live transcript includes intermittent FAA and military primary returns near the 747, while Fairbanks controllers reported only the airliner. The FAA’s technical replay attributed the apparent secondary return in its system to a known mismatch between primary radar and the aircraft’s transponder beacon. No public continuous track maps an independent object through the descent and turn. Radar contributes ambiguity and operational context here, not a verified second vehicle.
### Three witnesses, unequal descriptions
All three JAL crew members reported seeing unusual lights and were judged rational in the immediate FAA interview. The famous giant walnut-shaped “mothership,” however, is principally Terauchi’s description. First officer and flight engineer testimony is less expansive in the released record. The safest formulation is therefore “the crew saw lights; the captain interpreted a vast object,” rather than assigning every later detail equally to all three witnesses.
### Classification
This file is classified as a commercial aviation radar-visual report unconfirmed by FAA review. “Unconfirmed” does not mean the crew fabricated its experience. It means the agency’s retained radar data, technical reconstruction, and checks by other aircraft did not verify separate traffic. The lights remain unidentified in the limited sense that the public record does not conclusively determine what produced every visual observation.
## Timeline
- **17 NOV 1986 · ABOUT 17:11 AKST:** North of Fort Yukon, the JAL 1628 crew first observes unusual lights off the left side while cruising at 35,000 feet.
- **18 NOV · 02:19 UTC:** The crew asks Anchorage Center about traffic and reports two targets roughly one mile ahead with white and yellow lights.
- **02:25–02:27 UTC:** Anchorage and the military ROCC discuss intermittent primary returns near the 747; the military return is lost after about a minute.
- **02:32–02:35 UTC:** Flight 1628 descends from 35,000 to 31,000 feet and changes heading while reporting that the lights remain in formation.
- **02:36–02:39 UTC:** Anchorage requests a 360-degree right turn; near its completion the crew reports that the traffic has disappeared.
- **02:44–02:51 UTC:** The crew reports lights again to the left and behind. United Flight 69 is vectored closer but sees only the JAL 747 and its contrail.
- **02:53–03:23 UTC:** Terauchi reports losing sight of the UFO; a military C-130 sees no companion traffic, and Flight 1628 lands at Anchorage.
- **29–31 DEC 1986:** UPI reporting makes the encounter an international story, publishing early FAA statements and Terauchi’s aircraft-carrier-scale description.
- **5 MAR 1987:** The FAA releases its records, attributes its apparent second target to a split radar return, says it cannot confirm the event, and closes its inquiry.
## Sources & interviews
- [FAA releases documents on reported UFO sighting last November](<https://nara-media.s3.amazonaws.com/seattle/rg-237/733667/box_1/733667-001-024/733667-001-024.pdf>) — Federal Aviation Administration · March 5, 1987 · NARA Record Group 237
- [Selected pilot-controller transcript for JAL 1628](<https://nara-media.s3.amazonaws.com/seattle/rg-237/733667/box_1/733667-001-014/733667-001-014.pdf>) — Federal Aviation Administration · January 9, 1987 · NARA Record Group 237
- [Unidentified Traffic Sighting by Japan Airlines: chronology and radar-data index](<https://nara-media.s3.amazonaws.com/seattle/rg-237/733667/box_1/733667-001-012/733667-001-012.pdf>) — Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center · December 18, 1986 · NARA Record Group 237
- [Japan Air Lines Cargo Flight 1628](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_Cargo_Flight_1628>) — Wikipedia · Orientation and reference trail · Consulted September 16, 2026
- [List of Japan Airlines incidents and accidents](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japan_Airlines_incidents_and_accidents>) — Wikipedia · Related aviation-history orientation · Consulted September 16, 2026
- [The crew of a Japan Air Lines cargo jet…](<https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/12/29/The-crew-of-a-Japan-Air-Lines-cargo-jet/1302536216400/>) — United Press International · December 29, 1986 · Contemporary reporting
- [Controller confirms UFO sighting](<https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/12/30/Controller-confirms-UFO-sighting/4431536302800/>) — United Press International · December 30, 1986 · Contemporary reporting
- [JAL pilot describes UFO](<https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/12/31/JAL-pilot-describes-UFO/6559536389200/>) — United Press International · December 31, 1986 · Contemporary witness interview
- [JAL 1628: Capt. Terauchi’s Marvelous ‘Spaceship’](<https://skepticalinquirer.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2014/11/p19.pdf>) — Robert Sheaffer · Skeptical Inquirer · November/December 2014 · Review of Philip J. Klass’s conventional analysis
## A note on evidence
Unidentified describes a limit of the available information. It doesn’t identify an origin.
[Next case file: The Westall School Mystery](<https://uap.fun/encounters/westall-1966/>)