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The pilot was adamant — whatever had tailed him was no planet. Ee ee trol and the JAL ($50), or inscrutable 8-by-10 glossy blow- ups of radar signals ($10). The deluxe package cost $194.30 — the ultimate inside look at this increasingly bizarre little inci- dent. A story about it ran over the wires. There were hundreds of re- quests for various parts of the package. More than a few wanted the whole thing. And everybody wanted it right away. HE FULL AND FINAL news conference that was intended to kill this story once and for all was an anticlj- mactic event at which the FAA released two pounds of docu- ments and no conclusions. It took place in a spacious room with an American flag in a corner, and unfathomable diagrams of air- planes and radar signals up on the white boards that lined the room. Steucke was the only FAA per- son available to answer questions. He had called up the Air Force people, and “they told me three things to say”: Their radar signal was clutter, there was no scram- ble, and there is no investigation. And none of the FAA’s technical people would be there to answer questions, he said, because, “frankly, they’re gun-shy as hell about it.” Besides, the FAA was not in the business, would not be in ~ the UFO business in the future, and did not intend to conduct a scientific investigation, he said. “We pursued this from what I would call an operational systems view.... We were out to deter- mine if there was another aircraft there, which we were not able to do one way or the other.” He did mention a couple of other unusual, far less-dramatic pilot sightings above Alaska, but the bottom line on this one was that the safety of the air traffic control system had not been com- Promised — case closed. EPILOGUE RICHARD HAINES HAS moved on to other sightings by pilots. The Alaska sighting “will go down as a good case,” he says. “Not the best. But a good solid case” for which “there is no logi- cal explanation.” But he’s afraid the publicity it generated will urage.pilots from reporting Unusual phenomena — if they tealize that whatever they tell To — —o ~ ground control could be timed = to the Amerian public, for a ee, Back in February he received a post card from Capt. Terauchi, who apologized for not answeri Haines’ follow-up letters, “Sorry for the delay,” the captain wrote, “but things are getting hot” — don’t call me, I'll call you. Erland Stephens, the shift su- pervisor in the control room the night of the sighting, has had some medical problems and is-on sick leave. He says that if he had been in Capt. Terauchi’s position, he would have kept his mouth shut, or told what he had to tell as a humorous story. . Carl Henley, who handled the JAL flight that night, wants you to know he’s just an air traffic controller who likes his job. He’ like to talk to Capt. Terauchi one day — he feels they’ve been through something together — and find out whether there was anything he could have done for the pilot that he didn’t do. Paul Steucke and his wife went out to dinner to celebrate on the night of the final news confer- ence. Life was good. Two galleries in Alaska were carrying his artwork, he was flirting with a third in Honolulu, and he was about to be named a federal em- ployee of the year in a competi- tion involving 30 U.S, agencies in the Anchorage area. And Capt. Kenju Terauchi, the veteran pilot who did his duty and reported what he saw, has moved back to Tokyo after three years in Anchorage, where he had liked to fish for red and silver salmon. The easy speculation is that he decided to distance him- self from an event that had caused him more harm than good. But JAL insists the move was a routine rotation. The captain left instructions with the airline to tell anyone who calls that he stands by his account — and does not wish to give it again. Anchor- age Daily News reporter Hal Bernton was left with the impres- sion that Terauchi felt he got hung out to dry. The pilot grew more reticent with each conversa- tion; he seemed frustrated. But he remained convinced that Flight No. 1628 had indeed en- countered something highly ad- vanced technologically, and unlikely to have Originated on “T can’t understand the tech- nology,” he told Bernton, “but it was not dangerous.” . If there is a next time, Terauchi said, he might try blinking his wing lights four times, then twice more — “Hi” in Morse code, And perhaps one day, someone else will see what he saw, he said, and his controversial experience will € on new meaning. “T think,” said the captain, “we have to keep this record.” oO Se NO se ed : a REST NP NRE ee 5 _ “ > a eae Scns Soper = SAGAS eRe OR She Se “ S ee Se. 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