[1] Editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine and UFO investigator Phillip J. Klass reported that the planets Jupiter and Mars were in the area that Teruchi said he saw two lights, and although they would have been quite visible, he did not mention seeing them.

After reviewing transcripts of the radio communications, an FAA spokesperson stated that the pilot told the ground controllers that he lost "sight of the object after completing his turn".

[4] The FAA released a data package of the incident characterizing Terauchi as a "'UFO repeater', having reported two other UFO sightings prior to November 17th, and two more this past January".

In a January 11, 1987 UFO sighting reported by Terauchi in the same general area as Flight 1628, he stated he saw "irregular pulsating lights ... [and] a large black chunk just in front of us".

The FAA radar did not confirm an object, and the event was later determined to have been "lights from small villages being diffused by thin clouds of ice crystals".

[6] Science writer Brian Dunning writes that there was "nothing extraordinary or unusual on that evening" calling Terauchi "a fine and competent pilot, but was hardly unbiased when it came to alien spaceships" and Flight 1628 "just another unevidenced aerial anecdote".