Japan / United States · 17 November 1986
Over eastern Alaska (Fort Yukon area) - Japanese crew, 1986
DocumentedThe FAA told a requester in 2001 that every page would be destroyed within 30 days; seventeen years later 1,500 of them turned up intact in the National Archives.
- Where
- Over eastern Alaska (Fort Yukon area) - Japanese crew, US airspace
- When
- 17 November 1986
- Who reported it
- 3 JAL cockpit crew plus FAA Anchorage ARTCC controllers and Elmendorf ROCC personnel
- Entities described
- None reported
- Handled as
- INVESTIGATED / UNRESOLVED
- Evidence class
- GOV-1
The record
An official file preserves that a report was made and examined. It does not, by itself, establish what was seen.
- Federal Aviation Administration / Department of Transportation; records held by NARA FAA JAL 1628 investigation file - FAA Form 8020-5 Aircraft Incident Record; Form 3112; Chronology of Events; crew interview transcripts; ARTCC radar printouts; facility logs (opens in a new tab)
The document is attached to this entry.
What is not settled
Object-only, and the official radar verdict is against it: the FAA found no target in close proximity and attributed the uncorrelated primary target to split radar images from momentary transponder desynchronisation. Both aircraft vectored to look saw nothing. The captain's aircraft-carrier characterisation is his own later account; the two junior crew corroborated lights, not a structured craft. The honest formulation is the FAA's: confirmed incident, cause unknown.