Japan Airlines Flight 123

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Japan Airlines Flight 123

JA8119, missing the vertical stabilizer
Summary
Date	August 12, 1985
Type	Mid-air disintegration of tail and loss of hydraulics
Site	Mount Osutaka-no-one, Gunma, Japan
Fatalities	520
Injuries	4
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Boeing 747-SR46
Operator	Japan Airlines
Tail number	JA8119
Passengers	509
Crew	15
Survivors	4

Japan Airlines Flight 123 was a JAL domestic flight from Tokyo International Airport in Haneda to Osaka International Airport in Itami. The Boeing 747-SR46 that made this route, registered JA8119, crashed into the ridge of Mount Takamagahara in Gunma Prefecture, Japan 100 km from Tokyo, on Monday August 12, 1985. The crash site was on Osutaka-no-O'ne (Osutaka Ridge), near Mount Osutaka.

All 15 crew members and 505 out of 509 passengers died: a total of 520 deaths. It remains the worst single-aircraft disaster in history, and the second-worst aviation accident of all time, after the Tenerife disaster (not counting ground victims). The four female survivors were seated towards the rear of the plane: Yumi Ochiai, an off-duty JAL flight attendant, age 25, who was jammed between a number of seats; Hiroko Yoshizaki, a 34-year-old woman and her 8-year-old daughter Mikiko, who were trapped in an intact section of the fuselage; and a 12-year-old girl, Keiko Kawakami, who was found sitting on a branch in a tree. Among the dead was the famous singer Kyu Sakamoto.

Contents 1 Sequence of events 2 Rescue operations 3 Cause 4 Aftermath 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Sequence of events

The flight took off at 6:12 p.m. About 12 minutes after takeoff, as the aircraft reached cruising altitude over Sagami Bay, there was an explosion in the rear of the plane resulting in the loss of the vertical stabilizer and other parts into the sea, depressurizing the cabin, and severing all four of the aircraft's hydraulic lines. A photograph (shown) taken from the ground sometime later showed that the vertical stabilizer was missing. The pilots set their transponder to broadcast a distress signal to air traffic control in Tokyo, who 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. Some passengers, not having access to writing instruments, cut themselves and used their own blood to write farewell messages.^[1]

[edit] 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 forces 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. It is believed that many of the survivors died during this interval.

The off-duty flight attendant who survived the crash 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.

[edit] Cause

The official cause of the crash according to the report published by the Japanese Aircraft and Railway Accidents Investigation Commission, is as follows:

1. The aircraft was involved in a tailstrike incident at Itami Airport on June 2, 1978, which damaged the aircraft's rear pressure bulkhead.
2. The subsequent repair performed by Boeing was flawed. Boeing's procedures called for a doubler plate with two rows of rivets to cover up the damaged bulkhead, but the engineers fixing the aircraft used two doubler plates with only one row of rivets. 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 surprisingly cut into two pieces parallel to the stress crack it was intended to reinforce, "to make it fit".^[2] This negated the effectiveness of one of the two 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, it ruptured the lines of all four hydraulic systems. With the aircraft's control surfaces disabled, the aircraft was uncontrollable.

A conspiracy theory exists, alleging that the Japan Self-Defense Forces was carrying out a missile test in the bay under the area where the accident took place, and that this caused the disaster. However, most experts dismiss this theory, and point to the lack of reliability in the official report in relation to the rapid decompression as a means to explain the disaster. Such experts tend to favour the 'Flutter Theory' and are calling for the cause of the crash to be reinvestigated. So far the government, which destroyed much of the data relating to the accident shortly before the Freedom of Information act became law, has refused to do this.^[3]

[edit] Aftermath

The Japanese public's confidence in JAL took a dramatic downturn in the wake of the disaster, 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.^[4] 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.^[4]

The crash also led to the 2006 opening of the Safety Promotion Center near Haneda Airport, directed by Yutaka Kanasaki.^[5][6] This center was created for training purposes to alert employees of the importance of airline safety and their personal responsibility to insure 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. All visitors must be accompanied for a tour, which can be given in English. Photographs are not permitted, although there are copyrighted photographs in a brochure available to the public. Kanasaki requested that photographs not be published on the internet or for public viewing.

[edit] See also

• List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
• Reise, Reise, an album by German band Rammstein, features an extract from the Cockpit Voice Recorder of the JAL123 disaster. It is not featured in a track, but in negative time before the first song. The album cover features a picture of a Flight Data Recorder.
• United Airlines Flight 232 was another case where all control surfaces failed. Dennis E. Fitch, a deadheading DC-10 instructor who had studied the case of JAL Flight 123, used a steer-by-throttle technique to guide the plane to an emergency landing, though a wing struck the ground and the plane caught fire as it touched down. 185 out of 296 survived.
• The DHL shootdown incident in Baghdad was the first jet airliner to land safely without any hydraulics.
• Flying an airplane without control surfaces
• Japan Airlines Flight 123 is featured in National Geographic Channel's Air Crash Investigation series "Out Of Control".

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Reproduction animation of JAL123 (Japanese)
• The record of JAL123 (Japanese with English place names)
• Aircraft Accident Report (PDF, East Asian fonts)
• Accident details at planecrashinfo.com
• Digital Flight Data Recorder (PDF)
• Pre-crash photo of JA8119
• JAL123 CVR (cockpit voice recorder) transcript
• JAL123 CVR (cockpit voice recorder) audio of the final moments of flight (WAV)
• Charlie-Victor-Romeo (a play which features this aircraft accident)