Japan Airlines Flight 123

All you want to know about Japan Airlines Flight 123

Japan Airlines Flight 123

CG render: JA8119, during breakup of the vertical stabilizer
Summary
Date August 12, 1985
Type Structural failure, loss of hydraulic controls
Site Mount Osutaka-no-one, Ueno, Gunma Prefecture, Japan
Passengers 509
Crew 15
Fatalities 520
Survivors 4
Aircraft type Boeing 747-SR46
Operator Japan Airlines
Tail number JA8119
Flight origin Tokyo International Airport (Haneda)
Destination Osaka International Airport (Itami)
Photograph taken by a witness of the crippled 747. The location of the missing vertical stabilizer is circled.
Photograph taken by a witness of the crippled 747. The location of the missing vertical stabilizer is circled.

Japan Airlines Flight 123 was a Japan Airlines domestic flight from Tokyo International Airport (Haneda) to Osaka International Airport (Itami). The Boeing 747-SR46 that made this route, registered JA8119, crashed into the ridge of Mount Takamagahara in Ueno, Gunma Prefecture, 100 kilometers from Tokyo, on Monday August 12, 1985. The crash site was on Osutaka Ridge (おすたかのおね Osutaka-no-One?), near Mount Osutaka. All 15 crew members and 505 out of 509 passengers died, resulting in a total of 520 deaths. It remains the deadliest single-aircraft accident, the second-deadliest aviation accident after the Tenerife disaster in history, only counting victims on board.[1]

Contents

Passengers

It was around the Bon holiday period in Japan, when many Japanese people every year make trips to their hometowns or resorts. 21 non-Japanese boarded the flight.[2] The four female survivors were seated towards the rear of the plane: Yumi Ochiai (落合 由美 Ochiai Yumi?), an off-duty JAL flight attendant, age 25, who was jammed between a number of seats; Hiroko Yoshizaki (吉崎 博子 Yoshizaki Hiroko?), a 34-year-old woman and her 8-year-old daughter Mikiko Yoshizaki (吉崎 美紀子 Yoshizaki Mikiko?), who were trapped in an intact section of the fuselage; and a 12-year-old girl, Keiko Kawakami (川上 慶子 Kawakami Keiko?), who was found wedged between branches in a tree.[3] Among the dead were the famous singer Kyu Sakamoto and Japanese banker Akihisa Yukawa, the father of solo violinist Diana Yukawa.[4]

Sequence of events

The flight took off from Runway C-15-L[5] at Tokyo International Airport (commonly referred to as Haneda Airport) in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan at 6:12 p.m., 12 minutes behind schedule.[6] About 12 minutes after takeoff, as the aircraft reached cruising altitude over Sagami Bay, the rear pressure bulkhead failed. The resulting explosive decompression tore the vertical stabilizer from the aircraft and severed all four of the aircraft's hydraulic systems. A photograph (shown) taken from the ground some time later showed that the vertical stabilizer was missing.

The pilots, including Captain Masami Takahama (高浜 雅己 Takahama Masami?),[5][7]first officer Yutaka Sasaki (佐々木 祐 Sasaki Yutaka?), and flight engineer Hiroshi Fukuda (福田 博 Fukuda Hiroshi?),[8] set their transponder to broadcast a distress signal to Tokyo Area Control Center, which directed the aircraft to descend and gave it heading vectors for an emergency landing. Continued control problems required them to first request vectors back to Haneda, then to Yokota (a U.S. military air base), then back to Haneda again as the aircraft wandered uncontrollably.

With the loss of all control surfaces, the aircraft began to oscillate up and down in what is known as a phugoid cycle, a flight mode typical of accidents that disable an aircraft's controls. After descending to 13,500 feet (4100 m), the pilots reported that the aircraft was uncontrollable. It flew over the Izu Peninsula, headed for the Pacific Ocean, then turned back toward the shore and descended to below 7,000 feet (2100 m) before the pilots managed to return to a climb. The aircraft reached an altitude of 13,000 feet (4000 m) before entering a wild descent into the mountains and disappearing from radar at 6:56 p.m. and 6,800 feet (2100 m). During the oscillations that preceded the crash, the pilots managed a small measure of control by using engine thrust. The final moments of the plane occurred when it hit a mountain as a result of this loss of control, flipped, and landed on its back.

Thirty-two minutes elapsed from the time of the accident to the time of the crash, long enough for some passengers to write farewells to their families.[9]

Rescue operations

Because of mountainous terrain and darkness, rescue crews did not reach the crash site until the following morning, more than twelve hours after the crash. Most of the passengers' remains were identified, and were enshrined at the nearby village of Ueno.

There was some confusion about who would handle the rescue in the immediate aftermath of the crash. A U.S. Air Force helicopter was the first to the crash site, some 20 minutes after impact. The crew radioed Yokota Air Base to assemble rescue teams and offered to help guide Japanese forces to the site immediately. Japanese government representatives ordered the U.S. crew to return to Yokota Air Base because the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) were going to handle the rescue.

Although a JSDF helicopter spotted the wreck during the night, poor visibility and difficult terrain prevented it from landing at the site. The helicopter pilot reported no signs of survivors. As a result, JSDF personnel did not get to the site as quickly as they might have, spending the night in a village 63 kilometers from the wreck, and not arriving until the following morning. Medical staff found a number of bodies whose injuries indicated that they had survived the crash but died from shock or exposure while awaiting rescue.[3] One doctor said "If the discovery had come ten hours earlier, we could have found more survivors." [10]

Ochiai recounted from her hospital bed that she recalled bright lights and the sound of helicopter rotors shortly after she awoke amid the wreckage, and while she could hear screaming and moaning from other survivors, this gradually died down during the night.[3]

Cause

The official cause of the crash according to the report published by Japan's then Aircraft Accidents Investigation Commission is as follows:

  1. The aircraft was involved in a tailstrike incident at Osaka International Airport on June 2, 1978, which damaged the aircraft's rear pressure bulkhead.
  2. The subsequent repair of the bulkhead did not conform to Boeing's approved repair methods. Their procedure calls for one continuous doubler plate with three rows of rivets to reinforce the damaged bulkhead, but the Boeing technicians fixing the aircraft used two separate doubler plates, one with two rows of rivets and one with only one row.[11] This reduced the part's resistance to metal fatigue by 70%. According to the FAA, the one "doubler plate" which was specified for the job, (the FAA calls it a "splice plate" - essentially a patch), was cut into two pieces parallel to the stress crack it was intended to reinforce, "to make it fit".[12] This negated the effectiveness of two of the rows of rivets. During the investigation Boeing calculated that this incorrect installation would fail after approximately 10,000 pressurizations; the aircraft accomplished 12,319 take-offs between the installation of the new plate and the final accident.
  3. When the bulkhead gave way, the resulting explosive decompression ruptured the lines of all four hydraulic systems. With the aircraft's control surfaces disabled, the aircraft became uncontrollable.

Aftermath

The Japanese public's confidence in Japan Airlines took a dramatic downturn in the wake of the disaster, with passenger numbers on domestic routes dropping by one-third. Rumours persisted that Boeing had admitted fault to cover up shortcomings in the airline's inspection procedures and thus protect the reputation of a major customer.[3] In the months after the crash, domestic traffic decreased by as much as 25%. In 1986, for the first time in a decade, fewer passengers boarded JAL's overseas flights during New Years than the previous year.[13] Ten years after JAL Flight 123, a similar incident occurred on American Airlines Flight 965, which crashed into a mountain in Buga, Colombia. As with Flight 123, there were 4 survivors on Flight 965.

Without admitting liability, JAL paid 780 million yen to the victims' relatives in the form of "condolence money". Its president, Yasumoto Takagi, resigned, while a maintenance manager working for the company at Haneda committed suicide to "apologize" for the accident.[3]

The crash also led to the 2006 opening of the Safety Promotion Center near Haneda Airport, directed by Yutaka Kanasaki.[14] This center was created for training purposes to alert employees of the importance of airline safety and their personal responsibility to ensure safety. The center, which has displays regarding air safety, the history of the crash, and selected pieces of the aircraft and passenger effects (including handwritten farewell notes), is also open to the public by appointment made one day prior to the visit.

Dramatization

  • Japan Airlines Flight 123 is featured in the Mayday (called Air Emergency in the U.S. and Air Crash Investigation in other countries outside Canada) episode "Out of Control".

See also

References

  1. ^ Here "accident" means unplanned incident and "history" means civil aviation history; planned incidents and military attacks are excluded.
  2. ^ "524 killed in worst single air disaster." The Guardian.
  3. ^ a b c d e Macarthur Job, Air Disaster Volume 2, Aerospace Publications, 1996, ISBN 1-875671-19-6: pp.136-153
  4. ^ "Looking up so tears won't fall." The Japan Times.
  5. ^ a b Magnuson, Ed. "Last Minutes of JAL 123." TIME. 1. Retrieved 25 October 2007.
  6. ^ Magnuson, Ed. "Last Minutes of JAL 123." TIME. 2.
  7. ^ nexx.jp
  8. ^ Cineflix, Stone City Films. (2006). Mayday: Out of Control [documentary TV series].
  9. ^ "Disasters, Never a Year So Bad", TIME
  10. ^ "Last Minutes of JAL 123", TIME, p.5 Retrieved 25 October 2007.
  11. ^ "Fig_5. The Aspect of Aft Bulkhead Repair"
  12. ^ "Applying Lessions Learned from Accidents, Air Board findings", FAA, Retrieved 2 March 2007
  13. ^ Andrew Horvat, "United's Welcome in Japan Less Than Warm", Los Angeles Times 28 February 1986
  14. ^ "Why Japan Airlines Opened a Museum to Remember a Crash", Wall Street Journal, Retrieved 2 March 2007.

External links

Coordinates: 36°0′5″N 138°41′38″E / 36.00139, 138.69389

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