The Single Deadliest Air Crash In History: Japan Airlines Flight 123 | Mayday S3 EP3 | Wonder

paper was light gold in medieval times i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong 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 [Music] japan airlines flight 123 is uncontrollable next [Music] week 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 [Music] 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 resorted desperate measures to keep the plane aloft tokyo japan august 12th 1985. in most of japan it's the eve of obon when people traditionally honor 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 pathway request 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 umi 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 kilometers to the west it's filled almost to capacity 509 passengers and a crew of fifteen yeah one two three contact tokyo departure roger japan here one two three one 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'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 one two three passing eight eight hundred jal-123's route will take it south over enchu bay then southwest 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 pet 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 seat belt light is turned off an ordinary request on a routine day something extraordinary 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 your door here what check you [Music] the pilot's first thought is that the landing gear doors have blown off squawk seven seven 7700 is the emergency code when the crew radios this code to the ground air traffic control will know the plane is in trouble [Music] 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 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 okay ominously the pilots can't get the plane to respond it's dropping right turn right turn i don't like pressure it's trapping 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're controlled by hydraulic fluid which flows in pipes around the aircraft it's the lifeblood of the plane approved as your request turn right heading zero nine zero 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 [Music] no no ah 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 laws are lost no look i lost yes the company please make a request to the company please do you want to make a bus crew seem 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 put your heart into it 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 1200 meters only to level off and begin to climb again this repeats itself over and over again the pilots cannot understand this bizarre behavior and they are powerless to stop it tokyo area control august the 12th 1985. the controller receives an emergency signal from a jumbo jet that left haneda airport 13 minutes ago request return back to haneda in the cabin confusion and panic spread like wildfire there's been an explosion and now some passengers are gasping for air hydraulic pressure's dropped the plane's precious hydraulic fluid is gone that's why the flight controls aren't working properly don't bang 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 john 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 game to nagoya that'll 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 kilometers straight ahead [Music] but they'd need to start descending immediately if they're going to land [Music] there right your position 72 72 miles to nagoya can you run that nagoya negative request back to haneda it's the wrong 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 uh 123 can you descend 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 planet 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 listen right now the packaging right at the back has collapsed i think we 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 the mask 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 at this altitude the oxygen in their blood starts to fall first their judgment may become impaired eventually they may lose consciousness the r5 pet yes i understand captain the r5 massive stop 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 [Music] still the captain and his crew seem to be drowning in confusion [Music] i think we better make an emergency descent yes shall we use our mass too we better i think we better use the oxygen mass 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 and listen right now the r5 door has broken uh roger is the captain returning to tokyo what can you return to haneda uh uh just a moment uh we are making an emergency descent uh we'll contact you again in a little while uh keep monitoring us please 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 [Music] 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 roller coaster ride then a second experiment by applying more thrust to the engines on the left side of the aircraft they managed 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 lowering the landing gear should slow the plane down and make it more stable doesn't work 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 hitting the wheel on the way all the way it's all the way heavy get the gear down gears down the plane's black box records the flight attendants still trying to calm the passengers [Music] he's gonna hit 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 3 000 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 applying maximum power in order to lift the nose is their only option 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 it first the passengers grasped 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 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 the air traffic controllers japanese and american are desperate to help to give flight 123 any information or reassurance they can request a radar vector understood keep heading zero niner zero but frustratingly the plane continues heading off to the northwest away from both haneda airport and yokota air base [Music] 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 japanese 123 switch radio frequency to 119 decimal seven one one nine decimal seven please they try changing radio frequency if you can change the frequency to one one nine decimal seven there is no reply if you read come up on one one nine decimal seven we are all ready [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] northwest of haneda in the tensions of the moment the controller is a bit confused and mistakes the plane's distance from haneda north west of haneda [Music] how many miles yes that is correct on our radar you're 55 55 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 the plane is falling at 5 500 meters a flip minute [Applause] [Music] oh japanese 123 japanese 123 can you hear me japan air 123 japan here 123 do you read 123 japan air 123 japan air 123 is gone at tokyo control they've lost contact with the japan airlines jumbo jet full of passengers an american plane flying in the area has been listening into the drama of flight 123 and reports seeing flames in the mountains some hundred kilometers west of tokyo [Music] 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 repel 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 victor [Music] 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 [Music] at the crash site the passengers of flight 123 lie dying [Music] the next morning the last moments of flight 123 start to become clear the 747 sliced a path through the trees near the top of mount ossutaka 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 [Music] 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 [Music] incredibly two more passengers are alive a young mother and her eight-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 a hundred 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 had 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 will be saved i thought and waved frantically but the helicopter went further away don't go i waved disparately help but it faded i could no longer hear the voices of the boy or the younger 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 [Music] ron schlied a top investigator with america's national transportation safety board the ntsb was assigned the case so it was very big concern on our part about whether there was a problem with the 747 an air worthiness problem and so we had to jump on this very quickly to learn what happened at the washington headquarters of the ntsb the chairman was extremely concerned of 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 schlied 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 tremendous amount of anger once in japan schlied 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 was considered suspicious japanese airline personnel boeing personnel were considered suspicious they weren't even allowed to go to the accident site [Music] 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 we supervised them while they were on scene they could not operate on their own found that to gain access to the site the japanese had quickly constructed helicopter landing pads [Music] it was an amazing sight to look up at this mountain and see what looked like wreckage from an airplane in 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 minutes [Music] amidst the wreckage of jal-123 schleid 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 there were chinook helicopters flying over and 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 could get their hands on my darling wife life with you has been wonderful our children have grown up to be people i am 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 going to crash so they wrote notes to their loved ones and left them in the back of the seats or in their pockets [Music] 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 stabilizer 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 ah right now 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 [Music] stop the flap power power [Music] [Music] japan airlines flight 123 has crashed into mount 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 [Music] then 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 [Applause] 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 [Music] whatever it was also ripped off the tail fin and the main hydraulic lines with it making the plane uncontrollable decompression loss of the tail fin and hydraulic failure the investigators need to find out what links these four elements together [Music] ah 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 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 the 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 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 af pressure bulkhead was what they call a dome and uh it was uh designed to take the pressure with a lot less heavy metal and it's a 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 schleed 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 schlied 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 fa engineers there did some calculations for us based on this earlier repair of the bulkhead and his theory was if the repair wasn't done correctly for example if they had not put the rivets in properly and they only had one row of rivets holding the bulkhead together versus two as designed that it possibly could 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 [Music] the investigators found that a simple human error had led to this on a summer's evening in 1985 japan air 123 lifts off from haneda airport it's the three hundred and nineteenth takeoff since the repair of the damaged bulkhead a repair that the investigators calculated would only hold for ten thousand flights [Music] 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 [Music] 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 tailpin 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 fugoid 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 could be considered a miracle that the pilots were able to keep the airplane flying for 30 minutes or more after having lost all the hydraulics in their flight controls but it kept circling and eventually worked its way into the mountains and it became impossible for them to uh 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 lord to understand what the pilots were up against four hand-picked 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 jl accident was identified ron schlied 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 described our findings to him you can imagine this boeing man became very very upset uh personally was crying because of the fact that his airplane that he designed and then the people that did the repair because 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 [Music] 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 rumors abounded in japan that the airline was indeed guilty and that boeing was just taking the wrap for a valuable customer it's taken years for japan airlines to recover from this experience the worst single plane crash in history [Music] you

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Keywords: Wonder, wonder channel, survivial videos, survival stories, i shouldn't be alive, wonder i shouldn't be alive, outdoor channel, extreme documentary, air crash investigation full episodes, mayday crash investigation, air crash investigation, mayday air crash investigation, plane crash documentary, mayday crash animation, mayday air crash compilation follow me, mayday crash compilation, japan airlines 123, japan airlines flight 123, japan airlines flight 123 survivors

Id: MZWqlTm31yw

Length: 50min 25sec (3025 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021