Jumbo probe centres on 37cm tail-fin anchor

Press, 16 August 1985, Page 6

Jumbo probe centres on 37cm tail-fin anchor

NZPA-Reuter Tokyo Japanese engineers cast suspicion yesterday on - a small part that anchors Boeing 747 tail-fins to the fuselage as they tried to unravel the mystery cause of the worst single-plane disaster in history. All jumbo jets in Japan would be inspected on the orders of the Transport Ministry to prevent a repeat of Monday’s crash of Japan Air Lines domestic flight 123, from Tokyo to Osaka, a Ministry spokesman said. The plane ploughed into thick forest on a remote mountainside after a pitching, rolling descent, killing 520 people aboard. Only four people, two girls and two women, left the wreckage alive. A Transport Ministry spokesman said that all Japan’s 69 jumbos would come under scrutiny, including the 48 still flying with Japan Air Lines. Many are on inter-city routes in Japan. Engineers have been told to look at “the link”, which connects the front part of the vertical tail stabiliser to the main body of a 747. Parts of the tail-plane were found in the sea far from the final disaster area, where 4500 police and soldiers resumed body-re-covery work at dawn yesterday. Two hundred corpses, few recognisable, have been lifted by helicopters from the muddy slopes of Mount ■ Osutaka, where a skm area

is still strewn with tangled aluminium, splintered trees, dolls, and clothing.

The aluminium alloy link is 2cm in diameter and 37.61 cm long. It sits in the cabin ceiling just above the last few rows of seats at the back of a 747.

It is designed to take a strain of 2.7 tonnes of weight.

On one of those seats on flight 123 sat Yumi Ochiai, an off-duty stewardess who survived the flaming impact. She told J.A.L. officials that she had heard a bang above her head when the emergency started, 24,000 feet <• above Tokyo Bay.

J.A.L. and Transport Ministry officials would not say that a possible break in the link may have caused the crash, but it is high on the list of parts airlines have been told to inspect.

Others are in the rudder assembly. A Japan Air Lines spokesman said that the part was not subject to regular routine checks during flight maintenance.

Any break in the link would not be serious but subsequent damage to the vertical part of the tail was a possibility, he said. violent shaking could loosen the nearby door, triggering a cockpit warning light to make the pilot think a back door was broken, he said. The pilot, Captain Masami Takahama, radioed soon after leaving Haneda airport: “Emergency due to

broken R 5 door. Now descending.” He referred to the right rear door. The Transport Ministry ordered emergency checks as investigators combed the wreckage and started to decode the flight and cabin voice recorders found there. Hiroshi Fujiwara, the Transport Ministry’s deputy chief investigator, told a news conference that the voice recorder may not help reconstruct a full picture of the crisis. It only tapes on a continuous loop for 30 minutes and the Tokyo-Osaka flight managed to lurch about the sky for 35 minutes, veering north within sight of Mount Fuji to crash as darkness fell.

When rescuers reached the remote site the next day they found the survivors still entangled in their rear seats. Agence France-Presse reported yesterday that the president of Japan Air Lines, Yasumoto Takagi, had offered his resignation to assume responsibility for the crash. Mr Takagi, aged 74, met the Prime Minister, Mr Yasuhiro Nakasone, on Wednesday evening to convey his intention to resign and told the press afterwards that he had decided to assume responsibility for the accident. He did not disclose when he would resign, saying only: “The first thing I should do is to carry out everything possible for the families of the victims.”