JAL Airliner Sighting Over Alaska, 1986

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (UPI) -- An extensive investigation by the Federal
Aviation Administration was "unable to support" the Nov. 17 sighting by
Japanese flyers of UFOs near their plane, but no evidence was found to
contradict the report.

The final FAA report on the incident also includes transcripts of the
pilot's statement about the sighting saying the huge objects with blinking
lights vanished into the moonlight when a second plane arrived in the area.

"The FAA does not have enough material to say something was there," FAA
spokesman Paul Stucke said. "We are accepting the description of the crew
but are unable to support what they saw."

The FAA report, made public Thursday, included radar tapes and transcripts
of interviews with the crew of the Japanese commercial jet and air traffic
controllers.

No evidence was found to contradict the crew, but the agency did say an
unexplained radar image seen by three controllers that seemed to confirm
the sighting was actually a split image of the Japan Air Lines cargo plane.

The UFOs were spotted by the JAL crew when they entered Alaskan air space
on a flight that began in Iceland. Crew members saw two belts of lights
three miles ahead that hovered almost stationary, then shifted from
side-to-side and rapidly pulsed across the sky.

"... Most unexpectedly two space ships stopped in front of our face,
shooting off lights," said pilot Kenju Terauchi. "The inside cockpit shined
brightly and I felt warm in the face."

Later, above Fairbanks, Terauchi saw "a silhouette of a gigantic spaceship"
and obtained controllers' permission to make a series of turns to "run away
quickly." He said the object stayed with the aircraft.

Controllers directed a United Airlines plane to intersect the aircraft
path, but Terauchi said, "When the United plane came by our side, the
spaceship disappeared suddenly and there was nothing but the light of the
moon."

It was the third UFO sighting of Terauchi's 29-year career as a pilot.

Copilot Takanori Tamefuja and engineer Woshio Tsukupa said the November UFO
sighting was their first.

Tsukupa saw white and amber colored lights that glowed with a strange
intensity "that I cannot describe ... not even in Japanese."

Tamefuji saw the first series of lights but could not make out the UFO over
Fairbanks because it was on the captain's side of the cockpit. However, he
said an object showed on the plane's radar.

The FAA also released a report of a UFO sighting Jan. 29 picked up on radar
by the crew of an Alaska Airlines passenger plane over McGrath.

The crew, flying at 35,000 feet, reported a radar target moving in front of
the plane at 300 miles a minute but quickly lost track of it.

The agency could not confirm that radar sighting because it did not have
ground radar in the area.

[Original source: http://www.ufobbs.com/txt1/794.ufo]