733667-001-003-0012

UFO expert says it was Jupiter - Editor Philip Klass believes planets were in the sight line of JAL pilot Daily News staff and wire services NEW YORK — A Japan Air Lines pilot who claimed to have seen an uni- dentified flying object alongside his air- plane in the skies above Alaska last November was actually seeing an unusu- ally bright image of the planet Jupiter and possibly Mars, an investigator said Tuesday. : Philip J. Klass said astronomical cal- culations show that on Nov. 17, when the pilot, Capt. Kenju Terauchi, claimed to have seen the UFO, Jupiter was extreme- ly bright and was visible precisely where the pilot reported that he saw the UFO. Mars was just below and to the right of Jupiter, and may explain the pilot's initial report that he saw two lights, Klass said. Terauchi Wednesday rejected Klass’s explanation. “It was not a weather phenomena,”’ Terauchi said. “Not a star. It moved with you.” Terauchi said he did see J upiter during his flight, but he said the planet was not the UFO. Klass, an editor with the magazine Aviation Week and Space Technology and a long-time investigator of claimed UFO sightings, said the pilot’s claims that the object followed him as he made Anchorage Daily News & 360-degree turn are contradicted by what he told flight controllers at the time. John Leyden, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington, quoted from a summary of conversations between the pilot and ground controllers in which the pilot reported losing sight of the object after completing his turn. The object reappeared a few moments later, according to the. FAA summary quoted by Leyden. ' Terauchi was over Alaska enroute from Europe, via Iceland, to Tokyo when he reported sighting the object. Paul Steucke, a spokesman for the FAA in Anchorage, said that Terauchi ~ told FAA officials in an interview that - the object stayed with him as he turned. Terauchi, in a Wednesday interview, said he did lose sight of the object during part of the turn. Steucke said the FAA would be releas- ing the results of its own investigation in mid-February. According to Klass, who reviewed a complete copy of the transcript, the pilot never reported seeing Jupiter or Mars, even though they were clearly visible. Klass’s report was issued by the Com: mittee for the Scientific Investigation of a = _s : dL. a Friday, January 30, 1987 B5 SBahs ik Claims of the Paranormal in Buffalo, v N.Y., an organization of scientists who, . investigate claims of UFO Sightings, ESP - occurrences and other so-called paranor- mal phenomena. has Klass, who heads the organization's . UFO subcommittee, is the author of “ “UFOs: The Public Deceived.” He has~ been investigating UFO sightings for: more than 20 years. ae ‘Jupiter was only 10 degrees above-: the horizon, making it appear to the pilot + to be roughly at his .own 35,000-foot altitude,’ said Klass in his report. Mars “ was visible closer to the horizon and to’ the right of Jupiter, but was not as: bright, the report said. i650 “This is not the first time that an, experienced pilot has mistaken a bright ° celestial body for a UFO, nor will it be : the last,” Klass said. A United Airlines flight and an Air; Force C-130 cargo plane that were in: Terauchi’s vicinity at the time of the- claimed Sighting were asked to look for. the object, and neither reported seeing it. - “I think that the Japanese pilot should have been a little more skeptical when: the United airliner and the Air Force plane reported seeing nothing,” Klass: said Tuesday in a telephone interview> from Colorado, . TT