NUFORC Sighting 50797

Occurred: 2006-02-16 00:00 Local
Reported: 2006-06-01 19:34 Pacific
Duration: 30 secs or less
No of observers: 1

Location: Pacific Ocean (inflight, Japan-Los Angeles), , Pacific Ocean

Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object, Aircraft nearby

I was sitting in seat 47K (a window seat on the right side of the jet airliner) of Japan Airlines flight JL 060 on Feb 16, 2006, on my return trip from the Osaka/Kansai airport to Los Angeles. We were well into the flight (2-4 hours) when I happened to look out of my window, even though I knew there was nothing to look at except clouds and the ocean. It was broad daylight and we were flying above the clouds. The jet I was on also had a large video display which showed our location on a map, and it showed nothing but water all around us (no land appearing on the display).

But what I saw when I looked out of the window took me by surprise. There was something hovering at a medium distance away (not far, but near enough to get a decent look at), and at just a slightly lower altitude than the plane I was sitting on. I could see it when I looked straight out of my window and down slightly.

What I saw looked like jet-black smoke, except that the smoke was in the shape of a "V" with curved sides and a rounded point... like a 2-D parabolic curve. And the orientation of it was that the vertex of the parabola was pointing in the same direction as my jet was travelling (parallel with the jet), but it was also pointing slightly towards the jet. Also, the dimensional plane containing this 2-D parabolic curve of smoke was parallel with the surface of the earth.

I am not sure how large the object actually was, but I can say from my reference point that it was roughly 2 inches long at arm's length.

The oddest thing about what I saw was that the black smoke looked to be flowing within this parabolic curve shape, but the smoke never left this shape! And the motion of the hovering was the same approximate motion and speed of the wobble of a toy top when it just starts losing stabilty (as it slows down), except that the wobble motion and speed of what I was looking at stayed constant. The parabolic curve shape itself wasn't spinning (it kept pointing in the same direction as described above), it just had a slow and steady wobbling motion to it.

I stared at it as long as I could, trying to figure out what it was. How could smoke hold a constant shape and wobble like it was a solid object??? I did look around briefly to see if any other passengers near me were also looking at it, but I only saw people reading, watching TV on the small displays on the backs of the seats in front of them, or sleeping. I was travelling alone and didn't know anybody to talk to about it anyways. I also wanted to get up to access my stowed bag where I had a disposable camera, but I knew that by the time I got the camera and returned to my seat that the object would be either out of view or too small to take a good picture. So I quickly looked back out the window to watch it and study it as much as I could. As we travelled, it slowly drifted towards the rear of my jet and became smaller as we moved away from it, until I couldn't see it anymore from my window.

Looking back at this experience, it was most unfortunate that I didn't think to take note of our position -- the jet airliner also showed (along with the map) the latitude, longitude, altitude, speed, etc. of where we currently were.

Is there a way to find out who the pilots of this flight were, and contact them to ask them if they also saw it? And can the same be done with the passengers of this flight??? I am 35 years old and I have a 4 year Bachelor's of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. But I can't think of anything that I know of which could describe what I saw. All that I know for sure is that I saw a black, smokey, parabola shape wobbling as a solid object, but I couldn't see anything else -- no vehicle! Yet I was near enough to see the flowingness of the smoke. And even though I was looking at it mostly from the side and slightly from above, watching it wobble gave me a good feel of its overall shape.

The only explanation that seems to make sense about what I saw is to imagine some kind of invisible triangular craft hovering there, with the black smoke eminating from the outer edge of the bottom of the craft as a result of its hovering mechanism. Also, maybe the black smoke completely dissipates shortly after being produced. This could explain why the smoke seemed to conform to a certain shape -- the shape of the craft producing it -- and why the entire parabola of smoke looked to move together as a single entity while the craft was wobbling...

Posted 2006-07-16