Original subtitles

This is the story of one of the most

tragic incidents in aviation history.

Of how a jumbo jet goes berserk,

plunging up and down at 7,300 meters.

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 air crash in history.

Japan Airlines 123 is uncontrollable.

Next...

3000.

We're not getting any oxygen.

We have the terrain alarm.

We are in an emergency.

This may be the last video ever taken

of Japan Airlines Flight 123.

It's late summer, and millions are traveling home

for a traditional Japanese holiday.

Something exploded?

Put the oxygen masks on, please!

Japan Air 123. Request--

The plane is only 12 minutes into its flight

when terror strikes...

It's out of control, plunging up and down,

hundreds of meters 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,

while the pilots resort to desperate measures

to keep the plane aloft...

Tokyo, Japan.

August 12, 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 Narita.

It's six o'clock in the evening,

but the rush won't be over for hours.

Crowded passenger lists and busy controllers

make it a typical holiday weekend.

Roger, approved as your request.

456, turn right on the heading 2-5-0.

Climb and maintain flight level 2-4-0.

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 6:12 in the evening Flight 123 takes off,

heading for the industrial city of Osaka,

400 kilometres to the west.

It's filled almost to capacity, 509 passengers,

and a crew of 15.

Japan Air 123, contact Tokyo Departure.

Roger. Japan Air 123.

Captain Masami Takahama is 49 years

old and one of the airline's senior training captains.

On this flight he'll be handling the radio,

and keeping an eye on the first officer,

who is 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 eight... ah, 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 meters.

12 minutes into this short flight,

the plane's black box shows that all is going well.

Hello Pat, 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.

An ordinary request on a routine day.

Something exploded!

Air is rushing out of the cabin.

The oxygen masks drop down automatically

when the air pressure falls.

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 pilot's first thought is that the landing gear doors

have blown off.

Squawk 7-7?

7-7-0-0 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 beneath Flight 123 changes.

Someone in the cockpit has keyed in the emergency signal.

Fasten your seatbelts.

The plane's crew members 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 okay.

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.

Instead, they are controlled by hydraulic fluid

which flows in pipes around the aircraft.

It's the lifeblood of the plane.

Tokyo, Japan Air 123.

Request immediate--

Trouble.

Request return back to Haneda. Over.

Roger approved as you request.

Turn right, heading 0-9-0.

Put the mask on securely.

Put the band around your head, like this.

- Don't bank so much. - Yes.

Crew members 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 7,300 meters up in the air,

traveling at nearly 540 kilometers an hour,

and unable to control the plane.

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,

that's right? - That's 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.

Do we want to make a fuss?

The crew seems paralyzed 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 screens tell them it's flying erratically

and is possibly out of control.

Right turn, descend.

Look at his altitude.

Up and down, up and down.

But now uncontrol...

Put your heart into it or it'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 1,200 meters

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.

Tokyo area control, August 12, 1985.

The controller receives an emergency signal

from a jumbo jet that left Haneda airport 13 minutes ago.

Tokyo, Japan Air 123.

Request immediate--

Trouble. Request return back to Haneda. Over.

Put the oxygen mask!

In the cabin, confusion and panic spread like wildfire.

There has been an explosion,

and now some passengers are gasping for air.

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.

At Tokyo Control,

the controller is now joined by his supervisor.

123, he's declared an emergency,

says it's uncontrollable.

He says he wants to go back to Haneda,

but his heading is all wrong. He can't seem to turn.

Get him to Nagoya. That would be the easiest.

It's a straight line.

The best solution would be for the plane to switch course to Nagoya Airport,

which is 128 kilometres straight ahead.

But they'd need to start descending immediately

if they're going to land there.

Right.

Your position 72. 7-2 miles to Nagoya.

Can you land at Nagoya?

Negative. Request back to Haneda.

It's a longer runway.

The Captain wants to try to get back to Haneda.

It's a large airport and ideally suited 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, now descending.

But the Black Box shows that he doesn't descend.

Without control of the aircraft, they can't.

In the thin atmosphere at this altitude,

the passengers are finding it difficult to breathe.

People without oxygen masks may soon become unconscious.

The situation worsens as some of the masks

at the back of the plane run out of oxygen.

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.

Oh...

Yes, what is it?

Is it in the rear?

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 it's the baggage compartment.

The furthest to the rear.

Listen, the baggage compartment right 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, Pat?

At this altitude the oxygen in their blood starts to fall.

First their judgement may become impaired.

Eventually they may lose consciousness.

The R5, Pat? Yes, I understand.

Captain, the R5 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 it'd be better to use 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 said they received an emergency call from you at--

Listen, right now the R5 door has broken.

Roger. Is the captain returning to Tokyo?

- What? - Can you return to Haneda?

Ah, just a moment, we're making an emergency descent.

We'll contact you again in a little while.

Keep monitoring us, please.

Roger.

The 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 kilometers above the ground.

But there's a worse possibility.

If the door hit the tail of the aircraft,

it could have 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 television is already breaking into

regular programming with live interviews.

Someone saw the crippled jet fly overhead.

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 they push the throttles forward when the plane is 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 left side of the aircraft,

they manage to slowly turn the plane right,

in the general direction of Tokyo.

But then their luck runs out.

In the frantic juggling of throttles,

the pilots get out of step.

It drives the 747 into a frenzy.

Gear down! Gear down! Put the gear down.

Lowering the landing gear should slow the plane down

and make it more stable.

Doesn't work.

Shall I lower it with 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 stabilize the plane.

The drag of the undercarriage has a dampening effect

on the pitching motion.

But it also destroys the directional control they were getting

by applying more power to one side of the aircraft.

Close to Mount Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan,

the plane makes an abrupt turn to the right

and begins a terrifying dive.

The plane is falling at 900 meters a minute,

twice the normal rate of descent.

We're going down.

Heavy.

Is the wheel pushed all the way?

All the way. It's all the way.

- Ah, heavy. - Is the gear down?

Gear's down!

There's no need for alarm!

The plane's Black Box records the flight attendant

still trying to calm the passengers.

Japan Air 123, uncontrollable!

He's gonna hit the mountain.

Tokyo Control, Tokyo control, good day to you sir, this is...

All station, all station, except Japan Air 123:

keep silent until further advised.

...uncontrollable!

Understood.

Do you wish to contact-- - Stay with us, please.

Stay with us.

Just as suddenly the plane comes out of its dive.

They've dropped over 3000 meters.

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.

Hey, mountain! Look out! Turn right.

- Yes. - Right.

Right! Right!

We're going to hit the mountain. Max power.

Applying maximum power in order to lift the nose

is their only option.

We're going to hit it.

Right! Right! Power! Power!

I'm trying!

In their efforts to control the plane,

they've allowed the speed to drop too much.

To escape the mountain they need maximum power

to generate more speed and more lift.

We're gaining speed.

Stick with it.

Stick with it!

It's pushed all the way.

We're losing altitude.

Don't lower the nose!

It's lowering.

We're 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.

Raise the nose!

Having run out of options, the crew is forced to repeat

the same futile procedures, over and over.

They've been fighting the plane for nearly 30 minutes now.

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 radar vector to Haneda.

Roger, understood.

Keep heading 0-9-0.

But frustratingly the plane continues heading off

to the north-west, away from both Haneda airport

and Yokota Air Base.

Now, with every rise and fall of the plane,

they're barely above the mountain tops.

Can you control the aircraft now?

An ominous silence descends on area control.

Japan Air 123, switch radio frequency to 119.7.

119.7, please.

They try changing radio frequency.

If you can, change frequency to 119.7.

There is no reply.

If you read, come up on 119.7, we are all ready.

Japan Air 123,

yes, we've selected 119.7.

What is our position?

Your position... Uh, 45 miles northwest of Haneda.

In the tensions of the moment,

the controller is a bit confused

and mistakes the plane's distance from Haneda.

Northwest of Haneda.

How many miles?

Yes, that is correct.

On our radar, you're 55, 5-5 miles northwest.

We are ready for your approach anytime.

Yokota is also available for landing.

Let us know your intentions, over.

At Haneda Airport, emergency services are being mobilized

for the plane, wherever it can touch down.

Yes, roger.

They say we're 25 miles west of Kumagaya.

Suddenly, the plane goes into a steep dive, the worst yet.

Stop the flap! Power! Flap up. Flap up!

The plane is falling at 5,500 metres a minute.

Raise the nose!

Flap up! Flap up!

It's stuck!

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.

At Tokyo Control,

they've lost contact with a Japan Airlines jumbo jet

full of passengers.

An American plane flying in the area

has been listening in to the drama of Flight 123

and reports seeing flames in the mountains

some hundred kilometers west of Tokyo.

One of the C130 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.

During the night, the Japanese self-defense force

arrives on the scene.

A helicopter flown by Captain Isuzu Omori finds the crash site.

The pilot radios in.

Mineokayama.

Victor 1-0-7.

I see something...

I see flames in about 10 spots over an area

of about 300 meters square.

Victor 1-0-7. Mineokayama.

Is there any sign of survivors?

Victor 1-0-7. No sign of survivors.

Visibility poor.

Too much smoke.

Victor 1-0-7. Can you land to investigate?

Not a chance.

It's a 45-degree slope down there, nowhere to put down.

And there's fire everywhere.

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

68 kilometers from the crash site.

At the crash site, the passengers of flight 123 lie dying...

The next morning...

the last minutes of Flight 123 start to become clear.

The 747 sliced a path through the trees

near the top of Mount Osutaka,

one of the mountains north of Mount Fuji.

The plane finally hit a ridge

several hundred meters further on, and exploded.

The wreckage and passengers then tumbled down

the steep side of the mountain.

It's now 14 hours after the crash,

and the Japanese Self-Defense Force rescue team arrives at the scene.

They are confronted with the worst single aircraft accident in history.

They are shocked to find a survivor.

It's the offduty 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

at which the aircraft hit the ground,

those at the front of the plane experienced a sudden stop

of over 100 G's.

The four survivors are hurried to a hospital in Fujioka City.

Investigators will soon discover that all four

of the 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 harsh panting and gasping noises

from many people.

I heard it coming from everywhere all around me.

There was a boy crying "mother."

I clearly heard a young woman saying, "Come quickly."

Suddenly, I heard a boy's voice, "Okay, I'll hang on," he said.

It sounded like the voice of a boy of about school age.

In the darkness I could hear the sound of a helicopter.

I couldn't see any light,

but I could hear the sound and it was quite near too.

"We'll be saved", I thought, and waved frantically.

But the helicopter went further away.

"Don't go" I waved desperately.

"Help".

But it faded...

I could no longer hear the voices of the boy or the young woman.

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.

So, it was a very big concern on our part,

uh, about whether there was a problem with the 747,

an airworthiness problem.

And so we had to jump on this very quickly to learn what had happened.

At the Washington Headquarters of the NTSB,

the chairman was extremely concerned

at the potential consequences for world aviation.

He wrote a personal note to his opposite number in Japan,

begging him to invite the NTSB to join the investigation

as "guests".

During the late 70s and 80s,

Ron Schleede was involved with many of the major foreign investigations

for 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, uh, extremely stressful.

The news media were everywhere.

There was a tremendous 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 teams' 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 stick, stuck very close to us

and, uh, 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 site to look up at this mountain

and see what looked like wreckage from an airplane at a distance,

but you could not recognize any part of an airplane.

There were scores of helicopters 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 mountain site on foot,

and build shrines to their loved ones.

From above, flowers rained down on the investigators.

I recall these big white, I believe they were Chinook helicopters,

flying over and, uh, there were families aboard the helicopters

looking at the accident site. They were quite high

and they were dropping flowers, 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.

And they found many, many notes written on pieces of paper,

anything they can get their hands on.

My darling wife, life with you has been wonderful.

Our children have grown up to be people I'm proud of.

I never dreamed that the dinner we had last night

would be our last together.

Passengers were able to think and realize

that they were out of control.

And maybe gonna crash, so they wrote notes to their loved ones

and left them in the back of the seats or in their pockets.

But what could have caused this disaster?

Neither the heartrending 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 had 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 is found by the investigators amidst the wreckage.

The flight engineer was wrong.

Ah, right now the R5 door is broken.

The warning light on his panel led 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.

Lift the flaps! Power! Power! Power! Flaps up...

Flap up! Flap up!

It's up!

Raise the nose! Raise the nose!

Japan Airlines Flight 123

has crashed into Mt Osutaka, taking hundreds of lives.

Investigators are worried about a hidden fault in the Boeing 747.

They need to find the cause of this crash quickly.

A photograph taken by an amateur photographer

provides 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 photograph,

to sharpen up its blurred lines.

Finally, they get a clear enough picture.

The whole, huge tail fin 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.

hen, a Japanese Navy ship,

steaming across the bay south of Tokyo,

came upon the plane's tail fin 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.

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 tail fin,

and the main hydraulic lines with it,

making the plane uncontrollable.

- This may be hopeless! - The hydraulic fluid is all gone!

All lost!

Explosion, decompression, loss of the tail fin

and hydraulic failure:

the investigators need to find out what links

these four elements together.

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.

All modern jets, uh, aircraft, when they climb

they have to be pressurized to keep the cabin

to a reasonable level for the passengers.

So, let's take a 747.

When a 747 is on the ground,

it's actually somewhat oval shaped

and as it climbs and pressurizes, it becomes more circular.

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 pressurized air escaping from the cabin

out through the tail of the aircraft.

It must to be very, very heavy and strong

because the forces are tremendous.

They're over eight PSI differential.

Very-- A lot of pressure.

The design of a 747 aft pressure bulk head

was what they call a dome.

And it was designed to take the pressure

with a lot less heavy metal.

And it's a typical design, it's a pressure dome.

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 repair had, in fact, not been done correctly.

There was only one row of rivets holding that joint together.

Where there should have been two rows of rivets

holding the joint together.

To explain to the Japanese investigators what he 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 have been.

One of the FAA engineers there did some calculations for us

based on the earlier repair of the bulkhead

and his theory was that if repair wasn't done correctly,

for example if they had not put the rivets in properly

and they had only one row of rivets holding the bulkhead together versus two,

as designed, that it possibly could--

It would fail prematurely.

The FAA engineer calculated that the faulty repair

to the bulkhead would fail after 10,000 flights.

From the moment the repair was done,

it was simply a matter of time.

The investigators found that a simple human error had led to this.

Raise the nose!

On a summer's evening in 1985,

Japan Air 123 lifts off from Haneda Airport.

It is its 12,319 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 7,300 meters,

the air outside gets thinner and thinner.

But the air inside the cabin is pressurized,

for the passengers comfort.

The difference of pressure between the passenger cabin on one side of the bulkhead

and the unpressurized 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 pressurized air from the cabin blows a hole

in it two to three meters square...

...bringing down the ceiling around the rear toilets.

The highly pressurized air blasts its way into the tail fin 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 stabilizing influence of the tail

and with the loss of ability to control the rudder and flaps,

the pilots cannot control the plane.

The giant aircraft now oscillates

in a terrifying motion called the '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 meters at a time.

It really can be considered a miracle that the pilots

were able to keep the airplane flying for 30 minutes or more,

after having lost all their hydraulics and flight controls.

But it kept circling and 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 as long as they could

and hope for some miracle which never occurred.

Lower the nose, lower the nose!

Yes!

Gear down! Gear down!

To understand what the pilots were up against,

four handpicked flight crews were placed in a simulator

and confronted with the same situation.

Not one of them could land the plane.

The pilots of flight 123 managed to keep their plane in the air

for 30 minutes much of it among high mountains,

an amazing feat of flying.

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.

And when we, uh, described our findings to him,

you can imagine this Boeing man became very, very upset.

Uh, personally, uh, was crying

because of the fact that his airplane that he designed

and then the people that did the repair,

it was Boeing people that designed and did the repair

had made 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 has taken years for Japan Airlines to recover

from this experience,

the worst single plane crash in history.

difuze