AP PRESSWhat happened
A JAL 747 cargo crew reported lights and a vast silhouette pacing them for ~50 minutes across Alaska.
The record on unidentified anomalous phenomena
On the evening of November 17, 1986, Japan Air Lines flight 1628 — a 747 freighter hauling French wine to Tokyo — crossed into Alaskan airspace. What its captain reported over the next fifty minutes became one of the best-documented airline encounters in the file, because the FAA did something unusual: it kept everything.
The episode reads the record — the crew's statements, the controller tapes, the radar questions — and gives the skeptics' file its full turn, including the veteran captain's later sightings that critics say cut against him.
A JAL 747 cargo crew reported lights and a vast silhouette pacing them for ~50 minutes across Alaska.
Capt. Kenju Terauchi and his two crew; ARTCC controllers worked the flight in real time.
FAA incident file: crew statements, controller communications, and radar data preserved from that night.
No official explanation; sporadic radar returns are disputed as weather/clutter.
Skeptics note Jupiter and Mars sat low on the horizon along the flight path that night, that the sporadic radar returns are consistent with weather clutter, and that Capt. Terauchi reported further sightings later that proved mundane. What that reading must carry: three crew members, fifty minutes, and described maneuvers no planet performs. Both readings are in the episode.