Japan Air Lines 1628

1. On November 17, 1986, the crew of Japan Air Lines cargo Flight 1628, a Boeing 747, reports strange lights pacing their plane at 35,000 feet over Alaska.
2. Captain Kenju Terauchi, a 29-year veteran, describes ‘two small ships and the mothership’, including a walnut-shaped giant he says was ‘two times bigger than an aircraft carrier’.
3. An Anchorage air traffic controller reports a target near the jet on radar and offers evasive turns. The crew says the lights stayed with them through the turns and a descent, for more than half an hour.
4. In March 1987 the FAA concludes the radar blip was most likely a ‘split image’ of the 747 itself, and skeptic Philip Klass argues the crew was seeing the planet Jupiter. The FAA also describes the crew as ‘normal, professional, rational’.

Key witnesses: Capt. Kenju Terauchi, First Officer Takanori Tamefuji, Flight Engineer Yoshio Tsukuba; FAA Anchorage controllers
Status: DEBATED