Discover the harrowing story of Japan Airlines Flight 123, the deadliest single-aircraft disaster in history. Explore how aviation safety was transformed by this tragedy, leading to today’s safer skies.
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As was said before, 'safety rules are written in blood'. You're safe in the air because someone else wasn't.
Many Japanese believe that it was shot down by a missile. After that incident, a series of unequal treaties were signed, such as the Plaza Accord, the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Agreement, and the U.S.-Japan Joint Agreement. The development team of the TRON Project, an operating system Japan was developing as open-source free software before Windows, was also on board. JAL have been continuing to refuse to release the CVR and FDR data. The investigation by the authorities and the media coverage are all far too suspicious.
It was shot down.
One in every Eleven Million people? Or one in every Eleven Million flights? There's a big difference. Eleven Million people would get flown about every six months so your chances are actually quite high. Eleven Million flights would happen every couple of decades.
Until 1/20/2025….RIP the US aviation safety.
Now if only Boeing would have the same attitude with their planes.
My wife and I are watching this and she shouts out "babe it's a British Steve!" (Ya know from blues clues)
Yea, everybody got off. It only took half an hour for the flight crew to decied to start getting the passengers off.
its impossible to relay how well the crew performed despite the insurmountable odds, through the cockpit recordings you hear them fighting like hell through the bitter end and are legendary in their combined heroism, R.I.P to some of the best and bravest pilots to have ever blessed the skies.
Now flight safety is as easy as ABC 123
All that 60 MPH talking and you didn’t even tell us what the cause was!
This one is also indirectly mentioned in Sailor Moon. It's where Makoto lost her parents… And she was apparently on the plane, given how terrified she is of them.
God I hate flying…
17 years after this happened China Aiirlines Flight 611 also crashed as the result of a poorly done tail strike repair.
In that case the cause was finally discovered after an investigator found unusual chemical staining on the belly under the tail.
It turned out that the mystery chemical staining was in fact nicotine which had been leaking out of the cabin through a giant series of cracks under the "repair panel" that China Airlines techs had put on over the tailstrike damage in 1978.
are those fake cacti behind you
If anyone is curious to know more, the reports done by the FAA and NTSB are easy to find online. I had to do a report of this incident for class years ago. So much in the reports has disappeared over the years since every retelling is basically this video. I've only seen one video that even got the repair part right.
So sad and unnecessary!
If I recall correctly, there were nicotine stains on the patched bit, because smoking was still allowed. Life and its little surprises.
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.
One of the victims onboard JAL 123 was Kyu Sakamoto, the original singer of the song Ue o Muite Arukō, better known in the west as Sukiyaki, which was the first Japanese language song to break into the UK/US and other English language nations top ten list back, often reaching the number one spot for a few weeks in the early 1960's.
I almost died on a JAL flight this year, the only reason I still get to see my children is because of the quick actions of the crew. I literally owe my life to JAL. Arigato gozaimasu.
I remember at the time, the crew's ability to handle that plane was seen as nothing short of miraculous, as wwas the survival of those four people. What was learned from this crash was used by the pilots of the United crash in Sioux city where aroud half the passengers survived, far more than was expected, as no plane with similar damage had ever been landed before- at all. All honor to the JAL crew. They didn't survive, but their example saved many more than they could have imigined.
I read somewhere that they found one of the survivors up a tree just sitting there.
At least we know boweing being a piece of shit is no new thing.
You are missing out an important detail of the story, The pilots during those 30 min kept the plane flying adjusting altitude and elevation simply by using the throttles to steer the airplane in the sky. When this situation was replicated in a simulators nobody got close to the amount of time they were able to do in the real thing which is what makes their feat all the more astounding.
Knowing how safe aeroplanes and flying is these days is one of the reasons i absolutely love shows like Air Crash Investigation/Mayday and could quite happily watch while flying (i dont because i am aware not all people are comfortable flying as it is, im sure seeing someone near you watch a show about aeroplane accidents wouldnt help!!)
The C 130 did see right after the crash and called it in the military base offered to send help and the Japans government said no because they didn’t think anyone could have survived
Imagine you're driving a fully-loaded bus through twisty roads when the steering wheel comes off in your hands and your brakes fail completely. And all you can do to control the bus is feather the gas pedal, and use that force to steer the bus and needle it through heavy traffic. Now imagine doing that in three dimensions, not two. That's kind of what the crew did, and they kept it up for almost half an hour, which is insane.
They controlled the plane using ONLY engine thrust, which would be near-impossible even if they still had their tail, which they didn't. And when they applied thrust, the plane would climb because of increased airflow over the wings creating lift, so then they'd have to bring the nose down too or risk a stall. The plane "porpoised" or continually climbed and dived repeatedly, but that's all they could do to keep it in the air. Still, the crew simply did not give up, fighting it to the very last second.
A lot of plane crashes are over pretty quickly. You go from normal to dead in seconds or minutes, not half an hour. But with flight 123, the passengers had time to realize they were all likely going to die. And they had time to write goodbye notes to their loved ones, which is utterly heartbreaking to think of.
One thing missing from the video was Boeing's part in the incident and how the repair of the 747's bulkhead after the earlier tail strike didn't conform with Boeing's repair procedures, as the Boeing repair technicians didn't follow the correct procedures.
"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. Cutting the plate in this manner negated the effectiveness of the row of rivets, reducing the part's resistance to fatigue cracking to about 70% of that for a correct repair. The post-repair inspection by JAL did not discover the defect, as it was covered by overlapping plates. 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."
Certainly a horrific tragedy that JAL learned from and have used to bring in some of the strictest safety training in aviation. Which we saw being put in place when Flight 516 crashed earlier in 2024. Most of the flight attendants that day were young and fresh out of training.
I regularly fly JAL and I will continue doing so, as I feel comfortable flying with them, whilst knowing that they take our safety incredibly seriously.
Oh, and a fun fact to end this comment… Captain Takahama Masami's daughter, who was in high school at the time of the crash, went on to become a JAL flight attendant.
That crew performed like beasts in those circumstances… all things considered, luck included, to get a plane of that size down with so few functioning controls available to them and have ANY survivors is absolutely incredible, and that is putting it lightly… especially over that particular terrain.
…and there could have been more survivors if the rescue response was adequate+
What Simon didn't mention is that U.S Marines from a local US Naval Air Base where ready to go in and start a rescue effort after the C-130 found the accident, but the Japanese officials told them they didn't need their help.
The rescue efforts could have started 2 hours after the crash instead of 14 hours after, if the Japanese government had allowed the U.S. Marines to start the search. Politics and their "shame" culture got in the way of more people being found alive; the Japanese authorities were unhappy that a US Aircraft had found the wreck before they had, and wanted to avoid the "embarrassment" of the US launching a rescue effort before they could.
The four survivors said others were still alive after the crash (including the father and sister of one of the survivors), but as the hours went on, more voices fell silent until only the 4 remained.
You can read a first-hand account from one of the men on the C-130 if you look up "special to stripes by Michael Antonuuchi"
I really like the way the aviation industry approaches safety incidents. Every incident big and small gets a public report, with a list of recommendations from training to technical changes, and these recommendations usually get pick up by everyone, not just the involved parties. This leads to safer planes and better trained crew. Like after the plane went into the Hudson, it became apparent that the dual engine failure checklist had kind of a baked in assumption it was happening at high altitude, and wasn't useful on takeoff.
At this point, most incidents are caused by humans being human, like railroading yourself on your wrong understanding of the current situation, to mental overload from too many information or tasks, to complex inter-person dynamics like hierarchy gradients and even cultural aspects (there was a Korean Air flight to Guam that crashed entirely because the captain had the wrong mental model and the strict hierarchical society of South Korea enforces deference to older / higher rank people and prevented the co-pilot and flight engineer from questioning the captains decisions).The sad exemptions from that are the 737 Max crashes, these were fully on Boeing for putting cost and time before safety and redundancy.
Of course it was Boeing
Small correction, a vertical oscilation is not a Dutch roll but rather a phugoid. Both are oscilation, Dutch roll is lateral, Phugoid is vertical (overly simplified, i know)
Boeing going to disagree with this video 😂😂
the 2 planes that struck the towers did not carry as many passengers as those in Tenerife.
IF they carried passengers at all.
After all: At least 2 videos which i have copies of have been altered. Have been edited.
And at the exact moment we should have seen this second plane.
BUT, that part was cut out.
Some say: Camera glitch.
But 2 different angles (at least), 2 different people…. and somehow that particular part of the video has been edited????
And you still want me to believe that we have been told the truth?????
Those planes did not carry that many people.
And why you even compare it to Tenerife>>>>>
It only goes to show what your role is here, right? Sockpuppet
You're safer in a plane than being a Boeing Whistleblower.
Why should she move seats if she paid for it? That doesn’t sound fair at all, even if the seats are better 12:49
Once again, if its boeing, I ain't going
…I am also assured of justice when I go to the authorities to get help for an extremely serious offence but here we are. No one cares while she gets abused every day 😔