Japan Air Lines Flight 123

Japan Air Lines Flight 123 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Tokyo to Osaka, Japan. On the evening of Monday, August 12, 1985, the Boeing 747 flying the route suffered a severe structural failure and explosive decompression 12 minutes after takeoff. After flying under minimal control for 32 minutes, the plane crashed in the area of Mount Takamagahara, 100kilometres () from Tokyo.

The aircraft, featuring a high-density seating configuration, was carrying 524people. The initial crash killed all 15crew members and 460-490 of the 509 passengers on board; an estimated 20 to 50 passengers survived the initial crash but died from their injuries while awaiting rescue, leaving only four survivors. 520 people lost their lives as a result of the crash. The crash is the deadliest single-aircraft accident in aviation history and remains the deadliest aviation incident in Japan.

Japan's Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission (AAIC), The aircraft had flown for an additional 8,830 hours between the completion of bulkhead repairs and the crash.

Crew

At the time of the accident, the aircraft was on the fifth of its six planned flights of the day. and also acting as first officer. Takahama was a veteran pilot, having logged about 12,424 flight hours, including about 4,842 hours in 747s.

First Officer , age 39, was undergoing training for promotion to captain, and flew Flight 123 as one of his final training/evaluation flights, acting as captain. including four residents of Hong Kong, two from Italy and six from the United States, and one each from West Germany and the United Kingdom. Some ostensible foreigners had dual nationality, and some of them were residents of Japan.

The four survivors, all Japanese women, were seated on the left side and toward the middle of seat rows 54–60, in the rear of the aircraft.

The flight connected two of the largest cities of Japan, and a number of other celebrities initially booked the flight but ultimately had either switched to another flight or used the Tokaido Shinkansen instead. These include Sanma Akashiya, Masataka Itsumi and his family, Johnny Kitagawa, and the then–cast of Shōten. Some members of the Shonentai were also scheduled to travel with Kitagawa but had stayed in Tokyo.

The pilots set their transponder to broadcast a distress signal. Captain Takahama contacted Tokyo Area Control Center to declare an emergency and request a return to Haneda Airport, descending and following emergency landing vectors to Oshima. Tokyo Control approved a right-hand turn to a heading of 090° back toward Oshima, and the aircraft entered an initial right-hand bank of 040°, several degrees greater than observed previously. Captain Takahama ordered First Officer Sasaki to reduce the bank angle,

Crash site

The aircraft crashed at an elevation of in Sector 76, State Forest, 3577 Aza Hontani, Ouaza Narahara, Ueno Village, Tano District, Gunma Prefecture. The east–west ridge is about north-northwest of Mount Mikuni. An article in the Pacific Stars and Stripes from 1985 stated that personnel at Yokota were on standby to help with rescue operations, but were never called by the Japanese government.

A JSDF helicopter later spotted the wreck after nightfall. Poor visibility and the difficult mountainous terrain prevented it from landing at the site. The pilot reported from the air no signs of survivors. Based on this report, JSDF personnel on the ground did not set out to the site on the night of the crash. Instead, they were dispatched to spend the night at a makeshift village erecting tents, constructing helicopter landing ramps, and engaging in other preparations, from the crash site. Rescue teams set out for the site the following morning. Medical staff later found bodies with injuries suggesting that people had survived the crash only to die from shock, exposure to low temperatures overnight in the mountains, or injuries that, if tended to earlier, would not have been fatal. The Boeing repair technicians, however, had used two splice plates parallel to the stress crack. During the investigation, the Accident Investigation Commission calculated that this incorrect installation would fail after about 11,000 pressurization cycles; the aircraft accomplished 12,318 successful flights from the time that the faulty repair was made to when the crash happened.

Aftermath and legacy

The Japanese public's confidence in Japan Air Lines took a dramatic downturn in the wake of the disaster, with passenger numbers on domestic routes dropping by one-third. Rumors persisted that Boeing had admitted faults to cover up shortcomings in the airline's inspection procedures to protect the reputation of a major customer. In the months after the crash, domestic air traffic decreased by as much as 25%. In 1986, for the first time in a decade, fewer passengers boarded JAL's overseas flights during the New Year period than the previous year. Some of them considered switching to All Nippon Airways, JAL's main competitor, as a safer alternative.

In the aftermath of the incident, JAL president Yasumoto Takagi resigned. as did Susumu Tajima, an engineer who had inspected and cleared the aircraft as flightworthy following the tailstrike incident, whose suicide note cited "work problems".

In 1989, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 serving United Airlines Flight 232 experienced a similar total loss of hydraulic pressure after suffering an uncontained engine failure while flying over the Midwestern United States. United Airlines check pilot Dennis Fitch, who was aboard Flight 232 as a passenger, had studied the case of Japan Airlines 123 and had practiced similar scenarios in a flight simulator. This experience enabled him to assist the flight crew in making a controlled crash landing at Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City, Iowa, directly contributing to the survival of 184 of the 296 people on board.

In 2009, stairs with a handrail were installed to facilitate visitors' access to the crash site. On August 12, 2010, for the 25th anniversary of the accident, Japan Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism Minister Seiji Maehara visited the site to remember the victims. Families of the victims, together with local volunteer groups, hold an annual memorial gathering every 12 August near the crash site in Gunma Prefecture.

The crash led to the 2006 opening of the Safety Promotion Center, which is located on the grounds of Haneda Airport. This center was created for training purposes to alert employees to the importance of airline safety and their responsibility to ensure it. The center has displays regarding aviation safety, the history of the crash, and selected pieces of the aircraft and passenger effects (including handwritten farewell notes). It is open to the public by appointment. In an effort to promote safety awareness within the airline, all new JAL employees, regardless of their position, are required to attend a tour of the center as part of their employment, as well as visit the crash site at Osutaka Ridge.

The captain's daughter, Yoko Takahama, who was a high-school student at the time of the crash, went on to become a JAL flight attendant.

On June 24, 2022, an oxygen mask belonging to Flight 123 was found near the crash site during road repair work. The discovery came nearly a year after engine parts were also found in the same area.

In 2024, the 39th anniversary day climb was joined by JAL's President and CEO Mitsuko Tottori, who began her career with the airline as a flight attendant in 1985, the year of the Flight 123 accident. Speaking with reporters at the event, Tottori said, "I renewed my awareness that there should be no compromise in safety."

Memorials

In popular culture

The crash of Japan Air Lines Flight 123 was featured on three episodes of the Canadian-made, internationally distributed documentary series Mayday: "Out of Control" (2005), "Pressure Point" (2023), and as one of the seven crashes addressed in the 2007 special episode "Fatal Flaw".
It is featured in season 1, episode 2, of the TV show Why Planes Crash, in an episode called "Breaking Point".
The documentary series Aircrash Confidential featured the crash in a second-season episode titled "Poor Maintenance", which first aired on March 15, 2012, on the Discovery Channel in the United Kingdom.
The National Geographic Channel's documentary series Seconds from Disaster featured the accident in season six, episode six, titled "Terrified over Tokyo", released December 3, 2012.
Seventeen (titled in Japanese as Climber's High), the best-selling novel by Hideo Yokoyama, revolves around the reporting of the crash at the fictional newspaper Kita-Kanto Shimbun. Yokoyama was a journalist at the Jōmō Shimbun at the time of the crash. A film released in 2008, and also titled Climber's High, is based on the novel.
In 2009, the film Shizumanu Taiyō, starring Ken Watanabe, was released for national distribution in Japan. The film gives a semifictional account of the internal airline corporate disputes and politics surrounding the crash. The film does not mention Japanese Air Lines by name, using the name "National Airlines", instead. JAL not only refused to co-operate with the making of the film, but also bitterly criticised the film, saying that it "not only damages public trust in the company but [also] could lead to a loss of customers." The movie features music by Diana Yukawa, whose father was one of the victims of this disaster.
The cockpit voice recording of the incident was incorporated into the script of a 1999 play called Charlie Victor Romeo.
The 2004 album Reise, Reise by German band Rammstein is loosely inspired by the crash. The final moments of the cockpit voice recording are hidden in the pregap of the first track on some CD pressings of the album.
In 2016 Machiko Taniguchi, widow to deceased passenger Masakatsu Taniguchi, partnered with illustrator Kazuhimo Teishima to self-publish a children's picture book titled My Papa's Persimmon Tree, inspired by her and her family's experience of the crash. The book was translated into English in 2020.

Sources

(Tailstrike incident report)

References

External links

Official report for "Japan Air Lines Flight 123" by Japan Transport Safety Board (in Japanese)
Learning from the Past (Archive) Japan Air Lines
Crash of Japan Air Lines B-747 at Mt. Osutaka
JAL123 CVR (cockpit voice recorder) transcript
"Christopher Hood's Research about JL123"
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The record of JAL123 (Japanese with English place names) (Archive)
(Archive)
Planesafe.org: JAL123 (Archive)
The New York Times: J.A.L.'s Post-Crash Troubles