Mayday (2013) s03e03 Episode Script
Out of Control
VOICEOVER: 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 7,300m .
.
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 Flight 123 is uncontrollable.
THEME MUSIC This may be the last video ever taken of Japan Airlines Flight 123.
It's late summer and millions are travelling home for a traditional Japanese holiday.
EXPLOSION Something exploded.
(all scream) Put onput your 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 metres at a time and it's headed straight into the mountains that surround Mount Fuji - the tallest mountain in Japan.
On the ground, Japan Airlines staff search frantically for the cause of the problem.
In Tokyo, air traffic controllers try to guide the plane to safety while the pilots resort to desperate measures to keep the plane aloft.
(Speaks Japanese) 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.
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, 400km 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's sitting in the captain's seat.
Utaka 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 8er, 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 7,300m.
12 minutes into this short flight, the plane's black box shows that all is going well.
- PHONE RINGS - 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 seatbelt light is turned off Careful, please.
.
.
an ordinary request on a routine day.
EXPLOSION (all scream) Something exploded.
(all scream) Air is rushing out of the cabin.
The oxygen masks drop down automatically when the air pressure falls.
(all scream) Put your oxygen masks on! Fasten seatbelts! Seatbelts, please! Fasten your seatbelts! 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 77.
7700 is the emergency code.
When the crew radios this code to the ground, air traffic control will know the plane is in trouble.
Every plane on the controller's screen carries a label giving the plane's identity.
Suddenly, the label beneath Flight 123 changes.
Someone in the cockpit has keyed in the emergency signal.
BEEPING - (all scream) - Fasten seatbelts! 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! - I don't have 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're controlled by hydraulic fluid which flows in pipes around the aircraft.
It's the lifeblood of the plane.
CONTROL TOWER: Tokyo, Japan Air 123, request immediate Trouble.
Request return back to Haneda, over.
Roger, approved as you request.
Turn right to heading 090.
YUMI: Put the mask on securely.
Put the band around your head like this.
- Don't bank so much.
- Yes.
Crew members, please, help with the oxygen bottles.
Prepare the oxygen bottles, please! Don't bank so much.
- Turn it back.
- It won't go back.
Nothing seems to be working.
All the controls are dead, they're 7,300m up in the air, travelling at nearly 540km/h 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! You want to make fuss? The crew seem paralysed and don't radio the airline or answer the tower.
The officials on the ground don't know that the plane has lost its hydraulic power, but their 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.
What now? No control! Put your heart into it or it will stall.
The hydraulics failure has caused a serious problem.
For the last few minutes, the plane has begun flying in an alarming pattern.
First it climbs steeply, then tips over and goes into a terrifying dive of 1,200m, only to level off and begin to climb again.
This repeats itself over and over again.
The pilots cannot understand this bizarre behaviour and they are powerless to stop it.
(All scream) At Tokyo Control, the controller is now joined by his supervisor.
What's up? JAL 123, he's declared an emergency.
Says it's uncontrollable.
He says he wants to go back to Haneda, but his heading's all wrong - he can't seem to turn.
Get him to Nagoya, that will be the easiest - it's a straight line.
The best solution would be for the plane to switch course to Nagoya Airport which is 128km straight ahead.
But they'd need to start descending immediately if they're going to land there.
Right, your position - 72, 72 miles to Nagoya.
Can you land at Nagoya? Negative.
Request back to Haneda.
No, no.
They're round the wrong way.
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.
Ah, 123, can you descend? Roger 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.
(all scream) 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.
PHONE RINGS Yes, what is it? The flight attendant tells the engineer that the explosion has occurred in the rear of the plane.
and may have come from the baggage compartment.
So, in the baggage compartment farthest to the rear? Listen, now! 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? At this altitude, the oxygen in their blood starts to fall.
First, their judgment may become impaired.
Eventually, they may lose consciousness.
The R5? 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 better.
I think we better use the oxygen masks.
Yes.
But they don't put on their masks.
No-one knows why.
It might be indecision, or hypoxia beginning to cloud their judgment.
At Japan Airlines in Tokyo, Flight Operations have been alerted to the emergency but are as mystified as everyone else on the ground.
All they know is that over 500 lives are at stake.
It's their job to try to diagnose the problem and come up with a solution while the plane is in the air.
This is Japan Air, Tokyo.
Tokyo Control said they received an emergency call from you Listen, right now the R5 door has broken.
Roger, is the captain returning to Tokyo? - What? - Can you return to Haneda? Ah, ah, just a moment.
We are making an emergency descent.
Ah, we'll contact you again in a little while.
Keep monitoring us, please.
Roger.
R5 door - could it have come off? If the door has come off, that could mean an explosive decompression of the cabin as the air rushes out.
Passengers may have been sucked out kilometres above the ground.
But there's a worse possibility - if the door hit the tail of the aircraft, it could 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.
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.
Both hands.
Gear down.
Gear down! Put the gear down.
Lowering the landing gear should slow the plane down and make it more stable.
It doesn't work.
Should I throw the alternate? For safety, 747s employ an electrically-run system - separate from the hydraulics - that can lower the landing gear in an emergency.
While the engines are turning, they still have electric power.
Lowering the landing gear helps stabilise the plane.
The drag of the undercarriage has a dampening effect on the pitching motion.
But it also destroys the directional control they were getting by applying more power to one side of the aircraft.
Max power! Max power! Close to Mount Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan, the plane makes an abrupt turn to the right and begins a terrifying dive.
(all scream) The plane is falling at 900m a minute - twice the normal rate of descent.
We're going down.
Turn the wheel all the way.
All the way.
It's all the way.
- Heavy.
- Get the gear down.
Gear's down! MAN ON RADIO: Tokyo Control.
Good day to you, sir, this is All station, all station, except the Japan Air 123, keep silent until further advised.
TAKAHAMA: Uncontrollable! Understood.
They've dropped over 3,000m.
They're now in amongst towering mountains, but at least there's more oxygen at this altitude.
The pilots have been fighting the plane for an intense 22 minutes since the explosion.
This may be hopeless.
The hydraulic fluid is all gone.
It's uncontrollable! Hey, mountain! Correct.
Right, bank 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, right! - ALARM - Power.
Power! - Keep trying! - ALARM 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.
Oh, no! 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.
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 direction to Haneda.
Roger.
Understood.
Keep heading zero-nine-zero.
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 your radio frequency to 119.
7.
119.
7, please.
They try changing radio frequency.
If you can, change your 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 - fiveer .
.
45 miles north-west of Haneda.
In the tensions of the moment, the controller is a bit confused and mistakes the plane's distance from Haneda.
North-west of Haneda? How many miles? Yes.
That is correct.
On our radar, you are 55, 5-5 miles north-west.
We are ready for your approach at any time.
Yokota is also available for landing.
Let us know your intentions.
Over.
At Haneda Airport, emergency services are being mobilised for the plane, wherever it can touch down.
Yes, roger.
They say we're 25 miles west of Kumagaya.
Suddenly the plane goes into a steep dive, the worst yet.
Power! Flap up! Flap up! Power! The plane is falling at 5,500m a minute.
(all scream) ALARMS SOUND Flap up! Flap up! Flap up! (all scream) Raise the nose! Raise the nose! (all scream) Raise the nose! Japan Air 123, Japan Air 123, can you hear me? Japan Air 123, Japan Air 123, do you read? Japan Air 123.
Japan Air 123.
Japan Air 123 is gone.
PHONE RINGS At Tokyo Control they've lost contact with a Japan Airlines jumbo jet full of passengers.
An American plane flying in the area has been listening in to the drama of Flight 123 and reports seeing flames in the mountains some 100km west of Tokyo.
During the night the Japanese self- defence force arrives on the scene.
A helicopter flown by Captain Isuzu Amori finds the crash site.
The pilot radios in.
MAN: Minokoyama, Victor 107.
I see something, I see flames in about ten spots over an area of about 300m square.
Victor 107, Minokoyama.
Is there any sign of survivors? Victor 107.
No signs of survivors.
Visibility poor, too much smoke.
Victor 107.
Can you land to investigate? Not a chance, it's a 45-degree slope down there, nowhere to put down, and there's fire everywhere.
Seeing no sign of survivors and unwilling to risk a landing at night, Captain Amori returns to base.
Meanwhile, a team of rescuers is on its way by road, but since they don't expect to find anyone alive they spend the night in a village 68km from the crash site.
At the crash site, the passengers of Flight 123 lie dying.
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 Osutaka - one of the mountains north of Mount Fuji.
The plane finally hit a ridge several hundred metres further on and exploded.
The wreckage and passengers then tumbled down the steep side of the mountain.
It's now 14 hours after the crash and the Japanese self-defence force rescue team arrives at the scene.
They're confronted with the worst single aircraft accident in history.
They're shocked to find a survivor.
It's the off-duty flight attendant, Yumi Ochiai, still hanging on to life.
And she is not the only one.
Rescuers find a 12-year-old girl wedged in the branches of a tree and airlift her to safety.
Incredibly, two more passengers are alive.
A young mother and her 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 100Gs.
AMBULANCE SIREN BLARES 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.
YUMI OCHIAI: 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, 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.
Once in Japan, Schleede found that the local Japanese police had taken over the investigation and were treating it like a crime scene, diligently observing his team's every move.
Schleede found that to gain access to the site, the Japanese had quickly constructed helicopter landing pads.
SCHLEEDE: It was an amazing sight to look up at this mountain and see what looked like wreckage from an airplane, at a distance, but you could not recognise 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 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.
MAN: "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 realise 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 heart-rending letters nor the tangled wreckage yet yield any answer to what happened to Flight 123.
Still the main thing the investigators have to go on are the words on the plane's cockpit voice recorder - those of the plane's flight engineer who had said that door R5 was broken.
They believe that the door has somehow come off in flight, crashed into the tail, and damaged the plane's flying surfaces - the horizontal stabiliser, which makes the plane go up and down, the rudder, which controls side to side movement.
But then, a piece of news that destroys that theory totally.
The door had not come off.
It's found by the investigators amidst the wreckage.
The flight engineer was wrong.
BEEPING Er, right now the R5 door has 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.
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.
SCHLEEDE: There had 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 pressurised 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 pressurises 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 pressurised 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 8PSI differential, a lot of pressure.
The design of the 747 aft-pressure bulkhead was what they call a dome.
And it was designed to take the pressure with a lot less heavy metal.
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 unravelled 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 FA engineers there did some calculations for us based on this earlier repair of the bulkhead.
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.
On a summer's evening in 1985, Japan Air 123 lifts off from Haneda Airport.
It's the 12,319th take-off since the repair of the damaged bulkhead, a repair that the investigators calculated would only hold for 10,000 flights.
As the plane climbs to 7,300m, the air outside gets thinner and thinner but the air inside the cabin is pressurised for the passengers' comfort.
The difference of pressure between the passenger cabin on one side of the bulkhead and the unpressurised tail on the other stretches the bulkhead and its faulty repair to the breaking point.
In a test which duplicated these conditions cracks began to appear and lengthen around the rivet holes, until .
.
the bulkhead snaps.
In an instant, pressurised air from the cabin blows a hole it 2m to 3m square (all scream) .
.
bringing down the ceiling around the rear toilets.
The highly pressurised 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 stabilising 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 metres at a time.
SCHLEEDE: 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 and their 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.
Both hands.
Haul the gear down! Gear down! To put the gear down.
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 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 described our findings to him, you can imagine this Boeing man became very, very upset.
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.
However, Japan Airlines, the innocent party, had no such comfort.
After I left the scene and came home, it was my understanding that one of the senior Japanese Airlines maintenance managers actually committed suicide.
The Japanese Airlines president resigned.
The bookings slumped.
Rumours abounded in Japan that the airline was indeed guilty, and that Boeing was just taking the rap for a valuable customer.
It's taken years for Japan Airlines to recover from this experience - the worst single plane crash in history.
.
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 Flight 123 is uncontrollable.
THEME MUSIC This may be the last video ever taken of Japan Airlines Flight 123.
It's late summer and millions are travelling home for a traditional Japanese holiday.
EXPLOSION Something exploded.
(all scream) Put onput your 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 metres at a time and it's headed straight into the mountains that surround Mount Fuji - the tallest mountain in Japan.
On the ground, Japan Airlines staff search frantically for the cause of the problem.
In Tokyo, air traffic controllers try to guide the plane to safety while the pilots resort to desperate measures to keep the plane aloft.
(Speaks Japanese) 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.
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, 400km 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's sitting in the captain's seat.
Utaka 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 8er, 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 7,300m.
12 minutes into this short flight, the plane's black box shows that all is going well.
- PHONE RINGS - 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 seatbelt light is turned off Careful, please.
.
.
an ordinary request on a routine day.
EXPLOSION (all scream) Something exploded.
(all scream) Air is rushing out of the cabin.
The oxygen masks drop down automatically when the air pressure falls.
(all scream) Put your oxygen masks on! Fasten seatbelts! Seatbelts, please! Fasten your seatbelts! 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 77.
7700 is the emergency code.
When the crew radios this code to the ground, air traffic control will know the plane is in trouble.
Every plane on the controller's screen carries a label giving the plane's identity.
Suddenly, the label beneath Flight 123 changes.
Someone in the cockpit has keyed in the emergency signal.
BEEPING - (all scream) - Fasten seatbelts! 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! - I don't have 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're controlled by hydraulic fluid which flows in pipes around the aircraft.
It's the lifeblood of the plane.
CONTROL TOWER: Tokyo, Japan Air 123, request immediate Trouble.
Request return back to Haneda, over.
Roger, approved as you request.
Turn right to heading 090.
YUMI: Put the mask on securely.
Put the band around your head like this.
- Don't bank so much.
- Yes.
Crew members, please, help with the oxygen bottles.
Prepare the oxygen bottles, please! Don't bank so much.
- Turn it back.
- It won't go back.
Nothing seems to be working.
All the controls are dead, they're 7,300m up in the air, travelling at nearly 540km/h 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! You want to make fuss? The crew seem paralysed and don't radio the airline or answer the tower.
The officials on the ground don't know that the plane has lost its hydraulic power, but their 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.
What now? No control! Put your heart into it or it will stall.
The hydraulics failure has caused a serious problem.
For the last few minutes, the plane has begun flying in an alarming pattern.
First it climbs steeply, then tips over and goes into a terrifying dive of 1,200m, only to level off and begin to climb again.
This repeats itself over and over again.
The pilots cannot understand this bizarre behaviour and they are powerless to stop it.
(All scream) At Tokyo Control, the controller is now joined by his supervisor.
What's up? JAL 123, he's declared an emergency.
Says it's uncontrollable.
He says he wants to go back to Haneda, but his heading's all wrong - he can't seem to turn.
Get him to Nagoya, that will be the easiest - it's a straight line.
The best solution would be for the plane to switch course to Nagoya Airport which is 128km straight ahead.
But they'd need to start descending immediately if they're going to land there.
Right, your position - 72, 72 miles to Nagoya.
Can you land at Nagoya? Negative.
Request back to Haneda.
No, no.
They're round the wrong way.
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.
Ah, 123, can you descend? Roger 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.
(all scream) 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.
PHONE RINGS Yes, what is it? The flight attendant tells the engineer that the explosion has occurred in the rear of the plane.
and may have come from the baggage compartment.
So, in the baggage compartment farthest to the rear? Listen, now! 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? At this altitude, the oxygen in their blood starts to fall.
First, their judgment may become impaired.
Eventually, they may lose consciousness.
The R5? 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 better.
I think we better use the oxygen masks.
Yes.
But they don't put on their masks.
No-one knows why.
It might be indecision, or hypoxia beginning to cloud their judgment.
At Japan Airlines in Tokyo, Flight Operations have been alerted to the emergency but are as mystified as everyone else on the ground.
All they know is that over 500 lives are at stake.
It's their job to try to diagnose the problem and come up with a solution while the plane is in the air.
This is Japan Air, Tokyo.
Tokyo Control said they received an emergency call from you Listen, right now the R5 door has broken.
Roger, is the captain returning to Tokyo? - What? - Can you return to Haneda? Ah, ah, just a moment.
We are making an emergency descent.
Ah, we'll contact you again in a little while.
Keep monitoring us, please.
Roger.
R5 door - could it have come off? If the door has come off, that could mean an explosive decompression of the cabin as the air rushes out.
Passengers may have been sucked out kilometres above the ground.
But there's a worse possibility - if the door hit the tail of the aircraft, it could 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.
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.
Both hands.
Gear down.
Gear down! Put the gear down.
Lowering the landing gear should slow the plane down and make it more stable.
It doesn't work.
Should I throw the alternate? For safety, 747s employ an electrically-run system - separate from the hydraulics - that can lower the landing gear in an emergency.
While the engines are turning, they still have electric power.
Lowering the landing gear helps stabilise the plane.
The drag of the undercarriage has a dampening effect on the pitching motion.
But it also destroys the directional control they were getting by applying more power to one side of the aircraft.
Max power! Max power! Close to Mount Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan, the plane makes an abrupt turn to the right and begins a terrifying dive.
(all scream) The plane is falling at 900m a minute - twice the normal rate of descent.
We're going down.
Turn the wheel all the way.
All the way.
It's all the way.
- Heavy.
- Get the gear down.
Gear's down! MAN ON RADIO: Tokyo Control.
Good day to you, sir, this is All station, all station, except the Japan Air 123, keep silent until further advised.
TAKAHAMA: Uncontrollable! Understood.
They've dropped over 3,000m.
They're now in amongst towering mountains, but at least there's more oxygen at this altitude.
The pilots have been fighting the plane for an intense 22 minutes since the explosion.
This may be hopeless.
The hydraulic fluid is all gone.
It's uncontrollable! Hey, mountain! Correct.
Right, bank 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, right! - ALARM - Power.
Power! - Keep trying! - ALARM 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.
Oh, no! 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.
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 direction to Haneda.
Roger.
Understood.
Keep heading zero-nine-zero.
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 your radio frequency to 119.
7.
119.
7, please.
They try changing radio frequency.
If you can, change your 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 - fiveer .
.
45 miles north-west of Haneda.
In the tensions of the moment, the controller is a bit confused and mistakes the plane's distance from Haneda.
North-west of Haneda? How many miles? Yes.
That is correct.
On our radar, you are 55, 5-5 miles north-west.
We are ready for your approach at any time.
Yokota is also available for landing.
Let us know your intentions.
Over.
At Haneda Airport, emergency services are being mobilised for the plane, wherever it can touch down.
Yes, roger.
They say we're 25 miles west of Kumagaya.
Suddenly the plane goes into a steep dive, the worst yet.
Power! Flap up! Flap up! Power! The plane is falling at 5,500m a minute.
(all scream) ALARMS SOUND Flap up! Flap up! Flap up! (all scream) Raise the nose! Raise the nose! (all scream) Raise the nose! Japan Air 123, Japan Air 123, can you hear me? Japan Air 123, Japan Air 123, do you read? Japan Air 123.
Japan Air 123.
Japan Air 123 is gone.
PHONE RINGS At Tokyo Control they've lost contact with a Japan Airlines jumbo jet full of passengers.
An American plane flying in the area has been listening in to the drama of Flight 123 and reports seeing flames in the mountains some 100km west of Tokyo.
During the night the Japanese self- defence force arrives on the scene.
A helicopter flown by Captain Isuzu Amori finds the crash site.
The pilot radios in.
MAN: Minokoyama, Victor 107.
I see something, I see flames in about ten spots over an area of about 300m square.
Victor 107, Minokoyama.
Is there any sign of survivors? Victor 107.
No signs of survivors.
Visibility poor, too much smoke.
Victor 107.
Can you land to investigate? Not a chance, it's a 45-degree slope down there, nowhere to put down, and there's fire everywhere.
Seeing no sign of survivors and unwilling to risk a landing at night, Captain Amori returns to base.
Meanwhile, a team of rescuers is on its way by road, but since they don't expect to find anyone alive they spend the night in a village 68km from the crash site.
At the crash site, the passengers of Flight 123 lie dying.
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 Osutaka - one of the mountains north of Mount Fuji.
The plane finally hit a ridge several hundred metres further on and exploded.
The wreckage and passengers then tumbled down the steep side of the mountain.
It's now 14 hours after the crash and the Japanese self-defence force rescue team arrives at the scene.
They're confronted with the worst single aircraft accident in history.
They're shocked to find a survivor.
It's the off-duty flight attendant, Yumi Ochiai, still hanging on to life.
And she is not the only one.
Rescuers find a 12-year-old girl wedged in the branches of a tree and airlift her to safety.
Incredibly, two more passengers are alive.
A young mother and her 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 100Gs.
AMBULANCE SIREN BLARES 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.
YUMI OCHIAI: 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, 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.
Once in Japan, Schleede found that the local Japanese police had taken over the investigation and were treating it like a crime scene, diligently observing his team's every move.
Schleede found that to gain access to the site, the Japanese had quickly constructed helicopter landing pads.
SCHLEEDE: It was an amazing sight to look up at this mountain and see what looked like wreckage from an airplane, at a distance, but you could not recognise 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 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.
MAN: "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 realise 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 heart-rending letters nor the tangled wreckage yet yield any answer to what happened to Flight 123.
Still the main thing the investigators have to go on are the words on the plane's cockpit voice recorder - those of the plane's flight engineer who had said that door R5 was broken.
They believe that the door has somehow come off in flight, crashed into the tail, and damaged the plane's flying surfaces - the horizontal stabiliser, which makes the plane go up and down, the rudder, which controls side to side movement.
But then, a piece of news that destroys that theory totally.
The door had not come off.
It's found by the investigators amidst the wreckage.
The flight engineer was wrong.
BEEPING Er, right now the R5 door has 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.
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.
SCHLEEDE: There had 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 pressurised 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 pressurises 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 pressurised 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 8PSI differential, a lot of pressure.
The design of the 747 aft-pressure bulkhead was what they call a dome.
And it was designed to take the pressure with a lot less heavy metal.
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 unravelled 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 FA engineers there did some calculations for us based on this earlier repair of the bulkhead.
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.
On a summer's evening in 1985, Japan Air 123 lifts off from Haneda Airport.
It's the 12,319th take-off since the repair of the damaged bulkhead, a repair that the investigators calculated would only hold for 10,000 flights.
As the plane climbs to 7,300m, the air outside gets thinner and thinner but the air inside the cabin is pressurised for the passengers' comfort.
The difference of pressure between the passenger cabin on one side of the bulkhead and the unpressurised tail on the other stretches the bulkhead and its faulty repair to the breaking point.
In a test which duplicated these conditions cracks began to appear and lengthen around the rivet holes, until .
.
the bulkhead snaps.
In an instant, pressurised air from the cabin blows a hole it 2m to 3m square (all scream) .
.
bringing down the ceiling around the rear toilets.
The highly pressurised 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 stabilising 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 metres at a time.
SCHLEEDE: 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 and their 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.
Both hands.
Haul the gear down! Gear down! To put the gear down.
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 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 described our findings to him, you can imagine this Boeing man became very, very upset.
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.
However, Japan Airlines, the innocent party, had no such comfort.
After I left the scene and came home, it was my understanding that one of the senior Japanese Airlines maintenance managers actually committed suicide.
The Japanese Airlines president resigned.
The bookings slumped.
Rumours abounded in Japan that the airline was indeed guilty, and that Boeing was just taking the rap for a valuable customer.
It's taken years for Japan Airlines to recover from this experience - the worst single plane crash in history.