The initial press stories in January treated this sighting as real news. No one contradicted the captain when he
made his "outlandish" claims, the most outlandish being that he was followed by a UFO larger than his 747 jumbo jet.
The press was yearning for an explanation, but there was none to be had as long as the FAA was still investigating.
It was at this point that CSICOP decided it was necessary to fill the vacuum. On the jeudi 22 janvier 1987 CSICOP
published a press release entitled UFO Mystery Solved
s1Klass, P.J., "FAA Data Sheds New Light on JAL Pilot's UFO Report," The Skeptical Inquirer, Summer, 1987 (Buffalo,
NY).. The cover letter of the press release announced the findings of the (CSICOP) investigation into the
Japan Air Lines Flight 1628 UFO incident of mardi 18 novembre 1986
. The release itself stated that according
to a leading UFO investigator
(Philip J. Klass) at least one extraterrestrial
object was involved - the planet Jupiter, and possibly another - Mars
. The press release asserted that at the
time of the sighting (incorrectly given as one hour earlier than it actually occurred) Jupiter was extremely
bright
at a -2.6 magnitude and would have been about 10 degrees above the horizon on the left side of the
aircraft where the pilot first reported seeing the UFO. Mars would have been slightly lower and about 20 degrees to
the right of Jupiter. The press release stated that Although the very bright Jupiter and less bright Mars had to
be visible to JAL Capt. Kenjyu Terauchi, the pilot never once reported seeing either - only a UFO that he
described as being a
s2Klass, P.J., "FAA Data Sheds New Light on JAL Pilot's UFO Report," The Skeptical Inquirer, Summer, 1987 (Buffalo,
NY).. The press release could have mentioned, but did not, that Terauchi did report seeing numerous stars in
the sky, city lights and a glow of sunset in the west.
white and yellow
light in his initial radio report to the Federal Aviation
Administration controllers at Anchorage
The CSICOP explanation was based mostly on Phil Klass' analysis of an early version of the transcript of the audio tape. The radar tracking data were not made available at that time and so he could not have known the precise locations and flight directions of the plane at the times of the various sightings. Apparently he completely ignored the pictorial information (drawings by the captain) which had been widely publicized. Mr. Klass made a major error in not waiting for the release of the complete information package by the FAA because, if he had waited, he would have found that the publicized versions of the sighting were actually quite accurate in their descriptions of the lights. These descriptions, of course, rule out Jupiter and Mars as possible causes of the sighting. Without the FAA data package he did not know that initial drawings were made only about 2 hours after the event. Nor did he know that the other crew members, in separate interviews, supported the captain's report of the groups of lights that appeared in front of the plane. Nor did he know about the sudden rearrangement of the relative positions of the groups of lights from one above the other to one beside the other, a maneuver that Jupiter and Mars would have difficulty carrying out during the time of the sighting. Nor did he know that at the end of the sighting, while the plane was flying southward, roughly toward Jupiter and Mars, the pilot reported the "gigantic spacecraft" was behind and to the left, in a direction nearly opposite to the planets.
The CSICOP press release discussed and rejected the FAA and Air Force radar detections. Curiously, however, it completely ignored the claim by the pilot that the airplane radar did detect a radar-reflective object at 7 to 8 miles in the direction of the UFO. Perhaps Mr. Klass rejected this claim, but if he had waited for the data package from the FAA he would have learned that the other two members of the crew confirmed the pilot's statement about the radar detection.
In summary, the Jupiter-Mars explanation is contradicted by the sighting directions to the UFO at various times, by the descriptions of the crew members and by the airplane radar detection. However, the "gullible" press did not know that at the time. The explanation was widely publicized. The explanation made the captain look like an idiot, but that's OK. Only idiots report UFOs. Having done their duty the newsmedia promptly forget about the sighting.
In retrospect it appears that the CSICOP press release which was marked "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE" should have been marked "FOR PREMATURE RELEASE."