Documents / Document
This package was compiled by the FAA Alaskan Region Public Affairs Office in Anchorage and sent to FAA managers with a memo from Paul Steucke dated March 5, 1987. It gathers material on the November 17, 1986 sighting by the crew of Japan Air Lines flight 1628: a news release, pilot and controller transcripts, crew interviews and radar analysis. The FAA concluded that it could not confirm the event. It attributed the second radar target to a split, uncorrelated return from the JAL Boeing 747 and planned no further investigation.
“Gordon”20 pages
It was about seven or so minutes·since we began paying attention to the lights, most unexpectedly two spaceships stopped in front of our face, shooting off lights. The inside cockpit shined brightly and I felt warm in the face. Perhaps firing of jets was the result to kill inertia of their quick high speed maneuver, but the ships appeared as if they were stopped in one place in front of us. Then three to seven seconds later a fire like from jet engines stopped and became a small circle of lights as they began to fly in level flight at the same speed as we were, showing numerous numbers of exhaust pipes. However, the center area of the ship where below an engine might be was invisible. The middle of the body of the ship sparked an occasionally stream of lights, like a charcoal fire, from right to left and from left to right. Its shape was a square, flying 500 feet to 1000 feet in front of us, very slightly higher in altitude than us, its size was about the same size as the body of a DC-8 jet, and with numerous exhaust pipes. The firing of the exhaust jets varied, perhaps to maintain balance, some became stronger than others and some became weaker than others, but seemed controlled automatically. We did not feel threatened or in danger because the spaceship [Personal statement concerning JAL Flight 1628 sighting of unidentified air traffic, Nov. 17, 1986. Written by Capt. Kenju Terauchi; translated by Sayoko Mimoto, F!J. Alaskan Region, Airway Facilities Division. Received by FAA 1/2/87]
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 122 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.