Japan Air Lines 1628 FAA Release is the Federal Aviation Administration's public record packet for the November 17, 1986 Alaska unidentified-air-traffic case involving a JAL Boeing 747 cargo flight, its flight crew, Anchorage air traffic control, and later FAA radar review.123
Release Provenance
The National Archives identifies the record series as Record Group 237, "Information Releases Relating to Unidentified Flying Object, 1986 (FAA-Japan Airlines Flight 1628)," National Archives Identifier 733667.1
FAA's Alaskan Region issued the public release on March 5, 1987 in Anchorage. The release said FAA was unable to confirm the reported UFO event and that the packet included pilot-controller communications, controller and crew interviews, radar plots, and other data.3
The Black Vault later located and published the broader scanned series, describing more than 1,500 pages under NAID 733667 after earlier FAA correspondence had indicated that responsive JAL 1628 materials would be destroyed.4
Document Contents
The core record begins with FAA Form 8020-5, which classifies the episode as an aircraft incident involving unidentified traffic reported by JAL 1628 during its Iceland-to-Anchorage leg. The form summarizes the crew's report that traffic appeared at altitude, was visible on the aircraft's weather radar, and was intermittently indicated by Anchorage Center and the Military Regional Operations Center.2
The immediate post-flight interview notes identify Captain Kenjyu Terauchi, First Officer Takanori Tamefuji, and Flight Engineer Yoshio Tsukuda as the crew interviewed at Anchorage. Those notes preserve the initial cockpit-origin story: visual contact near the Alaska-Canada border, onboard color-radar indication at roughly seven miles, yellow, amber, and green lights, and a crew assessed by FAA personnel as normal, professional, and rational.53
Terauchi's translated written statement expanded the incident into the famous larger narrative of two smaller objects and a "Mother ship" during an approximately 50-minute encounter over Alaska.6 His January 2, 1987 FAA interview then added interpretive complications, including that this was not his first unusual sighting, which became important context for later caution around his conclusions.7
Radar And Controller Trail
The Anchorage ARTCC chronology records the operational origin of the case at 0219 UTC on November 18, 1986, corresponding to the evening of November 17 in Alaska, when JAL 1628 asked for traffic information and reported nearby traffic at its altitude.8
That chronology tracks the case's escalation: the crew reported a target on its own radar at 0225 UTC; ROCC briefly advised a primary return near the reported position; Anchorage Center approved deviations, descent, and a 360-degree turn near Fairbanks; and United Airlines Flight 69 was vectored to look, saw the JAL aircraft, and reported no other traffic.89
The full ATC transcript shows the uncertainty as an air-traffic-control problem rather than a polished UFO narrative. Controllers asked about clouds, altitude, radar replies, nearby military traffic, Fairbanks Approach returns, and possible visual confirmation by other aircraft while the crew continued reporting changing relative positions.9
FAA Closure
FAA's March 5 release framed the inquiry as a safety question: the agency normally did not investigate UFO sightings, but reviewed JAL 1628 to determine whether unreported aircraft might have occupied the same airspace.3
FAA said Technical Center specialists in Atlantic City reviewed the radar data on identical equipment and concluded that the apparent second radar target was not another aircraft, but an uncorrelated primary-and-beacon return from the JAL Boeing 747 itself.3
The same release drew a firm institutional boundary around the evidence. FAA said it did not perform a scientific analysis of stars, planets, magnetic fields, viewing angle, or similar factors; it reviewed FAA system data, crew and controller interviews, and aircraft-status material, then closed the inquiry with no further investigation planned.3
Archival Significance
The release remains important because it preserves the evolution of the story in primary records: a live aviation-safety report, immediate crew interviews, Terauchi's written and oral narrative, controller and radar coordination, FAA technical review, public-affairs handling, and the agency's final unconfirmed closure.256893
Its evidentiary strength is the official paperwork chain, not a resolved object identity. The record supports that trained pilots reported unidentified traffic, that controllers treated the report seriously in real time, and that FAA later explained its own radar ambiguity without confirming an unknown craft.893
The CIA contextual source is useful mainly as a boundary marker: Gerald K. Haines's CIA historical review says Agency UFO concern was substantial in the early 1950s but later limited and peripheral through 1990. That makes the public JAL 1628 source base primarily FAA and NARA, not a released CIA case file proving direct Agency ownership of the incident.10