733667-001-031-0037

66 bh UL VUUINUUU HU. UININIU _. New Yori skis Piacente 170: : _ Denver downs Brawns, 23-20;.in OT IWIAANUU WUAL Hit hard by floods, Lifestyles, Page F-1 Anchorage Daily News VOL. XLII, NO. 12 48 PAGES musher determined | ANCHORAGE, ALASKA, MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 1987 JAL pilot sees lights in the sky Object doesn’t show on military, FAA radar By DON HUNTER Daily News reporter For the second time in two months, a Japan Air Lines pilot has reported seeing an unknown object flying near his airplane over barren inte- rior Alaska. Capt. Kenjyu Terauchi re- ported the second sighting at about 7:30 a.m. Sunday morn- ing, as he, a co-pilot and a flight engineer flew at about 37,000 feet, said Paul Steucke, a spokesman for the Federal - Aviation Administration. As on the night of Terauchi’s first report in November, he was flying cargo in a Boeing 747 from London to a refuel- ing stop in Anchorage. There are more differences than similarities between the two reports, however. Unlike last time, the lights Terauchi saw Sunday morn- ing did not show up on mili- tary or FAA radar screens. The pilot himself told FAA investigators there was “no similarity’? between the flash- ing amber and white lights he saw Sunday and the massive. flying object. that Terauchi reported trailed his aircraft for hundreds of miles on Nov. 17, Steucke said. As on the first sighting, Terauchi was accompanied by a co-pilot and a flight engi- neer. They were not the same crew members, Steucke said. Steucke said the cargo plane’s co-pilot was flying the plane at the time of the sight- ing Sunday morning. The co- pilot reported seeing the lights, but did not watch them as long as Terauchi. The aircraft's flight engineer, who sits farther back in the cock- pit, ‘indicated he was uncer- _ tain whether he saw any lights at all,’’ Steucke said. ‘We asked him point-blank if this was like the Nov. 17 Sighting and he said, ‘no, no, See Back Page, SIGHTING SIGHTING: } Continued from Page A-1 | there’s no similarity between the two,’’’ Steucke said. Terauchi reported seeing the lights twice Sunday morn- ing, once for a period of about 20 minutes and once for about 10 minutes. In both cases, he said the lights approached from the front of the 747, went underneath the aircraft and reappeared behind it, Steucke said. Terauchi radioed word of the sighting to an air traffic controller in Anchorage. “His statement to the con- troller was ‘irregular lights, looks like a spaceship,’ ”’ Steucke said. Controllers and their super- visors immediately checked radar screens ‘‘to see if there were any objects around the JAL aircraft,’ Steucke said. “There were none, and that was confirmed” by military radar, he said. Steucke said FAA officials and experienced pilots specu- late that Sunday’s sighting could have been caused by a weather phenomenon called ‘bounce light effect.” Both times Terauchi report- ed seeing the lights Sunday, the airplane was flying over villages, Steucke said. “The ground temperature in the area was about minus- 23 and there was. a tempera- ture inversion at 23,500 feet,”’ he said. ‘‘Temperature inver- sions in cold climates, with ice crystals, have been known Set Bee pene wre January 12, 1987 Ss) Lights in sky to create a bounce light ef- fect.’’ Light from the villages could have reflected off ice crystals in the inversion and appeared to be hovering in mid-air, Steucke said. As the plane approached and passed over the villages, the reflect- ed light would have appeared to go under the aircraft and reappeared behind it, as Ter- auchi described the lights he saw Sunday, Steucke said. Steucke said the bounce- light theory is only specula- tion, not an agency finding. “Those of us involved in this talked about it,’’ he said. ‘People who are experienced at flying mentioned that it is not an infrequent occur- rence.”’ On Nov. 17, Terauchi re- ported that two brightly lit objects and a much larger third object — roughly twice the size of an aircraft carrier — trailed the JAL plane for more than 300 miles as it crossed into Alaska from Ice- land. Terauchi said the objects changed altitude with him and paced the jet for nearly an hour. In Anchorage, air traffic controllers monitoring the JAL plane’s progress saw what appeared to be the radar tracks of another flying ob- ject in the air space near _ Terauchi’s plane. Both incidents are under investigation, Steucke said. Terauchi could not be reached for comment Sunday. PRICE 25 CE =——_—_—