Overview
- Flight 123, which failed over central Japan in August 1985, crashed into Mount Takamagahara and killed 520 people with four survivors.
- About 12 minutes after takeoff from Tokyo, a rear fuselage rupture caused explosive decompression as oxygen masks dropped and altitude alarms sounded.
- The rupture stripped key parts of the tail and drained hydraulic pressure, leaving the 747 barely controllable for 32 minutes before it struck a ridge and crashed.
- Recoverers found the cockpit voice recorder, which captured Captain Masami Takahama’s final call — “Raise nose, raise nose.... Power” — a transcript aviation writer David Learmount called uniquely harrowing.
- Japan’s AAIC, assisted by the US NTSB, concluded the structural failure began with a faulty Boeing repair after a tailstrike seven years earlier.