Air Emergency (2003–…): Season 3, Episode 3 - Out of Control - full transcript
Japan Airlines flight 123 veers out of control and crashes in the mountains, becoming the worst air disaster involving a single aircraft in 1985.
Suddenly the plane goes
into a steep dive, the worst yet.
This is the story of one of the most
tragic incidents in aviation history.
(PANICKED SHOUTING)
Of how a jumbo jet goes berserk,
plunging up and down at 7,300km.
It won't go back!
Of how an innocent mistake
made years earlier
puts over 500 lives at risk,
and how investigators literally
stumble on the reason behind
the biggest single aircrash
in history. (SCREAMING)
Japan Airlines Flight 123
is uncontrollable. Next...
This may be the last video ever taken
of Japan Airlines Flight 123.
It's late Summer, and millions
are travelling home
for a traditional Japanese holiday.
(CRASHING)
Something exploded!
(SCREAMING) I can't breathe!
Put your oxygen masks on!
Put your oxygen masks on please!
Japan Air 123 request...
(SCREAMING) Put your...
The plane is only 12 minutes into
its flight when terror strikes.
It's out of control, plunging up and
down hundreds of metres at a time.
And it's headed straight into the
mountains that surround Mount Fuji,
the tallest mountain in Japan.
On the ground, Japan Airlines staff
search frantically
for the cause of the problem.
In Tokyo, air traffic controllers
try to guide the plane to safety...
Aah! ... While the pilots
resort to desperate measures
to keep the plane aloft.
Raise the nose! Raise the nose!
Tokyo, Japan. August 12th, 1985.
In most of Japan
it's the eve of Obon,
when people traditionally
honour their ancestors,
often returning to their
place of birth for family reunions.
Tokyo's Haneda Airport is crowded
with thousands trying to get home.
On the tarmac,
jumbo jets are lining up.
Air travel is so popular here that
Japan Airlines has to use 747s
even for its short internal flights.
Tokyo Area Control handles
all aircraft over central Japan,
including those on their way to
and from the city's two big airports,
Haneda and Norita.
It's 6pm, but the rush
won't be over for hours.
Crowded passenger lists
and busy controllers
make it a typical holiday weekend.
Roger, approved as you request.
Cathay 456,
turn right on heading 250,
climb, and maintain,
flight level 240.
At Haneda Airport, Japan Airlines
Flight 123 is boarding.
Among the passengers
is young Yumi Ochiai.
She's actually a flight attendant
for Japan Airlines,
but today she's off duty.
Yumi takes a seat, four rows
from the back of the plane.
At 6.12pm, Flight 123 takes off,
heading for the industrial city
of Osaka, 400km to the West.
It's filled almost to capacity -
509 passengers and a crew of fifteen.
Japan Air 123,
contact Tokyo departure.
Roger, Japan Air 123...
Captain Masami Takahama
is 49 years old
and one the airline's
senior training Captains.
On this flight,
he'll be handing the radio
and keeping an eye on
the First Officer,
who's sitting in the Captain's seat.
Yutaka Sasaki is flying the plane.
He's hoping
for promotion to Captain.
Hiroshi Fukuda,
a veteran flight engineer,
is the third man on the flight deck.
Tokyo Departure, Japan Air 123,
passing 8-800.
JAL 123's route
will take it South over Enshu Bay,
then South-West along the coast,
until finally taking
a sharp right turn to land in Osaka.
The flight will take 54 minutes.
Flight 123 is leaving Tokyo behind,
climbing to 7,300 metres.
Twelve minutes
into this short flight,
the plane's black box
shows that all is going well.
Hello, what's the problem?
Someone wants to go to the restroom.
Shall I let him?
The plane's black box records
a routine request from a passenger.
He wants to use the bathroom before
the seatbelt light is turned off.
Be careful please. Yes.
An ordinary request on a routine day.
(BANGING/CRASHING)
(SCREAMING)
Something exploded! (SCREAMING)
Air is rushing out of the cabin.
The oxygen masks
drop down automatically
when the air pressure falls.
Put the oxygen masks on, please!
Put the oxygen masks on, please!
The explosion, the sudden loss
of pressure in the cabin -
there must be a hole in the aircraft.
Gear door! Check gear. Gear!
What? Check gear! Gear!
The pilots' first thought is that the
landing gear doors have blown off.
Squawk 77?
7700 is the emergency code.
When the crew radios
this code to the ground,
Air Traffic Control will know
the plane is in trouble.
Every plane on the controller's
screen carries a label,
giving the plane's identity. Suddenly
the label under Flight 123 changes -
someone in the cockpit has
keyed in the emergency signal.
Seatbelts, seatbelts, please!
The plane's crewmembers are baffled.
They know only that there's been
a loud noise, some sort of explosion,
a subsequent drop in cabin pressure,
and a growing loss of control.
Yet their instruments offer
no clues to the mystery.
Engines? All engines OK.
Ominously, the pilots
can't get the plane to respond.
It's dropping!
Right turn. Right turn!
Hydraulic pressure?
It's dropping!
The plane's flight controls
are powered by hydraulic pressure.
The elevator, which makes the plane
go up and down,
the rudder and ailerons,
which make it turn.
On a big modern jet,
all these are too heavy to operate
with cables and levers. They're
controlled by hydraulic fluid,
which flows in pipes
around the aircraft.
It's the lifeblood of the plane.
Tokyo, Japan Air 12
request immediate turbo.
Request return to Haneda.
Over. Roger, approved as
you request. Go to heading 090.
Put the masks on securely.
Put the bank around your head,
like this.
Don't bank so much. Yes.
Crewmembers!
Please help out
with the oxygen bottles.
Prepare the oxygen bottles, please!
Don't bank so much. Turn it back.
It won't go back!
Nothing seems to be working.
All the controls are dead.
They're 7,300m up in the air,
travelling at nearly 540kmph,
and unable to control the plane.
Turn right, descend!
In the growing uncertainty
of the situation,
the pilots know
they need to get down, fast.
The controller is puzzled.
Instead of making the anticipated 180
degree turn back to the airport,
the plane now veers off its course -
but not towards Haneda.
No. No!
123, negative, negative.
Negative. Please confirm that
you are declaring emergency.
Affirmative. Request the nature
of your emergency.
Hydraulic pressure all lost!
All lost? No! Look!
All lost? Yes!
The company, please!Make a request
to the company, please!
You want to make a pass?
The crew seem paralysed,
and don't radio the airline
or answer the tower.
The officials on the ground
don't know that the plane
has lost its hydraulic power,
but their screen tell them
it's flying erratically,
and is possibly out of control.
Brake turn descent.
Look at his altitude -
up and down, up and down.
Now, control! Put your heart
into it, or we'll stall!
The hydraulics failure
has caused a serious problem.
For the last few minutes,
the plane has begun flying
in an alarming pattern.
First it climbs steeply.
Then tips over and goes into
a terrifying dive of 1,200m,
only to level off
and begin to climb again.
This repeats itself
over and over again.
The pilots cannot understand
this bizarre behaviour,
and they are powerless to stop it.
(SCREAMING)
Tokyo Area Control,
August 12th, 1985.
The controller receives an emergency
signal from a jumbo jet that
left Haneda Airport 13 minutes ago.
Tokyo, Japan Air 123
request immediate turbo.
Request return to Haneda.
Put the oxygen masks on!
In the cabin, confusion and panic
spread like wildfire.
There's been an explosion, and now
some passengers are gasping for air.
Seatbelts, seatbelts please!
Hydraulic pressure has dropped!
The plane's precious
hydraulic fluid is gone.
That's why the flight controls
aren't working properly.
Don't bank so much! Turn it back.
It won't go back!
Airline personnel are trained
to take charge in a crisis,
and passenger Yumi Ochiai
helps out even though off-duty.
Do your own oxygen masks
before the children!
At Tokyo Control, the controller
is now joined by his supervisor.
What's wrong?
JAL 123 - he's declared an emergency
Says it's uncontrollable. He says
he wants to go back to Haneda,
but his heading's all over -
he can't seem to turn.
Get him to Nagoya -
that'll be easiest.
It's a straight line.
The best solution is for the plane
to switch course to Nagoya Airport,
which is 128km straight ahead.
But they'd need to
start descending immediately
if they're going to land there.
Right, your position, 72.
72 miles to Nagoya.
Can you land at Nagoya?
Negative. Request back to Haneda.
Tell him no.
They're going the wrong way.
The Captain wants to
try to get back to Haneda.
It's a large airport and ideal
for a jumbo 747 in an emergency,
but it's in the opposite direction.
If he can get it down.
123, can you descend? Roger...
The black box shows
that he doesn't descend.
Without control of the aircraft,
they can't.
It's been five minutes
since the explosion,
and a flight attendant
is finally able to call the cockpit
with news about
what's happened to the plane.
Crew! (PHONE RINGING)
Oh! Yes, what is it?
The flight attendant
tells the engineer
that the explosion has occurred
in the rear of the plane,
and may have come
from the baggage compartment.
So, in the baggage compartment,
furthest to the rear?
Right now the baggage compartment
at the back has collapsed!
I think we'd better descend!
They need to get down quickly before
the passengers become unconscious.
But the Captain seems to be
struck by a strange paralysis.
all the passengers are using their
masks. Shall we descend a little?
The Captain does not reply.
It's possible that by now he and his
crew are suffering from hypoxia,
or lack of oxygen to the brain.
The R5 head?
At this altitude, the oxygen
in their blood starts to fall.
First, their judgement
may become impaired.
Eventually, they may
lose consciousness.
The R5 head?
Yes, I understand.
Captain, the offline masks
have stopped!
At the R5 door,
the situation is becoming critical.
The oxygen supply has failed.
The cabin crew have to give
the passengers whiffs of oxygen
from a gas bottle.
Still the Captain and his crew
seem to be drowning in confusion.
I think we'd better make
an emergency descent. Yes.
Shall we use our masks too?
We'd better.
I think we'd better use
the oxygen masks. Yes.
But they don't put on their masks.
No-one knows why.
It might be indecision, or hypoxia
beginning to cloud their judgment.
At Japan Airlines in Tokyo, flight
operations have been alerted to
the emergency, but are as mystified
as everyone else on the ground.
All they know is that
over 500 lives are at stake.
It's their job to
try to diagnose the problem
and come up with a solution
while the plane is in the air.
This is Japan Air, Tokyo.
Tokyo control centre received
an emergency call from you...
Listen!
Right now the R5 door has broken.
Roger. Is the Captain
returning to Tokyo?
What? Can you return to Haneda?
Uh... just a moment.
We are making an emergency descent.
We'll contact you again in a little
while. Keep monitoring us, please.
Roger.
R5 door. Could it have come off?
If the door has come off, that could
mean an explosive decompression
of the cabin as the air rushes out.
Passengers may have been sucked out
kilometres above the ground.
But there's a worse possibility.
If the door hit the tail of
the aircraft, it could've damaged it.
The tail keeps the plane stable.
Its rudder and elevators make the
plane go up and down or side-to-side.
If the tail is damaged,
flight operations
will be powerless to assist them.
In Tokyo, news that a Japan Airlines
jumbo jet is in trouble
has leaked almost immediately.
Japanese TV is already breaking
into regular programming
with live interviews.
Someone saw the crippled jet
fly overheard.
(TRANSLATOR ON TV) "I knew the plane
was in trouble," he is saying.
"It was swaying back and forth,
then it disappeared in a cloud."
Flight 123's meandering route
has put it in range of
an American Air Force base
at Yokota,
on the Northern outskirts of Tokyo.
An American controller there
has overheard the conversations
between the plane
and Tokyo Air Traffic Control.
He wants to help - to offer
Yokota runway for landing.
Japan Air 123, Japan Air 123,
Yokota approach.
If you hear me, contact Yokota.
The pilots are preoccupied
and don't respond.
Since they've lost
all normal control of the plane,
they're now testing the throttles
to see what happens.
They can make the plane
go faster or slower -
at least they have
speed at their command.
As they experiment, they find that
if push the throttles forward
when the plane's diving,
making the engines go faster,
it actually makes the plane come out
of the dive and brings the nose up.
And if they pull back the throttles
when it's climbing,
slowing the engines,
the nose tips and begins to dive.
These actions are the opposite
of what a pilot would normally do,
but it seems to work,
and they begin to flatten out
the mad, rollercoaster ride.
Then, a second experiment.
By applying more thrust to the
engines on the aircraft's left side,
they manage to
slowly turn the plane right,
in the general direction of Tokyo.
Then their luck runs out.
In the frantic juggling of throttles,
the pilots get out of step.
I don't understand.
It drives the 747 into a frenzy.
Pull down.
Gear down! Gear down!
Shall we put the gear down!
Lowering the landing gear should
slow the plane down
and make it more stable.
Doesn't work.
Shall I lower the alternate?
For safety, 747s employ
an electrically-run system,
separate from the hydraulics,
that can lower the landing gear
in an emergency.
While the engines are turning,
they still have electric power.
Lowering the landing gear
helps stabilise the plane.
The drag of the undercarriage
has a dampening effect
on the pitching motion. Right!
But it also destroys
the directional control
they were getting by applying more
power to one side of the aircraft.
Less power!
Close to Mount Fuji,
the tallest mountain in Japan,
the plane makes
an abrupt turn to the right,
and begins a terrifying dive.
(SCREAMING)
The plane is falling
at 900m a minute,
twice the normal rate of descent.
We're going down.
Heavy. Is the wheel all the way?
It's all the way, all the way.
Heavy! Get the gear down!
Gears down!
There is no need for alarm...
The plane's black box
records the flight attendant
still trying to calm the passengers.
Japan Air 123, uncontrollable.
Just as suddenly,
the plane comes out of its dive.
They've dropped over 3,000m.
They're now in amongst
towering mountains,
but at least there's more oxygen
at this altitude.
The pilots have been
fighting the plane
for an intense 22 minutes
since the explosion.
This may be hopeless!
The hydraulic fluid is all gone!
It's uncontrollable!
Mountain! Look out! Raise!
Raise!
Gonna hit the mountain! Max power!
Applying maximum power in order to
lift the nose is their only option.
Right! (ALARM SOUNDS)
Raise! Raise!
Raise! Power! Power!
Keep trying!
In their efforts
to control the plane,
they've let their speed
drop too much. Power!
To escape the mountain,
they need maximum power
to generate more speed and more lift.
Raise, please.
Stick with it. Stick with it!
It's pushed all the way.
We're losing altitude.
It's lowering. I'm going down.
The passengers grasp
the seriousness of the situation.
Many of them prepare for the end.
But increasing power to avoid
the mountains has caused the plane
to resume
its wayward up-and-down motions.
(ALARM SOUNDS) Raise the nose!
Having run out of options,
the crew is forced to repeat
the same futile procedures
over and over.
Lift up the flaps! Power!
They've been fighting the plane for
nearly 30 minutes now. Flaps up!
Japan Air 123,
Japan Air 123, Yokota...
the Air Traffic Controllers,
Japanese and American,
are desperate to help,
to give Flight 123 any information
or reassurance they can.
Request landing back to Haneda.
Roger, understood.
Keep heading 090.
But, frustratingly, the plane
continues heading North-West,
away from both Haneda Airport
and Yokota Airbase.
Now, with every rise and fall
of the plane,
they're barely above
the mountaintops.
Can you control the aircraft now?
An ominous silence
descends on Area Control.
Japan Air 123, switch radio
frequency to 119-decimal-7.
119-decimal-7, please.
They try changing radio frequency.
If you can, change frequency
to 119-decimal-7.
There is no reply.
If you read, come up on
119-decimal-7. We are all ready.
Japan Air 123.
We've selected 119-decimal-7.
What is our position?
Your position, 5 - um...
4-5 miles North-West of Haneda.
In the tensions of the moment,
the controller is a bit confused,
and mistakes the plane's
distance from Haneda.
(ALARM SOUNDS) North-West of Haneda
How many miles?
Yes, that is correct.
On our radar you are 55,
5-5 miles North-West.
We are ready
for your approach any time.
Yokota is available for landing too.
Let us know your intentions. Over.
At Haneda Airport, emergency services
are being mobilised for the plane,
wherever it can touch down.
Yes, Roger.
They say we're 25 miles
West of Haneda.
Suddenly the plane goes
into a steep dive, the worst yet.
Lift up the flap! Power!
Flap up, flap up, flap up! Power!
Power!
The plane is falling 5,500m a minute.
Raise the nose! (SCREAMING)
Flap up, flap up, flap up!
It's up!
Raise the nose! Raise the nose!
Raise the nose!
Japan Air 123.
Japan Air 123, can you hear me?
Japan Air 123,
Japan Air 123, do you read?
Japan Air 123. Japan Air 123.
Japan Air 123 is gone.
(PHONE RINGS)
At Tokyo Control,
they've lost contact
with a Japan Airlines jumbo jet
full of passengers.
An American plane flying the area
has been listening in
to the drama of Flight 123,
and reports seeing flames in the
mountains some 100km West of Tokyo.
One of the C-130 pilots
later said that they even guided
a rescue helicopter to the scene.
And American Marines stood by,
ready to rappel down
to the burning wreckage,
but before they could do so,
they were ordered to return to base.
Rivalry between the various
Japanese emergency forces
is reported to have caused
confusion and delays
as the victims of the crash
wait for help.
In the night, the Japanese Self
Defence Force arrives on the scene.
A helicopter flown by Captain
Isuzu Omori finds the crash site.
The pilot radios in.
Victor 107.
I see something.
I see flames in about ten spots
over an area of about 300m square.
Victor 107,
is there any sign of survivors?
Victor 107, no signs of survivors.
Visibility poor. Too much smoke.
Victor 107, can you land
to investigate? Not a chance.
It's a 45 degree slope down there.
Nowhere to put down.
And there's fires everywhere.
(PLANE ENGINE HUMMING)
Seeing no sign of survivors, and
unwilling to risk a landing at night,
Captain Omori returns to base.
Meanwhile, a team of rescuers
is on its way by road,
but since they don't expect
to find anyone alive,
they spend the night in a village
68km from the crash site.
The next morning, the last moments
of Flight 123 start to became clear.
The 747 sliced a path
through the trees,
through the top of Mount Osutaka,
one of the mountains
North of Mount Fuji.
The plane finally hit a ridge
several hundred metres further on,
and exploded.
The wreckage and passengers tumbled
down the steep side of the mountain.
It's now 14 hours after the crash,
and the Japanese Self-Defence Force
rescue team arrives at the scene.
They are confronted with the worst
single aircraft accident in history.
They're shocked to find a survivor.
It's the off-duty
flight attendant Yumi Ochiai,
still hanging on to life.
And she is not the only one.
Rescuers find a 12-year-old girl
wedged in the branches of a tree,
and airlift her to safety.
Incredibly, two more passengers
are alive, a young mother
and her 8-year-old daughter.
It's nothing short of a miracle.
But how have these four survived?
The human body is believed to be able
to stand a forward deceleration
of up to 25 times
the force of gravity.
But investigators report that,
from the speed that the aircraft
hit the ground,
those at the front of the plane
experienced a sudden stop
of over 100g.
(SIRENS WAIL)
The four survivors are hurried
to a hospital in Fujioka City.
(SHOUTING IN JAPANESE)
Investigators will soon discover
that all four surviving passengers
were seated in the last seven rows.
This is how they survived.
In the back of the 747,
the impact forces were much less.
Sheer luck had protected them
from the flying debris.
Yumi Ochiai has a broken pelvis
and a fractured arm.
She tells a disturbing story of what
happened as she lay on the mountain,
awaiting rescue, and that many more
passengers survived the crash.
After the crash, I heard continual
gasping noises from many people.
I heard it coming from everywhere
all around me.
It's clear now that many died
in the cold night air
waiting for rescue.
The crash of this jumbo jet
would normally be
a strictly Japanese affair,
but it sets aviation alarm bells
ringing around the world.
Only weeks earlier, an Air India 747
had gone down in the Atlantic,
killing 329 people.
Now another 520 dead.
Was there something wrong with
the 747, the world's biggest jet?
Could there be
some unknown design fault?
There were some 600
747s flying worldwide.
A problem with the plane would have
grave consequences for aviation.
Ron Schleede, a top investigator
with America's National
Transportation Safety Board,
the NTSB, was assigned the case.
There was very deep concern
on our part
about if there was a problem with
the 747, an air ordinance problem,
so we had to jump on this
very quickly to learn what happened.
During the late 70 sand 80s,
Ron Schleede was involved with many
of the major foreign investigations
for the NTSB.
He's familiar with the sensitivities
of working with foreign governments,
and heads to Tokyo where he'll meet
the rest of his team:
representatives from Boeing,
the plane's manufacturer,
and an engineer from America's
Federal Aviation Administration.
When I arrived in Tokyo,
the atmosphere in Japan
was extremely stressful.
The news media were everywhere.
There was a huge amount of anger.
Once in Japan, Schleede found that
the local Japanese police
had taken over the investigation, and
were treating it like a crime scene,
diligently observing
his team's every move.
Everyone was considered suspicious,
Japanese airline personnel, Boeing
personnel were considered suspicious
They weren't even
allowed to go to the accident site.
Schleede had to wait for two days
before the Japanese authorities
would allow him to visit the site.
I was able to convince
the Japanese to allow us
to take Boeing people to the site,
with the stipulation that the Boeing
people stuck very close to us,
and we supervised them
while they were on scene.
They could not operate on their own.
Schleede found that,
to gain access to the site,
the Japanese had quickly constructed
helicopter landing pads.
It was an amazing sight
to look up at this mountain
and see what looked like wreckage
from an airplane in the distance,
but you could not recognise
any part of an airplane.
There were scores of helicopter
in the air, landing and taking off
every couple of minutes.
Amidst the wreckage of JAL 123,
Schleede found that
some families of the victims
had managed to scramble
to the remote mountainside on foot
and build shrines
to their loved ones.
From above, flowers rained down
on the investigators.
I recall these big white
Chinook helicopters
flying over with the families on
board looking at the accident site.
They were quite high,
and they were dropping flower petals
down onto the accident site.
The one thing that we found
when we got to the accident site
was that many of the passengers had
a lot of time to think about the end
so they wrote notes
to their loves ones
and left them in the backs
of the seats or in their pockets.
But what could have caused
this disaster?
Neither the heart-rending letters
nor the tangled wreckage
yet yield any answer
to what happened to Flight 123.
Still the main thing the
investigators have to go on
are the words on the plane's
cockpit voice recorder,
those of the plane's flight engineer,
who had said that door R5 was broken.
They believe that the door
has somehow come off in flight,
crashed into the tail, and damaged
the plane's flying surfaces:
the horizontal stabiliser,
which makes the plane go up and down;
the rudder,
which controls side-to-side movement.
But then a piece of news that
destroys that theory totally.
The door had not come off.
It's found by the investigators
amidst the wreckage.
The flight engineer was wrong.
(BEEPING)
Right now the R5 door is broken!
The warning light on his panel
lead him to believe
that the door had failed in flight.
But the alarm may well have been
set off by a short circuit
in the electrical system,
caused by the ceiling collapsing
in the explosion.
It was not a broken door
that caused Flight 123 to crash.
The investigators
would have to look elsewhere.
A photograph
taken by an amateur photographer
gives the first clue to the mystery
of why the plane became unflyable.
There's something odd
about the image.
Photographic technicians
put it on a computer
and work hard to enhance the photo,
to sharpen up its blurred lines.
Finally,
they get a clear enough picture.
The whole huge tailfin
of the airplane is missing.
It's what keeps the plane steady.
Since most of the plane's hydraulic
fluid lines pass through the fin,
it starts to make sense
why they lost hydraulic pressure
and control of the plane.
Then a Japanese Navy ship, steaming
across the bay South of Tokyo,
came upon the plane's tailfin
floating on the sea.
It's at the very spot where the plane
had first reported an emergency.
Investigators are now certain that
the starting point of the accident
must have something to do with
the tail of the aircraft.
(BANGING/CRASHING)
They review the known facts...
Something had caused the ceiling at
the back of the plane to collapse.
There had been an explosive
decompression of the aircraft.
Whatever it was
also ripped off the tailfin
and the main hydraulic lines with it,
making the plane uncontrollable.
This may be hopeless!
The hydraulic fluid is all gone!
We're lost! Raise!
Explosion, decompression, loss of
a tailfin and hydraulic failure...
The investigators need to find out
what links
these four elements together
(SCREAMING)
Aah! Aah!
Routinely, the investigators begin
by looking back
into the plane's history,
and they make
an intriguing discovery.
The plane had been in another
accident seven years earlier.
The pilot landed the plane
with its nose too high.
The tail struck the ground
and scraped along the runway.
There'd been a repair
to the rear part of the airplane
including the
rear pressure bulkhead.
For all modern jets, aircraft when
they climb have to be pressurised
to keep the cabin to a reasonable
level for the passengers.
The rear pressure bulkhead is like
a huge metal umbrella
lying on its side
at the very back of the plane.
Its purpose is to stop pressurised
air escaping from the cabin
out through the tail of the aircraft.
Seven years earlier,
Japan Airlines called in Boeing
to repair the cracked bulkhead.
Boeing engineers spliced a new panel
into the damaged bulkhead.
But at the accident site
of Flight 123 in 1985,
Ron Schleede stumbled across
a piece of wreckage
that unraveled the whole mystery.
It was a piece of this new panel that
had been spliced into the bulkhead.
The repairs had not
been done correctly.
There was only one row of rivets
holding that joint together
where there should have been two.
To explain to the Japanese
investigators what he'd discovered,
Ron Schleede sketched out how
the repair should have been made,
and the mistake that had been made.
It was a catastrophic error.
The rivets were carrying twice
the force they should've been.
From the moment the repair was done,
it was simply a matter of time.
The Investigators found that
a single human error had led to this.
(ALARM SOUNDS) Raise the nose!
Raise the nose!
On a Summer's evening in 1985,
Japan Air 123 lifts off
from Haneda Airport.
It's the 12,319th take-off
since the repair
of the damaged bulkhead,
a repair that
the investigators calculated
would only hold for 10,000 flights.
As the plane climbs to 7,300m,
the air outside
gets thinner and thinner.
But the air inside the cabin
is pressurised
for the passengers' comfort.
The difference in pressure
between the passenger cabin
on one side of the bulkhead, and
the unpressurised tail on the other,
stretches the bulkhead and its faulty
repair to the breaking point.
In a test which
duplicated these conditions,
cracks began to appear and lengthen
around the rivet holes, until...
The bulkhead snaps.
In an instant,
pressurised air from the cabin
blows a hole in it 2-3m square...
....bringing down the ceiling
around the rear toilets.
The highly-pressurised air blasts
its way into the tailfin
of the aircraft
and simply blows it off.
From that moment on,
the plane is doomed.
The pilots don't know,
and will never know,
that most of the tail
of their aircraft is missing,
blown off into the sea below along
with the crucial hydraulic lines
that allow them to control the plane.
It all finally makes sense.
Without the stabilising
influence of the tail,
and with the loss of the ability
to control the rudder and flaps,
the pilots cannot control the plane.
The giant aircraft now oscillates
in a terrifying motion
called a "phugoid" cycle.
As the nose drops into a shallow
dive, the plane gathers speed,
which generates lift. The nose rises
again and the plane begins to climb
until it loses speed,
tips over and begins to fall again.
the whole cycle repeats itself
over and over again.
Flight 123 is now plunging
up and down in terrifying dives,
sometimes several hundred metres
at a time.
It's really a miracle
that the pilots were able
to keep the airplane flying
for 30 minutes or more
after having lost all the hydraulics
and their flight controls,
but it kept shortening & eventually
worked its way into the mountains,
and it became
impossible for them to land -
there was no real alternative
for them at all
except to fly
for as long as they could
and hope for some miracle,
which never occurred.
Back in Tokyo, as the cause of
the JAL accident was identified,
Ron Schleede had to break the news
to his colleague from Boeing,
one of the top designers of the 747.
The simple truth was that
a single row of rivets had been used
when a double row was required.
When we described
our findings to them,
you can imagine this Boeing man
became very upset,
and personally was crying,
because of the fact this airplane,
that he designed, and then
the people that did the repair -
it was Boeing people that designed
and did the repair -
had make an improper repair
that caused the airplane to crash.
The Japanese police wanted to bring
criminal charges against Boeing
for its part in the tragedy,
but the prosecutors
decided not to go ahead.
Boeing's reputation was damaged,
but if they could derive any comfort
at all from this tragedy,
it was that there was
no inherent fault in the 747.
the plane continues on
to become one of the most successful
civil aircraft of all time.
However, Japan Airlines,
the innocent party,
had no such comfort.
After I left the scene
and came home,
it was my understanding that
one of the senior Japanese Airlines
maintenance managers
actually committed suicide.
The Japanese Airlines President
resigned.
The bookings slumped.
Rumours abounded in Japan
that the airline was indeed guilty
and that Boeing was just taking
the rap for a valuable customer.
It's taken years for Japan Airlines
to recover from this experience,
the worst single plane crash
in history.
Subtitled by BSkyB.
into a steep dive, the worst yet.
This is the story of one of the most
tragic incidents in aviation history.
(PANICKED SHOUTING)
Of how a jumbo jet goes berserk,
plunging up and down at 7,300km.
It won't go back!
Of how an innocent mistake
made years earlier
puts over 500 lives at risk,
and how investigators literally
stumble on the reason behind
the biggest single aircrash
in history. (SCREAMING)
Japan Airlines Flight 123
is uncontrollable. Next...
This may be the last video ever taken
of Japan Airlines Flight 123.
It's late Summer, and millions
are travelling home
for a traditional Japanese holiday.
(CRASHING)
Something exploded!
(SCREAMING) I can't breathe!
Put your oxygen masks on!
Put your oxygen masks on please!
Japan Air 123 request...
(SCREAMING) Put your...
The plane is only 12 minutes into
its flight when terror strikes.
It's out of control, plunging up and
down hundreds of metres at a time.
And it's headed straight into the
mountains that surround Mount Fuji,
the tallest mountain in Japan.
On the ground, Japan Airlines staff
search frantically
for the cause of the problem.
In Tokyo, air traffic controllers
try to guide the plane to safety...
Aah! ... While the pilots
resort to desperate measures
to keep the plane aloft.
Raise the nose! Raise the nose!
Tokyo, Japan. August 12th, 1985.
In most of Japan
it's the eve of Obon,
when people traditionally
honour their ancestors,
often returning to their
place of birth for family reunions.
Tokyo's Haneda Airport is crowded
with thousands trying to get home.
On the tarmac,
jumbo jets are lining up.
Air travel is so popular here that
Japan Airlines has to use 747s
even for its short internal flights.
Tokyo Area Control handles
all aircraft over central Japan,
including those on their way to
and from the city's two big airports,
Haneda and Norita.
It's 6pm, but the rush
won't be over for hours.
Crowded passenger lists
and busy controllers
make it a typical holiday weekend.
Roger, approved as you request.
Cathay 456,
turn right on heading 250,
climb, and maintain,
flight level 240.
At Haneda Airport, Japan Airlines
Flight 123 is boarding.
Among the passengers
is young Yumi Ochiai.
She's actually a flight attendant
for Japan Airlines,
but today she's off duty.
Yumi takes a seat, four rows
from the back of the plane.
At 6.12pm, Flight 123 takes off,
heading for the industrial city
of Osaka, 400km to the West.
It's filled almost to capacity -
509 passengers and a crew of fifteen.
Japan Air 123,
contact Tokyo departure.
Roger, Japan Air 123...
Captain Masami Takahama
is 49 years old
and one the airline's
senior training Captains.
On this flight,
he'll be handing the radio
and keeping an eye on
the First Officer,
who's sitting in the Captain's seat.
Yutaka Sasaki is flying the plane.
He's hoping
for promotion to Captain.
Hiroshi Fukuda,
a veteran flight engineer,
is the third man on the flight deck.
Tokyo Departure, Japan Air 123,
passing 8-800.
JAL 123's route
will take it South over Enshu Bay,
then South-West along the coast,
until finally taking
a sharp right turn to land in Osaka.
The flight will take 54 minutes.
Flight 123 is leaving Tokyo behind,
climbing to 7,300 metres.
Twelve minutes
into this short flight,
the plane's black box
shows that all is going well.
Hello, what's the problem?
Someone wants to go to the restroom.
Shall I let him?
The plane's black box records
a routine request from a passenger.
He wants to use the bathroom before
the seatbelt light is turned off.
Be careful please. Yes.
An ordinary request on a routine day.
(BANGING/CRASHING)
(SCREAMING)
Something exploded! (SCREAMING)
Air is rushing out of the cabin.
The oxygen masks
drop down automatically
when the air pressure falls.
Put the oxygen masks on, please!
Put the oxygen masks on, please!
The explosion, the sudden loss
of pressure in the cabin -
there must be a hole in the aircraft.
Gear door! Check gear. Gear!
What? Check gear! Gear!
The pilots' first thought is that the
landing gear doors have blown off.
Squawk 77?
7700 is the emergency code.
When the crew radios
this code to the ground,
Air Traffic Control will know
the plane is in trouble.
Every plane on the controller's
screen carries a label,
giving the plane's identity. Suddenly
the label under Flight 123 changes -
someone in the cockpit has
keyed in the emergency signal.
Seatbelts, seatbelts, please!
The plane's crewmembers are baffled.
They know only that there's been
a loud noise, some sort of explosion,
a subsequent drop in cabin pressure,
and a growing loss of control.
Yet their instruments offer
no clues to the mystery.
Engines? All engines OK.
Ominously, the pilots
can't get the plane to respond.
It's dropping!
Right turn. Right turn!
Hydraulic pressure?
It's dropping!
The plane's flight controls
are powered by hydraulic pressure.
The elevator, which makes the plane
go up and down,
the rudder and ailerons,
which make it turn.
On a big modern jet,
all these are too heavy to operate
with cables and levers. They're
controlled by hydraulic fluid,
which flows in pipes
around the aircraft.
It's the lifeblood of the plane.
Tokyo, Japan Air 12
request immediate turbo.
Request return to Haneda.
Over. Roger, approved as
you request. Go to heading 090.
Put the masks on securely.
Put the bank around your head,
like this.
Don't bank so much. Yes.
Crewmembers!
Please help out
with the oxygen bottles.
Prepare the oxygen bottles, please!
Don't bank so much. Turn it back.
It won't go back!
Nothing seems to be working.
All the controls are dead.
They're 7,300m up in the air,
travelling at nearly 540kmph,
and unable to control the plane.
Turn right, descend!
In the growing uncertainty
of the situation,
the pilots know
they need to get down, fast.
The controller is puzzled.
Instead of making the anticipated 180
degree turn back to the airport,
the plane now veers off its course -
but not towards Haneda.
No. No!
123, negative, negative.
Negative. Please confirm that
you are declaring emergency.
Affirmative. Request the nature
of your emergency.
Hydraulic pressure all lost!
All lost? No! Look!
All lost? Yes!
The company, please!Make a request
to the company, please!
You want to make a pass?
The crew seem paralysed,
and don't radio the airline
or answer the tower.
The officials on the ground
don't know that the plane
has lost its hydraulic power,
but their screen tell them
it's flying erratically,
and is possibly out of control.
Brake turn descent.
Look at his altitude -
up and down, up and down.
Now, control! Put your heart
into it, or we'll stall!
The hydraulics failure
has caused a serious problem.
For the last few minutes,
the plane has begun flying
in an alarming pattern.
First it climbs steeply.
Then tips over and goes into
a terrifying dive of 1,200m,
only to level off
and begin to climb again.
This repeats itself
over and over again.
The pilots cannot understand
this bizarre behaviour,
and they are powerless to stop it.
(SCREAMING)
Tokyo Area Control,
August 12th, 1985.
The controller receives an emergency
signal from a jumbo jet that
left Haneda Airport 13 minutes ago.
Tokyo, Japan Air 123
request immediate turbo.
Request return to Haneda.
Put the oxygen masks on!
In the cabin, confusion and panic
spread like wildfire.
There's been an explosion, and now
some passengers are gasping for air.
Seatbelts, seatbelts please!
Hydraulic pressure has dropped!
The plane's precious
hydraulic fluid is gone.
That's why the flight controls
aren't working properly.
Don't bank so much! Turn it back.
It won't go back!
Airline personnel are trained
to take charge in a crisis,
and passenger Yumi Ochiai
helps out even though off-duty.
Do your own oxygen masks
before the children!
At Tokyo Control, the controller
is now joined by his supervisor.
What's wrong?
JAL 123 - he's declared an emergency
Says it's uncontrollable. He says
he wants to go back to Haneda,
but his heading's all over -
he can't seem to turn.
Get him to Nagoya -
that'll be easiest.
It's a straight line.
The best solution is for the plane
to switch course to Nagoya Airport,
which is 128km straight ahead.
But they'd need to
start descending immediately
if they're going to land there.
Right, your position, 72.
72 miles to Nagoya.
Can you land at Nagoya?
Negative. Request back to Haneda.
Tell him no.
They're going the wrong way.
The Captain wants to
try to get back to Haneda.
It's a large airport and ideal
for a jumbo 747 in an emergency,
but it's in the opposite direction.
If he can get it down.
123, can you descend? Roger...
The black box shows
that he doesn't descend.
Without control of the aircraft,
they can't.
It's been five minutes
since the explosion,
and a flight attendant
is finally able to call the cockpit
with news about
what's happened to the plane.
Crew! (PHONE RINGING)
Oh! Yes, what is it?
The flight attendant
tells the engineer
that the explosion has occurred
in the rear of the plane,
and may have come
from the baggage compartment.
So, in the baggage compartment,
furthest to the rear?
Right now the baggage compartment
at the back has collapsed!
I think we'd better descend!
They need to get down quickly before
the passengers become unconscious.
But the Captain seems to be
struck by a strange paralysis.
all the passengers are using their
masks. Shall we descend a little?
The Captain does not reply.
It's possible that by now he and his
crew are suffering from hypoxia,
or lack of oxygen to the brain.
The R5 head?
At this altitude, the oxygen
in their blood starts to fall.
First, their judgement
may become impaired.
Eventually, they may
lose consciousness.
The R5 head?
Yes, I understand.
Captain, the offline masks
have stopped!
At the R5 door,
the situation is becoming critical.
The oxygen supply has failed.
The cabin crew have to give
the passengers whiffs of oxygen
from a gas bottle.
Still the Captain and his crew
seem to be drowning in confusion.
I think we'd better make
an emergency descent. Yes.
Shall we use our masks too?
We'd better.
I think we'd better use
the oxygen masks. Yes.
But they don't put on their masks.
No-one knows why.
It might be indecision, or hypoxia
beginning to cloud their judgment.
At Japan Airlines in Tokyo, flight
operations have been alerted to
the emergency, but are as mystified
as everyone else on the ground.
All they know is that
over 500 lives are at stake.
It's their job to
try to diagnose the problem
and come up with a solution
while the plane is in the air.
This is Japan Air, Tokyo.
Tokyo control centre received
an emergency call from you...
Listen!
Right now the R5 door has broken.
Roger. Is the Captain
returning to Tokyo?
What? Can you return to Haneda?
Uh... just a moment.
We are making an emergency descent.
We'll contact you again in a little
while. Keep monitoring us, please.
Roger.
R5 door. Could it have come off?
If the door has come off, that could
mean an explosive decompression
of the cabin as the air rushes out.
Passengers may have been sucked out
kilometres above the ground.
But there's a worse possibility.
If the door hit the tail of
the aircraft, it could've damaged it.
The tail keeps the plane stable.
Its rudder and elevators make the
plane go up and down or side-to-side.
If the tail is damaged,
flight operations
will be powerless to assist them.
In Tokyo, news that a Japan Airlines
jumbo jet is in trouble
has leaked almost immediately.
Japanese TV is already breaking
into regular programming
with live interviews.
Someone saw the crippled jet
fly overheard.
(TRANSLATOR ON TV) "I knew the plane
was in trouble," he is saying.
"It was swaying back and forth,
then it disappeared in a cloud."
Flight 123's meandering route
has put it in range of
an American Air Force base
at Yokota,
on the Northern outskirts of Tokyo.
An American controller there
has overheard the conversations
between the plane
and Tokyo Air Traffic Control.
He wants to help - to offer
Yokota runway for landing.
Japan Air 123, Japan Air 123,
Yokota approach.
If you hear me, contact Yokota.
The pilots are preoccupied
and don't respond.
Since they've lost
all normal control of the plane,
they're now testing the throttles
to see what happens.
They can make the plane
go faster or slower -
at least they have
speed at their command.
As they experiment, they find that
if push the throttles forward
when the plane's diving,
making the engines go faster,
it actually makes the plane come out
of the dive and brings the nose up.
And if they pull back the throttles
when it's climbing,
slowing the engines,
the nose tips and begins to dive.
These actions are the opposite
of what a pilot would normally do,
but it seems to work,
and they begin to flatten out
the mad, rollercoaster ride.
Then, a second experiment.
By applying more thrust to the
engines on the aircraft's left side,
they manage to
slowly turn the plane right,
in the general direction of Tokyo.
Then their luck runs out.
In the frantic juggling of throttles,
the pilots get out of step.
I don't understand.
It drives the 747 into a frenzy.
Pull down.
Gear down! Gear down!
Shall we put the gear down!
Lowering the landing gear should
slow the plane down
and make it more stable.
Doesn't work.
Shall I lower the alternate?
For safety, 747s employ
an electrically-run system,
separate from the hydraulics,
that can lower the landing gear
in an emergency.
While the engines are turning,
they still have electric power.
Lowering the landing gear
helps stabilise the plane.
The drag of the undercarriage
has a dampening effect
on the pitching motion. Right!
But it also destroys
the directional control
they were getting by applying more
power to one side of the aircraft.
Less power!
Close to Mount Fuji,
the tallest mountain in Japan,
the plane makes
an abrupt turn to the right,
and begins a terrifying dive.
(SCREAMING)
The plane is falling
at 900m a minute,
twice the normal rate of descent.
We're going down.
Heavy. Is the wheel all the way?
It's all the way, all the way.
Heavy! Get the gear down!
Gears down!
There is no need for alarm...
The plane's black box
records the flight attendant
still trying to calm the passengers.
Japan Air 123, uncontrollable.
Just as suddenly,
the plane comes out of its dive.
They've dropped over 3,000m.
They're now in amongst
towering mountains,
but at least there's more oxygen
at this altitude.
The pilots have been
fighting the plane
for an intense 22 minutes
since the explosion.
This may be hopeless!
The hydraulic fluid is all gone!
It's uncontrollable!
Mountain! Look out! Raise!
Raise!
Gonna hit the mountain! Max power!
Applying maximum power in order to
lift the nose is their only option.
Right! (ALARM SOUNDS)
Raise! Raise!
Raise! Power! Power!
Keep trying!
In their efforts
to control the plane,
they've let their speed
drop too much. Power!
To escape the mountain,
they need maximum power
to generate more speed and more lift.
Raise, please.
Stick with it. Stick with it!
It's pushed all the way.
We're losing altitude.
It's lowering. I'm going down.
The passengers grasp
the seriousness of the situation.
Many of them prepare for the end.
But increasing power to avoid
the mountains has caused the plane
to resume
its wayward up-and-down motions.
(ALARM SOUNDS) Raise the nose!
Having run out of options,
the crew is forced to repeat
the same futile procedures
over and over.
Lift up the flaps! Power!
They've been fighting the plane for
nearly 30 minutes now. Flaps up!
Japan Air 123,
Japan Air 123, Yokota...
the Air Traffic Controllers,
Japanese and American,
are desperate to help,
to give Flight 123 any information
or reassurance they can.
Request landing back to Haneda.
Roger, understood.
Keep heading 090.
But, frustratingly, the plane
continues heading North-West,
away from both Haneda Airport
and Yokota Airbase.
Now, with every rise and fall
of the plane,
they're barely above
the mountaintops.
Can you control the aircraft now?
An ominous silence
descends on Area Control.
Japan Air 123, switch radio
frequency to 119-decimal-7.
119-decimal-7, please.
They try changing radio frequency.
If you can, change frequency
to 119-decimal-7.
There is no reply.
If you read, come up on
119-decimal-7. We are all ready.
Japan Air 123.
We've selected 119-decimal-7.
What is our position?
Your position, 5 - um...
4-5 miles North-West of Haneda.
In the tensions of the moment,
the controller is a bit confused,
and mistakes the plane's
distance from Haneda.
(ALARM SOUNDS) North-West of Haneda
How many miles?
Yes, that is correct.
On our radar you are 55,
5-5 miles North-West.
We are ready
for your approach any time.
Yokota is available for landing too.
Let us know your intentions. Over.
At Haneda Airport, emergency services
are being mobilised for the plane,
wherever it can touch down.
Yes, Roger.
They say we're 25 miles
West of Haneda.
Suddenly the plane goes
into a steep dive, the worst yet.
Lift up the flap! Power!
Flap up, flap up, flap up! Power!
Power!
The plane is falling 5,500m a minute.
Raise the nose! (SCREAMING)
Flap up, flap up, flap up!
It's up!
Raise the nose! Raise the nose!
Raise the nose!
Japan Air 123.
Japan Air 123, can you hear me?
Japan Air 123,
Japan Air 123, do you read?
Japan Air 123. Japan Air 123.
Japan Air 123 is gone.
(PHONE RINGS)
At Tokyo Control,
they've lost contact
with a Japan Airlines jumbo jet
full of passengers.
An American plane flying the area
has been listening in
to the drama of Flight 123,
and reports seeing flames in the
mountains some 100km West of Tokyo.
One of the C-130 pilots
later said that they even guided
a rescue helicopter to the scene.
And American Marines stood by,
ready to rappel down
to the burning wreckage,
but before they could do so,
they were ordered to return to base.
Rivalry between the various
Japanese emergency forces
is reported to have caused
confusion and delays
as the victims of the crash
wait for help.
In the night, the Japanese Self
Defence Force arrives on the scene.
A helicopter flown by Captain
Isuzu Omori finds the crash site.
The pilot radios in.
Victor 107.
I see something.
I see flames in about ten spots
over an area of about 300m square.
Victor 107,
is there any sign of survivors?
Victor 107, no signs of survivors.
Visibility poor. Too much smoke.
Victor 107, can you land
to investigate? Not a chance.
It's a 45 degree slope down there.
Nowhere to put down.
And there's fires everywhere.
(PLANE ENGINE HUMMING)
Seeing no sign of survivors, and
unwilling to risk a landing at night,
Captain Omori returns to base.
Meanwhile, a team of rescuers
is on its way by road,
but since they don't expect
to find anyone alive,
they spend the night in a village
68km from the crash site.
The next morning, the last moments
of Flight 123 start to became clear.
The 747 sliced a path
through the trees,
through the top of Mount Osutaka,
one of the mountains
North of Mount Fuji.
The plane finally hit a ridge
several hundred metres further on,
and exploded.
The wreckage and passengers tumbled
down the steep side of the mountain.
It's now 14 hours after the crash,
and the Japanese Self-Defence Force
rescue team arrives at the scene.
They are confronted with the worst
single aircraft accident in history.
They're shocked to find a survivor.
It's the off-duty
flight attendant Yumi Ochiai,
still hanging on to life.
And she is not the only one.
Rescuers find a 12-year-old girl
wedged in the branches of a tree,
and airlift her to safety.
Incredibly, two more passengers
are alive, a young mother
and her 8-year-old daughter.
It's nothing short of a miracle.
But how have these four survived?
The human body is believed to be able
to stand a forward deceleration
of up to 25 times
the force of gravity.
But investigators report that,
from the speed that the aircraft
hit the ground,
those at the front of the plane
experienced a sudden stop
of over 100g.
(SIRENS WAIL)
The four survivors are hurried
to a hospital in Fujioka City.
(SHOUTING IN JAPANESE)
Investigators will soon discover
that all four surviving passengers
were seated in the last seven rows.
This is how they survived.
In the back of the 747,
the impact forces were much less.
Sheer luck had protected them
from the flying debris.
Yumi Ochiai has a broken pelvis
and a fractured arm.
She tells a disturbing story of what
happened as she lay on the mountain,
awaiting rescue, and that many more
passengers survived the crash.
After the crash, I heard continual
gasping noises from many people.
I heard it coming from everywhere
all around me.
It's clear now that many died
in the cold night air
waiting for rescue.
The crash of this jumbo jet
would normally be
a strictly Japanese affair,
but it sets aviation alarm bells
ringing around the world.
Only weeks earlier, an Air India 747
had gone down in the Atlantic,
killing 329 people.
Now another 520 dead.
Was there something wrong with
the 747, the world's biggest jet?
Could there be
some unknown design fault?
There were some 600
747s flying worldwide.
A problem with the plane would have
grave consequences for aviation.
Ron Schleede, a top investigator
with America's National
Transportation Safety Board,
the NTSB, was assigned the case.
There was very deep concern
on our part
about if there was a problem with
the 747, an air ordinance problem,
so we had to jump on this
very quickly to learn what happened.
During the late 70 sand 80s,
Ron Schleede was involved with many
of the major foreign investigations
for the NTSB.
He's familiar with the sensitivities
of working with foreign governments,
and heads to Tokyo where he'll meet
the rest of his team:
representatives from Boeing,
the plane's manufacturer,
and an engineer from America's
Federal Aviation Administration.
When I arrived in Tokyo,
the atmosphere in Japan
was extremely stressful.
The news media were everywhere.
There was a huge amount of anger.
Once in Japan, Schleede found that
the local Japanese police
had taken over the investigation, and
were treating it like a crime scene,
diligently observing
his team's every move.
Everyone was considered suspicious,
Japanese airline personnel, Boeing
personnel were considered suspicious
They weren't even
allowed to go to the accident site.
Schleede had to wait for two days
before the Japanese authorities
would allow him to visit the site.
I was able to convince
the Japanese to allow us
to take Boeing people to the site,
with the stipulation that the Boeing
people stuck very close to us,
and we supervised them
while they were on scene.
They could not operate on their own.
Schleede found that,
to gain access to the site,
the Japanese had quickly constructed
helicopter landing pads.
It was an amazing sight
to look up at this mountain
and see what looked like wreckage
from an airplane in the distance,
but you could not recognise
any part of an airplane.
There were scores of helicopter
in the air, landing and taking off
every couple of minutes.
Amidst the wreckage of JAL 123,
Schleede found that
some families of the victims
had managed to scramble
to the remote mountainside on foot
and build shrines
to their loved ones.
From above, flowers rained down
on the investigators.
I recall these big white
Chinook helicopters
flying over with the families on
board looking at the accident site.
They were quite high,
and they were dropping flower petals
down onto the accident site.
The one thing that we found
when we got to the accident site
was that many of the passengers had
a lot of time to think about the end
so they wrote notes
to their loves ones
and left them in the backs
of the seats or in their pockets.
But what could have caused
this disaster?
Neither the heart-rending letters
nor the tangled wreckage
yet yield any answer
to what happened to Flight 123.
Still the main thing the
investigators have to go on
are the words on the plane's
cockpit voice recorder,
those of the plane's flight engineer,
who had said that door R5 was broken.
They believe that the door
has somehow come off in flight,
crashed into the tail, and damaged
the plane's flying surfaces:
the horizontal stabiliser,
which makes the plane go up and down;
the rudder,
which controls side-to-side movement.
But then a piece of news that
destroys that theory totally.
The door had not come off.
It's found by the investigators
amidst the wreckage.
The flight engineer was wrong.
(BEEPING)
Right now the R5 door is broken!
The warning light on his panel
lead him to believe
that the door had failed in flight.
But the alarm may well have been
set off by a short circuit
in the electrical system,
caused by the ceiling collapsing
in the explosion.
It was not a broken door
that caused Flight 123 to crash.
The investigators
would have to look elsewhere.
A photograph
taken by an amateur photographer
gives the first clue to the mystery
of why the plane became unflyable.
There's something odd
about the image.
Photographic technicians
put it on a computer
and work hard to enhance the photo,
to sharpen up its blurred lines.
Finally,
they get a clear enough picture.
The whole huge tailfin
of the airplane is missing.
It's what keeps the plane steady.
Since most of the plane's hydraulic
fluid lines pass through the fin,
it starts to make sense
why they lost hydraulic pressure
and control of the plane.
Then a Japanese Navy ship, steaming
across the bay South of Tokyo,
came upon the plane's tailfin
floating on the sea.
It's at the very spot where the plane
had first reported an emergency.
Investigators are now certain that
the starting point of the accident
must have something to do with
the tail of the aircraft.
(BANGING/CRASHING)
They review the known facts...
Something had caused the ceiling at
the back of the plane to collapse.
There had been an explosive
decompression of the aircraft.
Whatever it was
also ripped off the tailfin
and the main hydraulic lines with it,
making the plane uncontrollable.
This may be hopeless!
The hydraulic fluid is all gone!
We're lost! Raise!
Explosion, decompression, loss of
a tailfin and hydraulic failure...
The investigators need to find out
what links
these four elements together
(SCREAMING)
Aah! Aah!
Routinely, the investigators begin
by looking back
into the plane's history,
and they make
an intriguing discovery.
The plane had been in another
accident seven years earlier.
The pilot landed the plane
with its nose too high.
The tail struck the ground
and scraped along the runway.
There'd been a repair
to the rear part of the airplane
including the
rear pressure bulkhead.
For all modern jets, aircraft when
they climb have to be pressurised
to keep the cabin to a reasonable
level for the passengers.
The rear pressure bulkhead is like
a huge metal umbrella
lying on its side
at the very back of the plane.
Its purpose is to stop pressurised
air escaping from the cabin
out through the tail of the aircraft.
Seven years earlier,
Japan Airlines called in Boeing
to repair the cracked bulkhead.
Boeing engineers spliced a new panel
into the damaged bulkhead.
But at the accident site
of Flight 123 in 1985,
Ron Schleede stumbled across
a piece of wreckage
that unraveled the whole mystery.
It was a piece of this new panel that
had been spliced into the bulkhead.
The repairs had not
been done correctly.
There was only one row of rivets
holding that joint together
where there should have been two.
To explain to the Japanese
investigators what he'd discovered,
Ron Schleede sketched out how
the repair should have been made,
and the mistake that had been made.
It was a catastrophic error.
The rivets were carrying twice
the force they should've been.
From the moment the repair was done,
it was simply a matter of time.
The Investigators found that
a single human error had led to this.
(ALARM SOUNDS) Raise the nose!
Raise the nose!
On a Summer's evening in 1985,
Japan Air 123 lifts off
from Haneda Airport.
It's the 12,319th take-off
since the repair
of the damaged bulkhead,
a repair that
the investigators calculated
would only hold for 10,000 flights.
As the plane climbs to 7,300m,
the air outside
gets thinner and thinner.
But the air inside the cabin
is pressurised
for the passengers' comfort.
The difference in pressure
between the passenger cabin
on one side of the bulkhead, and
the unpressurised tail on the other,
stretches the bulkhead and its faulty
repair to the breaking point.
In a test which
duplicated these conditions,
cracks began to appear and lengthen
around the rivet holes, until...
The bulkhead snaps.
In an instant,
pressurised air from the cabin
blows a hole in it 2-3m square...
....bringing down the ceiling
around the rear toilets.
The highly-pressurised air blasts
its way into the tailfin
of the aircraft
and simply blows it off.
From that moment on,
the plane is doomed.
The pilots don't know,
and will never know,
that most of the tail
of their aircraft is missing,
blown off into the sea below along
with the crucial hydraulic lines
that allow them to control the plane.
It all finally makes sense.
Without the stabilising
influence of the tail,
and with the loss of the ability
to control the rudder and flaps,
the pilots cannot control the plane.
The giant aircraft now oscillates
in a terrifying motion
called a "phugoid" cycle.
As the nose drops into a shallow
dive, the plane gathers speed,
which generates lift. The nose rises
again and the plane begins to climb
until it loses speed,
tips over and begins to fall again.
the whole cycle repeats itself
over and over again.
Flight 123 is now plunging
up and down in terrifying dives,
sometimes several hundred metres
at a time.
It's really a miracle
that the pilots were able
to keep the airplane flying
for 30 minutes or more
after having lost all the hydraulics
and their flight controls,
but it kept shortening & eventually
worked its way into the mountains,
and it became
impossible for them to land -
there was no real alternative
for them at all
except to fly
for as long as they could
and hope for some miracle,
which never occurred.
Back in Tokyo, as the cause of
the JAL accident was identified,
Ron Schleede had to break the news
to his colleague from Boeing,
one of the top designers of the 747.
The simple truth was that
a single row of rivets had been used
when a double row was required.
When we described
our findings to them,
you can imagine this Boeing man
became very upset,
and personally was crying,
because of the fact this airplane,
that he designed, and then
the people that did the repair -
it was Boeing people that designed
and did the repair -
had make an improper repair
that caused the airplane to crash.
The Japanese police wanted to bring
criminal charges against Boeing
for its part in the tragedy,
but the prosecutors
decided not to go ahead.
Boeing's reputation was damaged,
but if they could derive any comfort
at all from this tragedy,
it was that there was
no inherent fault in the 747.
the plane continues on
to become one of the most successful
civil aircraft of all time.
However, Japan Airlines,
the innocent party,
had no such comfort.
After I left the scene
and came home,
it was my understanding that
one of the senior Japanese Airlines
maintenance managers
actually committed suicide.
The Japanese Airlines President
resigned.
The bookings slumped.
Rumours abounded in Japan
that the airline was indeed guilty
and that Boeing was just taking
the rap for a valuable customer.
It's taken years for Japan Airlines
to recover from this experience,
the worst single plane crash
in history.
Subtitled by BSkyB.