Transcript for:
Japan Air Flight 123 Incident

a Boeing 747 carrying 524 people careen's out of control in the skies above Japan alarms blare in the cockpit as the pilots desperately grapple with an aircraft which seems to have a mind of its own oxygen masks drop from the ceiling and terrified passengers write last minute notes to loved ones what has caused the massive tail to explode off the aircraft and will the pilots be able to coax their stricken plane back to the airport this is the story of Japan Air flight 123. [Music] on the evening of August 12 1985 509 passengers and 15 crew boarded a Boeing 747 operated by Japan Airlines at Tokyo's haneda Airport they were Bound for Osaka about an hour to the Southwest this route was one of the busiest in Japan with thousands of people making the journey up and back every day and on this day flight 123 was full to the brim it was the beginning of the Japanese holiday season of Oban and many of the passengers were making their annual trip back to their hometowns they were not to know as they stepped on board that evening that the aircraft they were flying on was hiding a critical weakness one which had been growing like a cancer for years completely undetected today just minutes after takeoff it would reach Breaking Point for the pilots the fight was something special as well sitting in the captain seat was 39 year old first officer Yutaka sasi he would be acting as the captain for this flight under the watchful eye of the flight's actual captain with just under 4 000 hours of Total experience to his name sasahi was being promoted to Captain under 747 having been first officer honored for the last six years on this flight he would have to prove that he was ready for the upgrade sitting to his right and supervising him was 49 year old veteran Captain Masami takahama takahama had been flying since 1966. in which time he'd accumulated over 12 000 hours of flying experience by this point he had been flying the 747 for over a decade and sitting behind the pilots at the fight engineer station was the third crew member 46 year old Hiroshi fukada fukata had logged almost 10 000 fight arrows in his time as a flight engineer and was highly experienced on the 747 having amassed almost 4 000 hours at this seat fugada had been flying all day this was his third flight on this aircraft this evening the other two pilots had joined him for this flight after swapping out with the previous crew with this experienced crew the passengers could not have been in safer hands however the emergency or rather emergencies that they would face on this day was something that the crew had never been trained for at five past six that evening flight 123 pushed back from the gate at Tokyo it was a sweltering summer evening and thunderstorms had been hammering the country all day to avoid them the pilots would be flying a bit south of their usual route over the sea this flight would be a short one so short that almost as soon as it reached its cruising altitude of 24 000 feet it would begin descending again [Music] at 12 minutes past 6 first officer sassasi lined the aircraft up with the runway and applied to take off power within moments the massive Jet and its 524 passengers and crew were airborne fight123 climbed out over Tokyo bay and made a slow turn to the right towards Osaka for the first few minutes all went to plan as the plane climbed it began to pressurize air brought in by the engines was being fed into the cabin so that the air pressure inside the cabin was greater than the pressure outside as the plane climbed and the air outside got thinner the pressure difference between the air inside the cabin and the air outside the cabin grew greater and greater thinned aluminum skin of the plane stretched ever so slightly as the air inside pressed against it this happens on every flight and this particular aircraft which had been flying for 11 years had gone through this cycle unevently over 12 000 times in the cockpit the fight engineer monitored the cabin pressure as the plane climbed out ensuring that the air remained breathable for the passengers but what he didn't know and what nobody on board knew was that the bulkhead in the back of the plane an umbrella shaped structure which held in the pressurized air from the cabin had a critical weakness years earlier while landing at Osaka the plane had landed hard on its tail causing significant damage to this bulkhead the damage was so bad that the plane was grounded and extensive repairs were carried out but the repairs to the bulkhead had not been carried out correctly this meant that every flight since this incident as the plane climbed and the air inside the cabin pressed against the bulkhead tiny cracks began to grow and now after 12 319 flights as the plane cruised high above the Pacific this bulkhead catastrophically gave way what you're now about to see is a completely accurate rendition of the flight's Journey from this point on the position and movement of the plane as well as the audio you're about to hear has been meticulously imported directly from the flight data recorder of this flight pandemonium erupted on board as the pressurized air inside the cabin forced itself out of the hole which had now opened up in the rear of the plane this wave of pressure blasted off a huge section of the aircraft's tail including the rudder the auxiliary power unit and several other critical components and control systems in the passenger cabin everything that wasn't tied down was torn loose and propelled out the back of the plane by the Tyrant of air ceiling panels in the rear of the cabin were torn loose and flung back into the void as well the passenger oxygen masks dropped immediately on the passengers scrambled to attach them to their faces in the cockpit the cabin altitude alarm was blaring alerting the pilots that the air inside the plane was now too thin to breed but as the pilots were about to learn that was the least of their problems the captain decided that they had better turn back to Tokyo and land immediately he set the transponder's squawk code to 7700 the universal distress signal then he instructed the first officer to turn the plane to the right back towards Tokyo [Applause] uh [Music] but as the plane turned to the right it started banking way too steeply [Music] but no matter what the first officer did he couldn't turn the plane back to Wings level this pointed to an extremely concerning possibility it suggested that the hydraulic systems which powered the plane's fight controls had lost pressure the flight engineer watched in horror as all hydraulic systems bled out within seconds the fight controls had been rendered completely ineffective the captain asked the flight engineer whether it was really the case that the hydraulic pressure had reached zero [Applause] [Music] the Pilot's worst fears were confirmed all indications were at zero the loss of all hydraulic power was practically a death sentence without it the Pilot's controls were useless no matter how much they tried to use their control columns to make the plane climb descend or turn left or right it wouldn't work and as for the rudder on the tail fin that was an even worse shape it had been blown completely free of the plane the pilots had essentially become passengers on their own aircraft the controller offered radar vectors to guide the crew back in [Music] [Music] Fair traffic control this was the first sign that this was a serious emergency this wasn't just a plane returning with a faulty engine or a sick passenger it was out of control normally a plane's tail fin or vertical stabilizer acts like the fins on an arrow or a dart stabilizing its path through the air without it Flight 123 began to swing from side to side like a Falling Leaf in a phenomenon known as Dutch roll this was a nauseating movement for the passengers many of whom began to feel ill on top of the Terror from the decompression and with the rotter now gone from the aircraft the pilots had no way to stop this motion but this side to side movement was not the only controlled problem the pilots had without hydraulic power to move the plane's elevators the pilots could no longer control the pitch of the aircraft as a result the plane began to enter a terrifying roller coaster cycle first it pitched up and began climbing but as it climbed it lost speed and began to pitch back down and descend then as it descended it gained speed and began pitching back up again this sickening cycle is known as fugoid motion and it continued unabated with the plane gaining and losing thousands of feet with every cycle for the passengers this was like something out of a nightmare it was clear that the plane was in the most fundamental sense out of control Manny began writing notes to loved ones the flight attendants rushed around the cabin instructing the passengers on how to use the oxygen masks while stopping to take breaths from the few spare masks hanging from the ceilings this picture was taken by one of the passengers on board the chaos in the cabin Rings through here you can see a flight attendant taking oxygen from one of the spare masks incredibly in the cockpit the pilot still hadn't done their oxygen masks they were so focused on trying to regain control of the plane that they didn't even think to do this but now hypoxia was beginning to set in and at their altitude of 24 000 feet there is only about one-third as much oxygen as there is at ground level the Pilot's Focus was narrowing and their ability to think critically was becoming impaired over the next few minutes discussion between the crew members became increasingly sparse Tokyo Air Traffic Control called the flight but the pilots were so mentally overloaded from the emergency and from hypoxia that they didn't respond to the controller's calls the rest of the air traffic in the area continued on as normal receiving their instructions from Air Traffic Control to climb descend and change headings high above the Japanese Countryside the pilots of fight 123 and their more than 500 passengers were on their own there was however one part of the plane which the pilots could still control the engines so the question was how would they be able to use just the engines to control the movement of the plane in theory the pilots might be able to dampen the up and down motion of the plane by manipulating the engine power at just the right moments in the cycle they could try to stop it from climbing too much by reducing the engine power as the plane entered a climb and then increasing it again as the plane began descending with a bit of trial and error the pilots could try to get the timing just right and get the plane to fly within a much narrower range of altitudes once the pilots could stabilize the plane's altitude they could then start thinking about ways to dampen the incessant and sickening rolling motion of the plane the task ahead of them was monumental with death staring them straight in the face the three Pilots now dulled by hypoxia would have to learn how to control their crippled aircraft precisely with nothing more than their engines their training on the 747 was extensive and between them they had Decades of flying experience but this situation was beyond anything they had ever encountered as the pilots tried their hands at this new way of controlling the plane Tokyo Air Traffic Control chimed in with some options the captain decided that he would rather return to haneda than fly to Nagoya which was closer Anita was bigger and had more extensive Emergency Services if he could make it to a Runway it was going to be more of a controlled crash than an emergency landing he would need all the help he could get for his 509 passengers the controller could hear the stress in the captain's voice and to lighten his workload he told him that he could now speak in Japanese meanwhile the fight Engineers spoke via interphone with the flight attendants in the back of the aircraft trying to get a grasp of what had happened at this point the pilots were still completely in the dark about the nature of the damage to the aircraft [Applause] [Music] all right yeah [Music] you're welcome [Music] [Applause] [Music] the stewardess told the flight engineer that the back of the plane had been damaged and that a baggage compartment had collapsed he relayed this information to the pilots and also told them that the passengers were all wearing their oxygen masks but the two pilots didn't respond by this point they were hypoxic and so overloaded from their desperate attempts to control the plane that they couldn't process what he was saying their situation would have been dire even without hypoxia but with it it became nearly hopeless the human brain makes up just two percent of the body's weight but it uses 20 percent of its oxygen and the Brain area most sensitive to a reduction in oxygen supply is the cortex the thin layer of cells on the brain's surface this part of the brain is responsible for higher order functions like problem solving and carrying out complex tasks in other words exactly the kinds of things the pilots needed in this emergency the flight engineer continued to try to get through to the captain pressing him on the need to start an emergency descent [Applause] hello [Music] this time the pilots responded and they agreed they needed to put on their oxygen masks and start descending immediately but this is not what happened unable to think clearly the crew continued their fruitless battle with the aircraft's controls but on one front they had made some progress by carefully timing their movements of the thrust levers the pilots had managed to dampen the severe fugoid motions of the plane it was still following the up down cycle but not as dramatically as before this was a significant Improvement in their situation and a source of Hope for the crew they had now proven that they could control the altitude of the plane at least to some extent using just the engines but they would have to do a lot more than just maintain altitude if they were to make it back to an airport Japan Airlines contacted the pilots and asked them about their whereabouts they had received word from Air Traffic Control that the plane was in distress quite how much trouble it was in though they had no idea the flight engineer told them that the right hand door at the back of the aircraft had broken perhaps fallen off the aircraft as it happened this wasn't the case but it was all he could glean from his instruments as he tried to make sense of the aircraft's widespread failures [Music] so the foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign was not in an emergency descent in fact it hadn't descended at all the plane was still cycling up and down between 20 000 feet and 25 000 feet passengers sitting on the right hand side of the plane could see Mount Fuji passing by beneath them and just beyond it the sprawling Metropolis of Tokyo it was so tantalizingly close and yet at the same time impossibly Out Of Reach if the crew were going to get back to the airport they would need to descend hello the first officer pushed the control column fully forward with all of his strength but it was no good it seemed that no matter how hard they tried the pilots couldn't get the plane to descend to have any hope they would need to try something different that's when the flight engineer had an idea [Applause] it was a good idea lowering the landing gear would slow the plane down which would help it descend it was unorthodox but put mildly so was everything else on this flight but the captain didn't think it would be possible to lower the landing gear without hydraulic power all of the plane's controls apart from the engine thrust levers have become mere decorations in the cockpit cruel ornaments mocking the crew's near total loss of control but there was still one way that the crew could lower the gear if they could only think of it on the 747 as on most aircraft it's possible to lower the gear without the use of hydraulic power by just letting them drop under their own weight the flight engineer suggested this method to the captain [Applause] the captain wasn't sure if he wanted the gear lowered just yet he and the first officer had been trying for minutes to stabilize the plane's flight path and against the odds they had achieved some level of success here by lowering the gear they would risk throwing all of that progress out the window but in the end the captain knew they had no choice they would have to lower the gear at some point anyway so why not now the pilots tried the alternate gear extension method slowly but surely the 747's massive landing gear began to drop into the slipstream a few moments later they were down and locked into place but aerodynamically the results were mixed on one hand the up and down motions of the plane had lessened somewhat however the Dutch roll had gotten stronger whatever the pilots did it seemed as if they could only smooth out one axis at a time either the vertical or the horizontal but not both it was beginning to Dawn on them that their situation might be hopeless but they continued fighting now they were going to attempt to use the engines to steer the plane back to Tokyo the first officer pushed the engines on the left side of the plane to high power and kept those on the right side at a lower power the plane continued swaying from side to side but gradually it swayed over to the right back towards the city as the giant plane made its turn Tokyo control tried to contact the crew but nothing the controller could possibly say could even come close to maturing at this point early on in their training Pilots are taught the phrase aviate navigate communicate this is the order of importance when flying a plane and the pilots of fight 123 were barely able to do the first of them aviate communication with the ground was the last thing on their minds the captain told his colleagues to ignore the controller and focus on flying the plane with reduced power on the engines and the gear fully extended the plane finally began to descend for the first time since leaving Tokyo the plane had now dipped below 20 000 feet a few more thousand feet and the air would have enough oxygen for the pilots to breathe by this point they were physically and mentally exhausted and in the hypoxic state they didn't think to switch which thrust levers were producing high power in order to stop the turn when they started to point towards Tokyo rather than switching them around and pushing the right hand engines to a higher thrust setting they had simply reduced thrust to all of the engines the turn they had started with the intention of heading back to Tokyo now simply continued all the way around in the cabin the passenger's oxygen supply was beginning to run out if the pilots couldn't get the plane down to 10 000 feet soon they too would become hypoxic on the ground shocked onlookers watched as a 747 carine through the sky above them some people took photos of the aircraft despite the graininess of these two photos the missing tale is clearly visible it was obvious even from the ground that this aircraft was in extreme distress but the only ones who could do anything about that were the three men in the cockpit and even they were barely hanging on as the plane descended the amount of oxygen in the air slowly began to rise gradually the Pilot's mental capacity returned mere reflex and half-conscious reaction was beginning to be replaced by conscious deliberate thought for the first time since the explosion the crew could now think about their situation rather than just react to it and as they did the true gravity of the situation became apparent to them [Music] [Applause] [Music] a total loss of hydraulic power is an extremely rare event in a passenger airliner but on the few occasions where it had happened it didn't end well the pilots of Flight 123 were well aware of this as they regained Lucidity at lower altitudes but at the same time they were now better placed than ever to regain control of their aircraft no longer suffering the dulling effects of hypoxia they would finally be able to coordinate their problem-solving efforts and work together as a crew in the passenger cabin a flight attendant made an announcement to the passengers that they would soon be able to take their oxygen masks off remember but this very Saving Grace a lower altitude now brought a new Danger straight ahead of the plane loomed a towering mountain range [Applause] but it wasn't clear that a turn would be enough to clear the mountains they would also need to climb back up to a higher altitude [Applause] [Music] [Applause] with all of its engines at full power the plane entered a steep climb so steep that there was a risk that it would lose speed and stall the captain told the first officer to reduce power somewhat so that they could keep the climb going without making it too steep but in its severely damaged State making precise changes to the flight path was like conducting brain surgery while wearing oven gloves controlling the pitch of the aircraft using engine power alone was an incredibly crude technique but it was the only option the pilots had but within just a few seconds the aircraft had lost a huge amount of speed if it lost any more it could stall and fall from the sky the first officer pushed the control column fully forwards but this did nothing he then pulled the engines almost back to idle and finally the plane began to pitch down it was too much the gigantic aircraft now flying at just nine thousand feet entered a terrifying dive foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the pilots pushed the four throttles fully forwards in a desperate attempt to power the plane out of its dive they were now perilously close to the mountains which began to block out the Evening Sun as the plane got lower and lower in the midst of this fight for survival Tokyo control tried to contact the aircraft individually using the selective calling system which rang ominously in the cockpit as the Pilot's battled for control with full power to the engines the plane now entered a rapid climb the steepness of which the pilots had never experienced the nose was fully 40 degrees above the horizon [Music] then as the airspeed rapidly bed off a new warning joined The Fray the stick Shaker vibrated the Pilot's controls violently alerting them to an impending stall thank you [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] once again the plane entered a horrifying Plunge [Music] [Applause] laughs the pilots knew that this couldn't go on forever they had become mere passengers on their own plane reacting to its erratic movements as they happened a witness on the ground would later describe the plane's movements as being like that of a staggering drunk the pilots knew that to have any chance of saving their Jet and its 521 passengers and crew they would need to try something different the first officer suggested lowering the flaps these would allow the plane to fly at lower speeds reducing the risk of stalling there was also a chance that they would provide some much needed stability to the plane's flight path but without hydraulic power the only way to lower the flaps was via the plane's backup electrical system the pilots activated the system and began lowering the flaps at a snail's pace powered by the electrical system rather than the immensely more powerful hydraulic system the plane's flaps began to extend the first officer continued his Herculean efforts to bring the giant aircraft under control and this time it seemed to be working by carefully timing his movements of the thrust levers he had managed to arrest the plane's roller coaster motion for the first time since the beginning of the emergency the plane was now flying roughly level the crew were now cooperating fully their minds no longer dulled by hypoxia this was their chance they had to make it back to the airport now the pilots contacted Tokyo approach control but they were so disoriented from the plane's violent movements that they had completely lost track of where they were how far were they from Tokyo now where would they have to point the plane to get back there the flight engineer asked the controller [Applause] [Music] positive [Music] they were 55 miles Northwest of Anita not that far for a 747 they could cover that distance in a matter of minutes if they could turn their plane around and head towards Tokyo there was a chance that they would be able to make it back in and given their Newfound stability this was beginning to look possible the first officer pushed the throttles forwards to counteract the drag that the flaps were now creating but the flaps which initially helped the pilot stabilize the plane now slowly began to turn against them rather than stopping at a certain point the flaps continued to extend and as they did the flaps on the left wing began to extend further than those on the right wing this created more lift on the left hand side of the plane pulling that wing skywards and putting the aircraft into a gradual right hand turn degree by degree the Pilot's hard one control was beginning to slip away from them as the plane Banks to one side the captain called for the flaps to be lowered further to 10 degrees he didn't realize it but by this time the flaps were already at 15 degrees and were continuing to drop even further second by second the imbalance between the flaps on the left and right wing only became greater the first officer pushed the thrust levers forwards but for some reason he pushed the ones on the left side to a higher power than the setting for those on the right hand side none of the crew noticed this and the plane began tipping over [Music] the plane was now on its side and slipping rapidly towards the mountains below from this low altitude there was little space to recover the aircraft began diving at over 18 000 feet per minute 10 times the normal rate of descent instinctively the pilots pulled fully back under controls with all of their might but it was too late the right wing tip and its outermost engine hit a Mountain Ridge and were ripped off the plane spun onto its back and careened into the Mountainside at hundreds of kilometers per hour igniting into an enormous Fireball air traffic controllers watched on helplessly as the plane disappeared from the radar screens they tried to contact the pilots but got no response just one minute later their worst fears were confirmed when a Japanese military aircraft reported seeing a huge burst of flames in the Nagano mountains the U.S Air Force had a plane flying nearby and offered to help to search for survivors even though it looked like there would be none but Japanese authorities rejected this offer preferring to send their own country's rescue forces to the scene of the crash [Music] however because they didn't believe anybody had survived the crash the Japanese didn't dispatch their rescue teams to the crash site until dawn the next morning a full 12 hours had passed by the time they arrived and doctors who arrived on site said that passengers whose lives could have been saved had they been discovered sooner had succumbed to their injuries during this time in all of the 524 passengers and crew only four people survived all of them were seated in the back of the aircraft this figure would likely have been higher were it not for the disgracefully late response of the Japanese authorities as a result of this crash Boeing redesigned the tale of the 747 so that rapid pressure spikes in the tail plane would no longer cause the kind of structural failure which occurred on fight123 they also redesigned the plane's hydraulic systems installing a fuse so that the loss of the aircraft's tail would not result in the total depletion of all four hydraulic systems Japan Airlines also modified their maintenance procedures putting in place stricter supervision of important repair work on making regular inspections more thorough the airline's Public Image suffered a tremendous blow as a result of the accident with bookings dropping by more than a third across the country in the weeks following the crash Flight 123 remains to this day the world's worst single aircraft crash if there's anything good to come from it apart from the safety improvements made to the 747 it's that nowadays rescue efforts are carried out as soon as possible after an accident regardless of its apparent survivability thanks for watching this episode if you'd like to see more episodes like this you can watch this playlist up here and if you'd like to support the channel and join all these people you can sign up on patreon and I put the link to that just at the bottom of the screen here thanks again for watching and I'll see you soon for the next episode