Responses: 4
The Crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123
This is a small clip from Seconds from Disaster for educational purposes only. Full episodes can be watched on National Geographic Channel.
Thank you my friend TSgt Joe C. for making us aware that on August 12, 1985 at 6:50 p.m. local time, a Japan Air Lines Boeing 747SR crashed into Mount Otsuka, 70 miles northwest of Tokyo. Only 4 of the 524 people aboard survived the crash by the time rescuers reached the remote crash site 12 hours later.
Images: Route of Japan Airlines Flight 123. Photo Credit Gauravjuvekar – CC BY-SA 3.0
1. Background from .japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/08/11/national/history/u-s-leaked-crucial-boeing-repair-flaw-led-1985-jal-jet-crash-ex-officials/#.W3EtBihKhaQ
"U.S. leaked crucial Boeing repair flaw that led to 1985 JAL jet crash: ex-officials
BY TOYOHIRO HORIKOSHI
KYODO
AUG 11, 2015
NEW YORK – The U.S. government divulged to an influential American newspaper crucial information on improper repair work on a plane carried out by Boeing Co., suggesting it was the presumable cause of the 1985 crash of a Japan Airlines jet, after sensing reluctance by Japanese authorities to release the data, former U.S. officials have told Kyodo News.
Japanese aviation authorities were thought to be hesitant about disclosing the information on the botched repair because that could impact law-enforcement investigations conducted separately to see if there was any negligence in Boeing’s servicing the plane or in the subsequent inspections done by Japan Airlines or the Transport Ministry.
On Aug. 12, 30 years will have passed since Flight 123, a packed jumbo jet bound for Osaka, crashed into a mountain in Gunma Prefecture about 40 minutes after taking off from Tokyo, killing 520 passengers and crew members. Four female passengers miraculously survived.
The crash — which remains the worst single-plane disaster in aviation history — jolted Japan. The intense interest it generated led to a range of speculation, prompting some people to come up with a theory that there was some conspiracy behind it.
Japan’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission (AAIC) concluded in a final report published two years later that the accident was caused by the plane’s rear bulkhead being torn by a rapid influx of decompressed air, causing the vertical fin to explode and disabling all hydraulic systems. The bulkhead, which looks like an umbrella canopy, separates the highly pressurized passenger cabin from the unpressurized tail section.
While investigators were immediately dispatched to Japan from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing, the maker of the 747-100SR aircraft, Japanese experts were speculating within days of the crash that the bulkhead could be a potential source of trouble, knowing the plane had a history of damage to its tail section.
Their speculation, however, was not confirmed until a U.S. investigative team found a crack in the bulkhead caused by unconventional fatigue attributed to an error in the repair procedure undertaken by Boeing.
The U.S. team shared the information with AAIC, now the Japan Transport Safety Board, 10 days after the tragedy, expecting AAIC to release the information promptly, which the Japanese authority failed to do.
“I told Hiroshi Fujiwara what the problem was,” said Ronald Schleede, a former official with the NTSB’s Bureau of Accident Investigation and a leading investigator on the JAL crash, referring to an AAIC official. “You need to put this information out to news media because we are prohibited from giving our information on another country’s investigation.”
Releasing this information was critical for the United States because it would reveal to the world that the devastating crash was attributable to the peculiar cause of a repair error in a single aircraft, giving safety assurances for the other 600 747s then flying around the world.
In an interview with Kyodo News at his home near Washington D.C., Schleede also said: “I was told by Jim Burnett to tell a New York Times aviation reporter the facts, including the improper repair. The reporter called Boeing and they confirmed the facts.”
Burnett, who was NTSB chairman at that time, and The New York Times reporter has since passed away.
Asked about the news report, John Purvis, who was then Boeing’s chief of air safety and a key member of the U.S. investigation team, said: “Officially, FAA or the NTSB does not talk to the press. They are very sensitive to that, but unofficially, NTSB talks to the press all the time.”
In an interview at his Seattle home, Purvis assumed the report was based on a U.S. government leak.
“Of course,” he said when asked if somebody in the government gave away the information. “But I don’t know who did.”
The New York Times published the report on Sept. 6, three weeks after the disaster, under the headline “Clues Are Found In Japan Air Crash,” revealing for the first time the critical finding about an improper repair seven years earlier that led to the bulkhead being destroyed. Boeing, then based in Seattle, was compelled to acknowledge its error in handling the repair. NTSB was not mentioned by name in the report.
The repair instruction was simple. A splice plate needed to be inserted into a joint section of the upper and lower domes of the bulkhead. They all needed to be riveted. But for some reason, the service team used a splice plate that was slimmer than designated, covering the gap with a separate filler, which led to a lack of structural integrity.
This repair was needed because the plane’s tail section hit a runway at Osaka airport in 1978. A 40-member team undertook the repair work.
Gunma Prefectural Police eventually charged 20 people, including four Boeing employees, with negligence. But prosecutors declined to seek indictments after Boeing refused to cooperate. In the United States, aviation probes focus on causes and it is not uncommon that no charges are filed unless some intentional acts are committed.
In line with the Convention on International Civil Aviation, Japan led the investigation into the JAL crash and AAIC spent 20 months producing a 600-page report, which received acclaim from overseas for being elaborate and accurate.
2. Background from thevintagenews.com/2018/01/06/japan-airlines-flight-123/
"Aviation technology has developed rapidly since the beginning of the 20th century and contemporary airplanes are rigorously maintained and exceptionally safe.
In fact, traveling by air is considered much safer than any kind of travel on the ground, since the abundance of vehicles involved in ground traffic presents a statistically higher risk of a fatal error or an unexpected event that may lead to a disastrous accident.
However, aviation accidents do happen and they are usually extremely deadly, mainly because of the extreme forces involved and the heights from which planes fall to the ground. The crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123 in 1985 is notorious for being the deadliest single-aircraft accident in history: 505 passengers and 15 crew members were lost in the disaster.
Japan Airlines Flight 123 was a Boeing 747SR which departed from the Haneda Airport in Tokyo and was flying towards Osaka International Airport. After 12 minutes of worry-free gliding, the plane suddenly suffered a severe explosive decompression which destroyed the plane’s vertical stabilizer and tore off a part of the tail.
The plane’s cabin was depressurized and the passengers were immediately forced to wear oxygen masks. Also, the decompression caused the crew to completely lose control of the plane’s hydraulics and the aircraft violently swerved and crashed into two ridges of Mount Takamagahara, 100 kilometers from Tokyo.
The official investigation has shown that the pilots managed to keep the plane in the air for another 32 minutes after the depressurization: several expert flight crews re-enacted the accident through a flight simulator, but none of them managed to prevent the crash or even stay in the air longer than 12 minutes after the malfunction of hydraulics.
Despite the extremely harsh circumstances of the accident, the crash of Flight 123 proved that even in the deadliest of crashes there is some hope for survival. Namely, four female passengers miraculously survived the disaster and lived to tell the tale.
Yumi Ochiai, a 26-year old off-duty flight attendant, Keiko Kawakami, a 12-year old girl, and Hiroki Yoshizaki and Mikiko Yoshizaki, a mother and daughter, miraculously survived the crash. All of them were seated in the left row in the rear of the aircraft, and, fortunately, this was the only part of the plane that remained intact.
However, the 12-year old Keiko Kawakami was found under the debris that surrounded the plane. She was catapulted out of her seat when the plane hit the mountain and landed on top of a nearby bush. Although she suffered extensive injuries and had to be treated at a hospital for three months, she fully recovered and continued to live her life. Still, the disastrous accident tragically changed her life: both of her parents and her younger sister were killed in the crash.
After the accident, an investigation revealed that the reason for the disaster was the fact that one of the plane’s stabilizers had been improperly fixed seven years earlier. Despite this, the Japan Airlines company never assumed the responsibility for the accident. However, the president of the company resigned, and Tominaga and Susumu Tajima, a maintenance manager and an engineer who cleared the plane for takeoff, committed suicide out of overwhelming guilt.
Read another story from us: A US plane carrying four H-bombs crashed into sea ice in Greenland and exploded, contaminating the surrounding area with radiation in 1968
Because of the notoriety of the crash of the Japan Airlines Flight 123, the company no longer uses “Flight 123” to designate the flight from Tokyo to Osaka. Instead, the flight is nowadays known as the “Flight 127”, and the company uses Boeings 767 and 777 instead of the formerly used Boeing 747."
The Crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKENZWQKkz0
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Orlando Illi Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. "Bill" Price CPT Jack Durish Capt Tom Brown CMSgt (Join to see) MSG Andrew White SFC William Farrell SGT (Join to see) Sgt Albert Castro SSG David Andrews Sgt Randy Wilber Sgt John H. SGT Charles H. Hawes SGT Mark Halmrast PO1 William "Chip" Nagel CPT Gabe SnellLTC Greg Henning
Images: Route of Japan Airlines Flight 123. Photo Credit Gauravjuvekar – CC BY-SA 3.0
1. Background from .japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/08/11/national/history/u-s-leaked-crucial-boeing-repair-flaw-led-1985-jal-jet-crash-ex-officials/#.W3EtBihKhaQ
"U.S. leaked crucial Boeing repair flaw that led to 1985 JAL jet crash: ex-officials
BY TOYOHIRO HORIKOSHI
KYODO
AUG 11, 2015
NEW YORK – The U.S. government divulged to an influential American newspaper crucial information on improper repair work on a plane carried out by Boeing Co., suggesting it was the presumable cause of the 1985 crash of a Japan Airlines jet, after sensing reluctance by Japanese authorities to release the data, former U.S. officials have told Kyodo News.
Japanese aviation authorities were thought to be hesitant about disclosing the information on the botched repair because that could impact law-enforcement investigations conducted separately to see if there was any negligence in Boeing’s servicing the plane or in the subsequent inspections done by Japan Airlines or the Transport Ministry.
On Aug. 12, 30 years will have passed since Flight 123, a packed jumbo jet bound for Osaka, crashed into a mountain in Gunma Prefecture about 40 minutes after taking off from Tokyo, killing 520 passengers and crew members. Four female passengers miraculously survived.
The crash — which remains the worst single-plane disaster in aviation history — jolted Japan. The intense interest it generated led to a range of speculation, prompting some people to come up with a theory that there was some conspiracy behind it.
Japan’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission (AAIC) concluded in a final report published two years later that the accident was caused by the plane’s rear bulkhead being torn by a rapid influx of decompressed air, causing the vertical fin to explode and disabling all hydraulic systems. The bulkhead, which looks like an umbrella canopy, separates the highly pressurized passenger cabin from the unpressurized tail section.
While investigators were immediately dispatched to Japan from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing, the maker of the 747-100SR aircraft, Japanese experts were speculating within days of the crash that the bulkhead could be a potential source of trouble, knowing the plane had a history of damage to its tail section.
Their speculation, however, was not confirmed until a U.S. investigative team found a crack in the bulkhead caused by unconventional fatigue attributed to an error in the repair procedure undertaken by Boeing.
The U.S. team shared the information with AAIC, now the Japan Transport Safety Board, 10 days after the tragedy, expecting AAIC to release the information promptly, which the Japanese authority failed to do.
“I told Hiroshi Fujiwara what the problem was,” said Ronald Schleede, a former official with the NTSB’s Bureau of Accident Investigation and a leading investigator on the JAL crash, referring to an AAIC official. “You need to put this information out to news media because we are prohibited from giving our information on another country’s investigation.”
Releasing this information was critical for the United States because it would reveal to the world that the devastating crash was attributable to the peculiar cause of a repair error in a single aircraft, giving safety assurances for the other 600 747s then flying around the world.
In an interview with Kyodo News at his home near Washington D.C., Schleede also said: “I was told by Jim Burnett to tell a New York Times aviation reporter the facts, including the improper repair. The reporter called Boeing and they confirmed the facts.”
Burnett, who was NTSB chairman at that time, and The New York Times reporter has since passed away.
Asked about the news report, John Purvis, who was then Boeing’s chief of air safety and a key member of the U.S. investigation team, said: “Officially, FAA or the NTSB does not talk to the press. They are very sensitive to that, but unofficially, NTSB talks to the press all the time.”
In an interview at his Seattle home, Purvis assumed the report was based on a U.S. government leak.
“Of course,” he said when asked if somebody in the government gave away the information. “But I don’t know who did.”
The New York Times published the report on Sept. 6, three weeks after the disaster, under the headline “Clues Are Found In Japan Air Crash,” revealing for the first time the critical finding about an improper repair seven years earlier that led to the bulkhead being destroyed. Boeing, then based in Seattle, was compelled to acknowledge its error in handling the repair. NTSB was not mentioned by name in the report.
The repair instruction was simple. A splice plate needed to be inserted into a joint section of the upper and lower domes of the bulkhead. They all needed to be riveted. But for some reason, the service team used a splice plate that was slimmer than designated, covering the gap with a separate filler, which led to a lack of structural integrity.
This repair was needed because the plane’s tail section hit a runway at Osaka airport in 1978. A 40-member team undertook the repair work.
Gunma Prefectural Police eventually charged 20 people, including four Boeing employees, with negligence. But prosecutors declined to seek indictments after Boeing refused to cooperate. In the United States, aviation probes focus on causes and it is not uncommon that no charges are filed unless some intentional acts are committed.
In line with the Convention on International Civil Aviation, Japan led the investigation into the JAL crash and AAIC spent 20 months producing a 600-page report, which received acclaim from overseas for being elaborate and accurate.
2. Background from thevintagenews.com/2018/01/06/japan-airlines-flight-123/
"Aviation technology has developed rapidly since the beginning of the 20th century and contemporary airplanes are rigorously maintained and exceptionally safe.
In fact, traveling by air is considered much safer than any kind of travel on the ground, since the abundance of vehicles involved in ground traffic presents a statistically higher risk of a fatal error or an unexpected event that may lead to a disastrous accident.
However, aviation accidents do happen and they are usually extremely deadly, mainly because of the extreme forces involved and the heights from which planes fall to the ground. The crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123 in 1985 is notorious for being the deadliest single-aircraft accident in history: 505 passengers and 15 crew members were lost in the disaster.
Japan Airlines Flight 123 was a Boeing 747SR which departed from the Haneda Airport in Tokyo and was flying towards Osaka International Airport. After 12 minutes of worry-free gliding, the plane suddenly suffered a severe explosive decompression which destroyed the plane’s vertical stabilizer and tore off a part of the tail.
The plane’s cabin was depressurized and the passengers were immediately forced to wear oxygen masks. Also, the decompression caused the crew to completely lose control of the plane’s hydraulics and the aircraft violently swerved and crashed into two ridges of Mount Takamagahara, 100 kilometers from Tokyo.
The official investigation has shown that the pilots managed to keep the plane in the air for another 32 minutes after the depressurization: several expert flight crews re-enacted the accident through a flight simulator, but none of them managed to prevent the crash or even stay in the air longer than 12 minutes after the malfunction of hydraulics.
Despite the extremely harsh circumstances of the accident, the crash of Flight 123 proved that even in the deadliest of crashes there is some hope for survival. Namely, four female passengers miraculously survived the disaster and lived to tell the tale.
Yumi Ochiai, a 26-year old off-duty flight attendant, Keiko Kawakami, a 12-year old girl, and Hiroki Yoshizaki and Mikiko Yoshizaki, a mother and daughter, miraculously survived the crash. All of them were seated in the left row in the rear of the aircraft, and, fortunately, this was the only part of the plane that remained intact.
However, the 12-year old Keiko Kawakami was found under the debris that surrounded the plane. She was catapulted out of her seat when the plane hit the mountain and landed on top of a nearby bush. Although she suffered extensive injuries and had to be treated at a hospital for three months, she fully recovered and continued to live her life. Still, the disastrous accident tragically changed her life: both of her parents and her younger sister were killed in the crash.
After the accident, an investigation revealed that the reason for the disaster was the fact that one of the plane’s stabilizers had been improperly fixed seven years earlier. Despite this, the Japan Airlines company never assumed the responsibility for the accident. However, the president of the company resigned, and Tominaga and Susumu Tajima, a maintenance manager and an engineer who cleared the plane for takeoff, committed suicide out of overwhelming guilt.
Read another story from us: A US plane carrying four H-bombs crashed into sea ice in Greenland and exploded, contaminating the surrounding area with radiation in 1968
Because of the notoriety of the crash of the Japan Airlines Flight 123, the company no longer uses “Flight 123” to designate the flight from Tokyo to Osaka. Instead, the flight is nowadays known as the “Flight 127”, and the company uses Boeings 767 and 777 instead of the formerly used Boeing 747."
The Crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKENZWQKkz0
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Orlando Illi Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. "Bill" Price CPT Jack Durish Capt Tom Brown CMSgt (Join to see) MSG Andrew White SFC William Farrell SGT (Join to see) Sgt Albert Castro SSG David Andrews Sgt Randy Wilber Sgt John H. SGT Charles H. Hawes SGT Mark Halmrast PO1 William "Chip" Nagel CPT Gabe SnellLTC Greg Henning
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SGT Robert George SFC Shirley Whitfield MSG Mark Million COL Lee Flemming LTC (Join to see) PO1 William "Chip" Nagel SSgt Harvey "Skip" Porter SCPO Morris Ramsey SFC William Farrell Alan K. LTC Greg Henning SSgt (Join to see) Sgt Trevor Barrett Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MSG Andrew White SP5 Mark Kuzinski SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth Cpl Scott McCarroll LTC John Shaw LTC John Griscom
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