【海外の反応】日航123便に実はもっと生存者がいた…救助隊は39マイル先でキャンプ設営してた衝撃の真実

It was atrociously handled. The USAF based in Japan were tracking the plane while it was in distress and found the crash site within 20 minutes, but the government refused outside help.

Hideo Yokoyama’s *Seventeen* is an interesting fictionalized account of the aftermath and how the press covered it. He had been a reporter for a local paper near the crash site, and the whole incident led him to quit journalism.

>One of the four survivors, off-duty Japan Air Lines flight purser Yumi Ochiai (落合 由美, Ochiai Yumi) recounted from her hospital bed that she recalled bright lights and the sound of helicopter rotors shortly after she awoke amid the wreckage, and while she could hear screaming and moaning from other survivors, these sounds gradually died away during the night.[20]

fuuuuck

With over 500 casualties, JAL123 was THE deadliest single plane crash in history. It also saved a bunch more some four years later because Captain Dennis Fitch studied this case and remembered it while trying to land a crippled DC-10 with just differential powers.

In investigating both cases, other pilots _failed_ to recreate their miraculous feats on the simulator. Controlling the direction of a plane with differential power alone was theorized, but never fully studied until up to this point. People found out pretty quickly that the plane would move up and down in a wave-like motion, something known as a _phugoid cycle_. It’s also important to note that in very extreme situations like these, a good crew resource management ended up being the only chance they got.

40 years later, both JAL123 and UA232 became case studies for emergency procedures and good examples of a proper crew resource management.

This is genuinely horrifying to think about.

Considering how the aircraft slammed itself onto the side of a mountain and the absolute fiasco that was the rescue operation, it's quite the miracle that there were any survivors at all

In case anyone wonders why we always check even when it's a flaming wreck

Not sending someone to check the status of survivors has to be the dumbest fucking emergency response possible. Anyone in charge of making that decision deserves to be jailed for dereliction of duty.

In 2006, Japan Air Lines opened the [Safety Promotion Center](https://www.jal.com/en/safety/center/) at Haneda Airport, with some key pieces of the debris from the investigation and the crash and passenger's personal effects on display, including the pressure bulkhead and a section of the vertical stabilizer. It's a training center for JAL employees, a stark reminder of the importance of safety in the critical roles employees hold.

Read and watched the documentary about how the pilot and crew fought til the end to save the plane. The flight path was a miracle in how they remained airborne for over 30 minutes. They almost made it. They never gave up and went down fighting til the end….