[Dion]

Originally Posted by troutman

[Terauchi] always failed to mention that two other aircraft in the area that were vectored into the vicinity of the JAL 747 to try to spot the UFO he had been reporting were unable to see any such object... [Flight Engineer Yoshio Tsukuba] "was not sure whether the object was a UFO or not"... When the copilot [Takanori Tamefuji] was asked if he could distinguish these lights "as being different" from a star, he replied: "No."

The bottom line is, Terauchi's own flight crew saw only 'lights,' and other aircraft checking out the situation saw nothing unusual.

Co-pilot Tamefuji described the lights as “Christmas assorted” lights with a “salmon” color. He said: I remember red or orange, and white landing light, just like a landing light. And weak green, ah, blinking. He also described the lights as pulsating slowly. They became stronger, became weaker., became stronger, became weaker, different from strobe lights. The lights were “swinging” in unison as if there were “very good formation flight…close” of two aircraft side by side. He described the appearance of the lights as similar to seeing “night flight head-on traffic”, where it is only possible to see the lights on an approaching aircraft and “we can not see the total shape.” He said, I’m sure I saw something. It was clear enough to make me believe that there was an oncoming aircraft.

Flight engineer Tsukuba, who sat behind the copilot, did not have as good a view of the lights. He first saw them “through the L1 window at the 11 o’clock position” and he saw “clusters of lights undulating”. These clusters were “made of two parts…shaped like windows of an airplane”. He emphasized that “the lights in front of us were different from town lights.” He described the colors as white or amber.

When the planes were about 12 miles apart, the UA plane reported seeing the JAL plane and nothing else. But by this time the UFO had apparently disappeared, not being seen by JAL1628, either.

The FAA conducted an investigation of the incident, and did not issue its final report until March 5. CSICOP’s (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal)Phil Klass issued a premature statement on January 22 claiming that the UFOs were the planets Jupiter and Mars – an impossible solution because the UFO was seen in a part of the sky opposite the position of these planets and because the UFOs moved from positions one above the other to side by side. CSICOP later issued a second explanation that the UFO was light reflecting off of clouds of ice crystals – also unlikely because the sky was clear at the reported altitude of the UFO. The FAA attributed the radar images received by ground radar to a “split radar return from the JAL Boeing 747.”

http://www.thinkaboutitdocs.com/1986...s-flight-1628/