Japan Airlines Flight 123: Map

Categories: Accidents and incidents involving the Boeing 747 > Japan Airlines accidents and incidents > 1985 in Japan > Aviation accidents and incidents in 1985 > Aviation accidents and incidents in Japan

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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 , suffered mechanical failures 12 minutes into flight and 32 minutes later crashed into two ridges of Mount Takamagahara

in Ueno

, Gunma Prefecture

, 100 kilometer from Tokyo, on Monday 12 August 1985. The crash site was on , near Mount Osutaka. All 15 crew members and 505 out of 509 passengers died, resulting in a total of 520 deaths and 4 survivors.

It remains the deadliest single-aircraft accident in history.

Aircraft

The aircraft involved, registration number JA8119, was a Boeing 747SR-46. Its first flight was on January 28, 1974. Before it was destroyed it had 25,030 airframe hours and 18,835 cycles.

Passengers

The flight was around the Obon holiday period in Japan, when many Japanese people every year make trips to their hometowns or resorts. 21 non-Japanese boarded the flight. The four survivors, all female, were seated towards the rear of the plane: , an off-duty JAL flight attendant, age 25, who was jammed between a number of seats; , a 34-year-old woman and her 8-year-old daughter , who were trapped in an intact section of the fuselage; and a 12-year-old girl, , who was found wedged between branches in a tree. Among the dead were the famous singer Kyu Sakamoto and Japanese banker Akihisa Yukawa, the father of solo violinist Diana Yukawa.

Sequence of events

The flight took off from Runway 15L at Tokyo International Airport (commonly referred to as Haneda Airport) in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan at 6:12 p.m., 12 minutes behind schedule. 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 taken from the ground some time later confirmed that the vertical stabilizer was missing. The loss of cabin pressure at high altitude had also caused a lack of oxygen throughout the cabin, and emergency oxygen masks for passengers soon began to fail. Flight attendants, including one who was off-duty and flying as a passenger, administered oxygen to various passengers using hand-held tanks.

The pilots, including Captain , first officer , and flight engineer , 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.

By then all hydraulic fluid had drained away through the rupture. With total loss of hydraulic control and non-functional control surfaces, the aircraft began to oscillate up and down in a phugoid cycle. The pilots managed a measure of control by using engine thrust. They discovered that by giving full throttle they could cause the plane to rise out of a nose-dive, and by reducing power the plane would slow enough to lower the nose from uncontrolled ascent. Similarly, they found that giving more power to the left or right engines and reducing power to the opposite would cause the plane to turn somewhat. These improvisations proved helpful, but further measures to exert control, such as lowering the landing gear and flaps, interfered with control by throttle, and the plane's uncontrollability once again escalated.

After descending to 13,500 feet (4100 m), the pilots reported the aircraft's uncontrollability. The plane 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 an uncontrollable descent into the mountains and disappearing from radar at 6:56 p.m. and 6,800 feet (2100 m). The final moments of the plane occurred when it clipped one mountain ridge then hit a second one during another rapid plunge, then flipped and landed on its back.

Thirty-two minutes elapsed from the time of the bulkhead explosion to the time of the final crash, long enough for some passengers to write farewells to their families. Subsequent simulator re-enactments of the mechanical failures suffered by Flight 123 failed to produce a better solution or outcome, and in fact none of the four flight crews in the simulations were able to keep the plane aloft for as long as the 32 minutes achieved by the actual crew.

Delayed rescue operation

An American Air Force base in Japan situated near the flight path of Flight 123 had been monitoring the distressed aircraft's calls for help. They maintained contact throughout the ordeal with Japanese flight control officials and made their landing strip available to the airplane. After the crash in the mountains, a U.S. Air Force helicopter was the first to spot the crash site 20 minutes after impact. The USAF crew radioed Yokota Air Base to alert them, and had assembled rescue teams in preparation to lower Marines down for rescues by helicopter tow line. The offers by American forces of help to guide Japanese forces immediately to the crash site and of rescue assistance were rejected by Japanese officials. Instead, Japanese government representatives ordered the U.S. crew to keep away from the crash site and return to Yokota Air Base

, stating the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) were going to handle the entire rescue alone.

Although a JSDF helicopter eventually spotted the wreck during the night, poor visibility and the difficult mountainous terrain prevented it from landing at the site. The pilot of the JSDF helicopter reported from the air that there were no signs of survivors. Based on this report, JSDF ground personnel did not set out to the actual site the night of the crash. Instead, they were dispatched to spend the night at a makeshift village erecting tents, constructing helicopter landing ramps and in other preparations, all some 63 kilometers from the wreck. JSDF did not set out for the actual crash site until the following morning. Medical staff later found a number of passengers' bodies whose injuries indicated that they had survived the crash only to die from shock or exposure overnight in the mountains while awaiting rescue. One doctor said "If the discovery had come ten hours earlier, we could have found more survivors."

Yumi Ochiai, one of the four survivors out of 524 passengers and crew, 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, these sounds gradually died away during the night.

Cause

An animation of the aircraft's tailstrike incident

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

The aircraft was involved in a tailstrike incident at Osaka International Airport on 2 June 1978, which damaged the aircraft's rear pressure bulkhead.
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. 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". 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 12,318 take-offs between the installation of the new plate and the final accident.
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. 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. Some of them considered switching to All Nippon Airways as a safer alternative.

Without admitting liability, JAL paid 780 million yen (6.4 million Euros or ca. 12,600 Euros per victim) 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.

Remembrance

The crash also led to the 2006 opening of the Safety Promotion Center

near Haneda Airport, directed by Yutaka Kanasaki. 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".

The crash is also the subject of a BBC television documentary (Disaster: JAL 123 – A Japanese Tragedy) first shown in 1999. The documentary highlights Japan's alleged refusal for a US military helicopter to provide assistance two hours after the crash and concludes by drawing parallels with Japan's reluctance to accept foreign help in the wake of the Great Hanshin Earthquake

in 1995.

To date three films have been made about Japan Airlines Flight 123. Osutakayama, directed by , was released in 2005. The central theme of this film is that the plane was shot down following orders from Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. was released in 2008. This film is based on the novel by Hideo Yokoyama. The novel and film revolve around the reporting of the crash at the fictional Kita-Kanto Shimbun. Yokoyama was a journalist at the Jōmō Shimbun at the time of the crash.

In 2009, Shizumanu taiyô, starring Ken Watanabe, was released to national distribution in Japan. The film, which does not mention JAL by name, instead using the name "National Airlines", gives a semi-fictional account of internal airline corporate disputes and politics surrounding the crash. JAL did not cooperate with the making of the film. JAL criticized the film, saying that it, "not only damages public trust in the company but could lead to a loss of customers."

The last 38 seconds of the cockpit voice recording appeared on certain pressings of the album Reise, Reise by Rammstein.

The cockpit voice recording of the incident also became part of the script of a play called Charlie Victor Romeo.