Japan Airlines Flight 123

ja:日本航空123便墜落事故

Japan Airlines flight 123 (JAL123, JL123), a Boeing 747-100SR-46, JA8119, crashed into the ridge of Mount Takamagahara in Gunma Prefecture, Japan (about 100 km from Tokyo), on August 12, 1985. The crash site, near Mount Osutaka, was named Osutakano-O'ne (Osutaka Ridge).

It was the worst single-aircraft disaster in history, with all 15 crew members dead, and 505 out of 509 passengers dead (including the famous singer Kyu Sakamoto) for a total of 520 deaths. There were four survivors, all passengers, though one of the survivors was an off-duty JAL stewardess. All four survivors were female—the off-duty stewardess, age 25, who was jammed between a number of seats; a 34-year-old woman and her 7-year-old daughter, who were trapped in an intact section of the fuselage; and a 12-year-old girl who was found sitting on a branch up in a tree.

The flight took off at 6:12 PM, bound from Tokyo International Airport, Haneda, Tokyo to Osaka International Airport, Itami, Hyogo. About 12 minutes after takeoff, as the aircraft reached cruising altitude over Sagami Bay, its tailplane buckled, shedding 15 feet of leading edge and the vertical stablizer into the sea, depressurizing the cabin, and severing all four of the aircraft's hydraulic lines. The pilots set their transponder to broadcast a distress signal to air traffic control in Tokyo, who allowed 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 US military air base), then back to Haneda again as the aircraft veered all over the map.

After descending to 13,500 feet, the pilots reported that the aircraft was "uncontrollable." It flew over the Izu Peninsula, headed for sea, then turned back toward the shore and descended to below 7,000 feet before the pilots managed to return to a climb. The aircraft reached an altitude of 13,000 feet before entering a wild descent into the mountains and disappearing from radar at 6:56 PM and 6,800 feet. During these oscillations that preceded the crash, the pilots managed a small measure of altitude control by using engine thrusts, as the hydraulic lines that powered the aircraft's elevator systems were inoperative. A well-known photograph taken from the ground shows the missing vertical stablizer.

Some thirty minutes elapsed from the time the tailplane buckled to the time of the crash, long enough for some passengers to scribble shaky farewells to their families.

Because of rain, unfavorable terrain, and the lack of sunlight, rescue crews were unable to reach the crash site until the following morning. Most of the passengers' remains were unidentifiable, 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 US Air Force helicopter was the first to the crash site, some 20 minutes after impact, but its crew were told to return to Yokota AB because the Japan Self-Defense Forces were supposedly going to handle the rescue. Of course, they didn't arrive until the following morning, probably leaving some passengers who had initially survived the impact to die of exposure on the mountainside during the night. The stewardess that survived the crash recounted later, from her hospital bed, that she recalled bright lights and the sound of helicopter rotors shortly after she awoke amid the wreckage, but that nothing further was seen or heard until the JSDF arrived the next day.

Cause

The cause of the crash according to the offical 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 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%.
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.

JAL accepted partial responsibility for the disaster because the tail had been making intermittent whistling noises (suggesting a flaw in the fuselage) for years, without action by company maintenance personnel.

Several higher and lower ranking employees of Japan Airlines committed suicide in the aftermath. Some of these people had absolutely no connection to the disaster, but they could not bear the shame that fell on the entire company. The Boeing engineer that had failed to properly repair the rear bulkhead in 1978 also committed suicide.

See also

• List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners

External links

• Reproduction animation of JAL123 (http://www.geocities.jp/jal123jp1985/)
• The record of JAL123 (Japanese with English place names) (http://mito.cool.ne.jp/detestation/123.html)
• Accident Accident Report(PDF) (http://araic.assistmicro.co.jp/aircraft/download/index.asp)（Aircraft and Railway Accidents Investigation Commission (http://araic.assistmicro.co.jp/)）
• Pre-crash photo of JA8119 (http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=217820&WxsIERv=Obrvat%20747FE-46&WdsYXMg=Wncna%20Nve%20Yvarf%20-%20WNY&QtODMg=Gbxlb%20-%20Unarqn%20Vagreangvbany%20%28UAQ%20%2F%20EWGG%29&ERDLTkt=Wncna&ktODMp=Ncevy%2016%2C%201984&BP=1&WNEb25u=Xwryy%20avyffba&xsIERvdWdsY=WN8119&MgTUQtODMgKE=Guvf%20n%2Fp%20penfurq%20vagb%20zbhagnva%20100%20xzf%20abegu%20jrfg%20bs%20Gbxlb%20850812&YXMgTUQtODMgKERD=17863&NEb25uZWxs=2002-02-05%2000%3A00%3A00&ODJ9dvCE=&O89Dcjdg=20783%2F230&static=yes&width=1024&height=677&sok=JURER%20%20%28ZNGPU%20%28nvepensg%2Cnveyvar%2Ccynpr%2Ccubgb_qngr%2Cpbhagel%2Cerznex%2Ccubgbtencure%2Crznvy%2Clrne%2Cert%2Cnvepensg_trarevp%2Cpa%2Cpbqr%29%20NTNVAFG%20%28%27%2B%22WN8119%22%27%20VA%20OBBYRNA%20ZBQR%29%29%20%20BEQRE%20OL%20cubgb_vq%20QRFP&photo_nr=1&prev_id=&next_id=NEXTID)
• JAL123 CVR (cockpit voice recorder) transcript (http://aviation-safety.net/investigation/cvr/transcripts/cvr_ja123.php)

zh:日本航空123號班機墜毀事件