Postscripts

There are two postscripts to this story. One is that the Philadelphia Inquirer evidently took this sighting seriously because several months later in the Sunday Magazine they published a very detailed report on the sighting. The author did not support the conclusion that the lights could be explained.

The second postscript is that CSICOP was not finished with the case. Evidently even Phil Klass could see that his Jupiter-Mars explanation had failed. In the Summer, mars 1987 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer he published a new analysis s1Klass, P.J., “FAA Data Sheds New Light on JAL Pilot’s UFO Report,” The Skeptical Inquirer, Summer, 1987 (Buffalo, NY). This time the lights were explained as reflections of moonlight from the clouds and turbulent ice crystals. (Recall that the air crew reported thin clouds below them.) According to Klass the turbulent ice crystals could have generated flame-colored lights and this would also explain why the undulating lights would periodically and suddenly disappear and then reapper as cloud conditions ahead changed. When the aircraft finally outflew the ice clouds and the initial "UFO" disappeared for good (the Captain) would search the sky for it, spot Jupiter further to the left and conclude it was the initial UFO. Klass attributed the airplane radar sighting to an echo from thin clouds of ice crystals. KLASS's clever explanation would not explain the heat which Terauchi felt on his face. Nor would it explain the distinct arrays of flames or lights associated with two independently flying objects that appeared ahead of the plane and above for many minutes (the clouds were reported to be below the plane). Nor would it explain the sudden rearranging of these arrays of lights. He says this could explain the colors, but this woud occur only if the moonlight were "broken" into its spectrum by refraction. But the spectrum of white light contains more than just the yellow, amber and green which were reported. Blue and red should also have been noted if the air crew was looking at what would essentially be a "rainbow."

The lights ahead of the aircraft were described as bright. The copilot compared them to headlights of oncoming aircraft. A reflection of the moon from thin clouds would cover broad areas of cloud and would be dim, rather than bright and point-like.

Klass explanation for the radar target is total conjecture on his part since the clouds were reported by the plane to be thin. Would there be any return at all from such clouds? One might ask, if there were so many clouds, why the radar didn't pick up numerous "blobby" returns on the right side and ahead of the aircraft as well as on the left where the "mothership" appeared to be. And, of course, Klass' explanation does not account for the silhouette of a gigantic spaceship.