Japan Air Lines Flight 350 was a domestic scheduled passenger flight from Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture, to Tokyo in Japan. Flight 350 was the first crash for Japan Air Lines in the 1980s. The investigation traced the cause of the crash to the deliberate actions of the captain.
Background
Aircraft
The aircraft involved was a McDonnell Douglas DC-8-61 registered as JA8061. It was manufactured by McDonnell Douglas in 1967 and in its 15 years of service, it had logged 36,955 airframe hours. It was equipped with four Pratt & Whitney JT3D-3B engines.
Katagiri's crewmates were 33-year-old First Officer Yoshifumi Ishikawa, and 48-year-old flight engineer Yoshimi Ozaki.
At 08:44, while Flight 350 was flying at an altitude of 164 feet (50 m) at a speed of 130 knots (240 km/h), Katagiri disengaged the autopilot. He then pushed the yoke forward and pulled the throttle back to idle before engaging the thrust-reversers on the inboard engines.
Among the 166 passengers and 8 crew, 24 died. Following the incident, Katagiri, one of the first people to take a rescue boat, took off his tie and coat, then put on a cardigan to convince rescuers that he was an office worker and avoid being identified as the captain. This led to initial police reports stating that Katagiri was among the casualties until he was located and identified in a nearby hotel, where he had his injuries treated, within hours after the crash. prior to the incident, which resulted in him being ruled not guilty by reason of insanity.
Investigators for the Japanese government traced Katagiri's mental history through testimonies from close associates. These testimonies revealed that Katagiri exhibited abnormal behavior and claimed to be hallucinating as early as 1976. Family members claimed he became less talkative around this time, while his colleagues at Japan Airlines raised suspicions of him suffering from neurosis prior to the Flight 350 incident. Later, his hallucinations became auditory in nature and increased in frequency to the point where he had to cancel flights. In November 1980, Katagiri's superiors at Japan Airlines temporarily removed him from flight duties after an incident where he deviated from the planned flight route and provided insufficient thrust inputs, causing him and his crew to delay turns and frequently initiate go-arounds.
Following his temporary removal from flight duties, Katagiri underwent psychiatric counseling upon the recommendation of his superiors and was diagnosed with depression due to dysautonomia. He was ordered to have a mental health leave from work until April 1981, when he was allowed to resume flying, albeit as a co-pilot. Despite concerns from Katagiri's wife over his behavior remaining unchanged even while resuming his treatment after returning to work, the doctors treating Katagiri sent a letter to Japan Airlines on October 6, 1981, clearing him for reinstatement as a captain on the grounds that his condition was not observed to have disrupted his performance in the cockpit. Subsequently, Katagiri was reinstated as captain the following month, in November 1981.
Shortly before the incident, Katagiri vocally expressed paranoid delusions about Japan's political situation, believing that the Soviet Union was conspiring to divide Japan by splitting it into two factions and inciting wars between them. On the day he flew Flight 350, First Officer Ishikawa observed Katagiri in a "state of delusion", trembling with fear while remarking that he would die rather than be captured and brutally killed by an "enemy". Katagiri's crewmates also noted that on the day before the crash, he exhibited erratic behavior during their flight from Haneda to Fukuoka and deviated from their flight plan by switching the right-hand engines to counterthrust. Katagiri's delusions, combined with a panic attack and the auditory illusion of hearing voices that Katagiri claimed were telling him to die, contributed to his decision to crash the aircraft. Katagiri has since been released from psychiatric care.