Japan Air Lines Flight 123

The Boeing 747SR-46 with registration JA8119 was built and delivered to Japan Air Lines in 1974. It had accumulated slightly more than 25,000 flight hours and 18,800 cycles (one cycle consisting of takeoff, cabin pressurization, depressurization, and landing). 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. He had logged about 3,963 flight hours, including about 2,665 hours in 747s. • Flight Engineer , age 46, was a veteran flight engineer having logged about 9,831 flight hours, including about 3,846 hours in 747s. In 1987, when the investigation concluded, all three cockpit crew members were posthumously awarded the Polaris Award. ==Passengers==

The flight was during the Obon holiday period when many Japanese people make trips to their hometowns or to resorts. 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. ==Accident==

Take-off and decompression The aircraft landed as JL366 at Haneda Airport in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, from Fukuoka Airport at 17:12. After almost an hour on the ground, Flight 123 pushed back from gate 18 at 6:04p.m. and took off from Runway 15L at 18:12, 12 minutes behind schedule. 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. Ed Magnuson of Time magazine said that the area where the aircraft crashed was referred to as the "Tibet" of Gunma Prefecture. File:Japan Airlines Flight 123 wreckage.jpg|Wreckage at the crash site File:Japan Airlines 123 05 Debris of aft fuselage (2).png|Rescuers at the crash site ==Delayed rescue operation==

A United States Air Force navigator stationed at Yokota Air Base published an account in 1995, stating that the U.S. military had monitored the distress calls and prepared a search-and-rescue operation that was aborted at the call of Japanese authorities. A U.S. Air Force C-130 crew was the first to spot the crash site 20 minutes after impact, while it was still daylight, and radioed the location to the Japanese and Yokota Air Base, where an Iroquois helicopter was dispatched. 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. One doctor said, "If the discovery had come 10 hours earlier, we could have found more survivors." One of the four survivors, off-duty Japan Air Lines flight purser 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, these sounds gradually died away during the night. ==Investigation==

Japan's Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission published their final report on the accident on June 19, 1987. The official cause of the crash according to the investigation was: • The aircraft was involved in a tailstrike incident at Osaka International Airport seven years earlier as JAL Flight 115, which damaged the aircraft's aft pressure bulkhead. • The subsequent repair of the bulkhead did not conform to Boeing's approved repair methods. For reinforcing a damaged bulkhead, Boeing's repair procedure calls for one continuous splice plate with three rows of rivets. 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 12 August, 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 safety. 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. 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 24 June, 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==

• 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. ==See also==