File / jal1628-1986
Evidential coreJAL 1628
A Boeing 747 over Alaska, an FAA investigation, and the best civil aviation file in the corpus
The crew of a Japan Airlines 747 freighter reported the presence of objects for nearly an hour, including one very large structure. FAA control in Anchorage logged intermittent radar returns. The FAA conducted a formal investigation and assembled an extensive file.
Official position
The FAA closed the investigation stating that the radar data did not unambiguously confirm the presence of an object; the captain was removed from the route.
Alternative hypotheses
- Jupiter and Mars in an unusually bright conjunction low on the horizon — consistent with the direction of the sighting.
- Reflections in cockpit glazing and optical phenomena in Arctic air.
- A split radar return from the aircraft itself — a hypothesis the FAA examined.
- A genuine unknown object.
Why the documentation matters more than the sighting
JAL 1628 is in the first class not because the sighting is extraordinary — stronger ones exist. It is here because the FAA treated the event as an aviation incident and ran a full investigation: interviews with the entire crew, transcripts, radar printouts, controller position logs.
That makes it one of the few older cases that can be partially reconstructed today from documents rather than from participants’ memories.
Where the case weakens
The FAA analysis did not conclusively establish that the radar returns came from a separate object. A split return from the 747 itself was among the possibilities considered. Meanwhile an unusually bright Jupiter–Mars pairing sat low on the horizon that night, in precisely the direction of the first sightings.
The element that holds up
Captain Terauchi described a very large structure seen against the lights of the city of Fairbanks — an observation with a spatial reference, not a point on a black sky. That single fragment of the account is far harder to explain with a planet than anything else in the case.
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