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April 1987 issue of "BASIS", newsletter of the Bay Area Skeptics
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         Bay Area Skeptics Information Sheet
                   Vol. 6, No. 4
                Editor:  Kent Harker



CSICOP PRESS RELEASE: JAL UFO INCIDENT

[The recent furor over the well-publicized UFO encounter of a JAL
flight reached its zenith on the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.
The story featured a "dramatization" of the incident with a
cockpit-view of the alleged UFO. It looked like banks of stadium
lights on either side of the front windows about 50 feet away! This
from the pilot's description of two small UFO's and a larger one.
I asked our own UFO expert and Chair of BAS, Robert Sheaffer, to
check the celestial arrangement in the area of the occurrence at
the time and date indicated by the pilot. The first paragraph is
Robert's comment. -- Ed.]

November 16, 1986, 4:48 P.M., 35,000 feet above Ft. Yukon, Alaska.
The sun has sank to 13 1/2 degrees below the horizon, meaning that
while many stars have become visible, the sky is not yet fully
dark. Jupiter is an extremely brilliant object shining at magnitude
-2.6 in the southeastern sky, and it is only about twelve degrees
above the horizon. Mars is also visible about 20 degrees west of
Jupiter, but it is much fainter, at magnitude - 0.1, and it is only
seven degrees above the horizon.

A brilliant planet such as Venus or Jupiter is by far most likely
to be perceived as a "UFO" when it is within about 20 degrees of
the horizon. Bright planets high in the sky are more readily
overlooked by casual observers, and even if spotted appear to be
"up high" where they belong. But when they are at lower angular
elevations, people imagine them to be close to the ground, and
scintillation effects due to the long light path through the
atmosphere make them appear to flash and change colors. The Jimmy
Carter UFO, the Incident at Exeter, and the Betty and Barney Hill
UFO are but a few well-known examples of brilliant planets low in
the sky being taken for a "UFO".

Buffalo NY -- An investigation of the incident in which a UFO
reportedly paced a Japan Airlines 747 en route to Anchorage,
Alaska, for nearly forty minutes on November 18, 1986, reveals that
at least one extraterrestrial object was involved: the planet
Jupiter, and possibly another, Mars.

The investigation was conducted by Philip J. Klass, an
internationally recognized skeptical UFOlogist and chairman of
CSICOP's UFO Subcommittee. His investigations have yielded prosaic
explanations for many famous UFO cases during the past twenty
years.

At the time the UFO incident began near Ft. Yukon, the JAL airliner
was flying south in twilight conditions so that an extremely bright
Jupiter (-2.6 magnitude) would have been visible on the plane's
left-hand side, where he first reported seeing the UFO, according
to Klass. Jupiter was only ten degrees above the horizon, making
it appear to the pilot to be at roughly his own 35,000 ft.
altitude. Mars, slightly lower on the horizon, was about twenty
degrees to the right of Jupiter but not as bright.

Although the very bright Jupiter and less bright Mars had to be
visible to JAL Captain Kenjyu Terauchi, the pilot never once
reported seeing either -- only a UFO that he described in his
initial radio report to FAA controllers at Anchorage as being a
"white and yellow" light. 

Many of the colorful details of the incident carried by the news
media, largely based on the six-week-old recollections of the
pilot, are contradicted by a transcript of radio messages from the
pilot to the FAA controllers while the incident was in progress.

For example, media accounts quoting the 747 pilot said that when
he executed a 360 degree turn, the UFO had followed him around
during the turn. But this claim is contrary to what the pilot told
the controllers at the time. During the pilot's interviews, he
"remembered" some details that did not actually occur, judging from
his earlier reports, and he forgot several important events that
would challenge his claim of being paced by an unknown craft.

Another airliner, United Airlines Flight 69, heading north from
Anchorage to Fairbanks, had agreed to deviate slightly from its
course to allow FAA radar controllers to vector it to the vicinity
of the JAL 747 to see if the United crew could spot the UFO. At
approximately 4:48 pm. Terauchi reported that the UFO was about
ten miles distant and to his far left -- in the direction of
Jupiter. At roughly 4:50 pm, the United pilot reported he could
now see JAL but a short time later said: "I don't see anybody
around him." Shortly afterward, the JAL pilot reported that the
UFO was "just ahead of United" which is where Jupiter would appear
to be from Terauchi's location. The United pilot would not notice
Jupiter because it was to his right, while his attention was
focussed on JAL which was to his far left.

At about this time, the pilot of a USAF C-130 transport in the area
volunteered to be sent to the vicinity of the JAL airliner to see
if he could see any object nearby. The C-130 crew readily spotted
the JAL 747, but they too could see nothing in its vicinity.

"This is not the first time that an experienced pilot has mistaken
a bright celestial body for a UFO, nor will it be the last," Klass
said. In one case in the early 1950s, investigated by the late Dr.
J. Allen Hynek, a military pilot chased a UFO for more than thirty
minutes and the UFO turned out to be the bright star Capella. In
this case, as with the recent Alaska incident, a radar operator
reported briefly seeing an unknown blip on his radar screen.

During World War II, B-29s on night bombing raids from the Mariana
Islands to Japan reported being paced by a mysterious "ball of
fire." Attempts to shoot down the object were unsuccessful. After
much speculation as to what kind of secret Japanese weapon might
be at work, the mysterious glowing object was identified as the
planet Venus, which was particularly bright at the time.

More than 25 percent of all UFOs reported to the Center for UFO
Studies (created by Dr. Hynek in 1973) during a fifteen 
month period turned out upon investigation to be a star or bright
planet. Some eyewitnesses in these cases reported that the
celestial UFO "darted up and down," or "wiggled from side-to-side,"
and a variety of shapes were described. 

In Captain Terauchi's account to the media some six weeks after the
incident, he described seeing two small UFOs in addition to a large
one. But the transcript reveals that the pilot only briefly
reported seeing TWO lights and thereafter referred to only one
light in his communications with FAA controllers. 

News accounts of the incident stressed that USAF radar had detected
an unidentified object in the vicinity of the JAL 747's "blip" --
 which seemed to confirm the pilot's sighting. However, radar
operating in mountainous areas, such as that where the UFO incident
occurred, can receive false echoes when radar bouncing off an
aircraft is reflected a second time off mountains and snow-covered
terrain.

When the pilot first reported the UFO, FAA controllers -- ever-
concerned over the possibility of mid-air collision -- asked
controllers in an Air Force Regional Operations Command Center to
examine their displays for an unknown intruder. A radar operator
spotted something, but was unsure whether it might be a spurious
echo. However, the echo appeared only briefly and was BEHIND the
747, whereas the pilot had reported that the UFO was in front or
to the left of the aircraft. Later, as the JAL 747 approached
Fairbanks International Airport -- even though the pilot was still
reporting a UFO -- the radar controller at the airport found no
unknown blips in the vicinity.

On January 11, 1987, Captain Terauchi reported seeing another UFO
while flying in approximately the same area of Alaska, but after
an FAA spokesperson in Anchorage suggested that this UFO might be
the lights from a distant village bouncing off clouds, the pilot
acknowledged that this might be the case. 

"My suspicions that this UFO might be a bright celestial body were
prompted by the fact that the pilot reported seeing the object for
more than thirty minutes," Klass said. "Experience has shown that
when a UFO remains visible for many minutes, it almost always
proves to be a celestial object." Another clue, he said, was the
fact that when the plane descended 4000 feet, the UFO appeared to
stay at the plane's altitude. At Jupiter's great distance, an
airplane's altitude change would produce no change in the planet's
apparent altitude. 

Klass, who was a senior editor with "Aviation Week and Space
Technology" for nearly 35 years, has been investigating famous UFO
cases as a hobby for more than twenty years. His most recent book
on the subject is "UFOs: The Public Deceived", (Prometheus Books,
Buffalo N.Y.). 

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