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Identification of the bodies of those killed in the crash has begun in St. Petersburg Airbus aircraft A321 of the Kogalymavia company on Sinai Peninsula. According to representatives of the operational headquarters, the process of identifying all the bodies may take up to several weeks.
On Tuesday morning, a second plane carrying the remains of the victims landed in St. Petersburg, while a search operation is still ongoing at the crash site.
The head of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry's task force in Sinai, Alexander Agafonov, said more than 100 items of passengers' personal belongings were found on Monday, including two cameras, two tablets, four cell phones, five passports and one crew member's ID card.
All these items can later help in identifying the bodies of those killed in a plane crash.
The BBC Russian service asked experts to clarify how the process of identifying the dead occurs in such cases.
"It's a very labor-intensive process"
Illustration copyright Reuters“It’s all very simple – there are piles of bodies lying around, and experts are trying to group them according to some parameters, but given such destruction, all this is very relative, so people go through this terrible mess and try to find out – by clothes, by body fragments, what - tattoos, some tattoos, maybe some features - only in this way,” explained the head of the department of forensic medical examination of the First Moscow State Medical University named after I.M. Sechenov to the BBC Russian Service Yuri Pigolkin.
“And so people are in a state of shock. Firstly, it’s just very difficult to identify a dead body - the color changes, and if it’s also damaged, then it’s very labor-intensive process, is extremely difficult,” says the expert.
“Then, when it has already been recognized that identification is impossible, then a genetic study is carried out. A genetic study is carried out by comparing genotypes, blood is taken on gauze, if the oral cavity is preserved, they can also take saliva. In the complex - saliva, blood, and bones "for research. Now genetic material has been collected from relatives - a database is created, and then these samples are entered into this database. Then, when there is a database, the genes obtained from the samples are compared in length with those in the database," says Pigolkin.
An Egyptian forensic expert who took part in the procedure for examining the crash site told reporters that the nature of the injuries to the bodies of the passengers of the crashed A321 may indicate that an explosion occurred on board the airliner before the collision with the ground.
“A large number of individual fragments of bodies may indicate that a strong explosion occurred on board even before the collision with the ground,” the RIA Novosti agency quotes the expert.
Given the condition of most of the bodies, DNA testing may be needed to determine the identities of the dead, he said.
DNA Forensics: Lessons from MH17
The identification of the bodies of the passengers who died as a result in July 2014 was carried out by specialists from the Netherlands Forensic Institute. The website of this organization identifies the dead.
In particular, the victims' fingerprints and dental records are being examined.
Data about passengers' personal belongings is also taken into account - for example, their clothes and jewelry.
According to the Netherlands Institute of Forensic Sciences, DNA testing is only used if identification from dental records is not possible. During the identification process, DNA samples are taken from the dead - fragments of muscle tissue, bone tissue and fragments of teeth.
“DNA is best protected from external influences in parts of the teeth,” the institute’s website says. After this, specialists create DNA profiles of the victims.
DNA samples (saliva sample) are also taken from direct relatives. Direct relatives are the parents, children, brothers and sisters of the deceased; their DNA is much closer than that of distant relatives, experts explain.
In addition, forensic experts obtain victims' personal items, such as combs or toothbrushes, which may contain samples of their DNA. But the data obtained with their help cannot always be used - sometimes it is impossible to determine who exactly this or that item belonged to, and whether anyone else used this item.
That is, this is a complex and complex process: the DNA profiles of the deceased are compared with the DNA profiles of their relatives, as well as with DNA profiles made based on the study of their personal belongings, and they are analyzed using a special program.
Valery Valiulin
Is it necessary, really?!
Based on real events. First and last names are excluded.
Arriving early in the morning for duty to carry out the next training flights, I was very upset - the flights were canceled. Flights are canceled infrequently, mainly due to weather conditions that do not allow them to be carried out, in the absence of weather at alternate airfields, in case of accidents and catastrophes of similar aircraft, and you never know other reasons to reschedule flights to another day. The reason for the cancellation of flights stunned me - in the unit from which I had transferred three years earlier, my friend, the commander of the ship with whom I had flown for two years in the same crew, died.
Subsequently, the flight and engineering personnel of all aviation units were informed of the results of the investigation of the disaster, the reasons that led to the death of people and the loss of the combat vehicle, and recommendations for measures to prevent the recurrence of similar tragedies in the future.
A colonel who arrived from Moscow, hanging a “sheet”* in front of the aviation squadron, measuring “two hundred twenty by one hundred eighty”, with the crew’s unfinished route from the take-off airfield to the point of the disaster marked on it, tried to convince us that a slow depressurization had occurred at high altitude cockpits. That all crew members, in violation of instructions, flew at high altitude with relaxed oxygen masks, and lost consciousness due to lack of oxygen and decreased pressure in the cabin. That the plane, having become uncontrollable, fell into a tailspin, switched to supersonic speed, collapsed in the air, fell to the ground. Of the six crew members, only the ship's navigator ejected.
I listened carefully to the speech of the flight safety inspector and did not believe what I heard! So that such an oversight could be made by the commander, with whom we once deliberately carried out a five-hour cross-country flight on an airplane with a faulty cabin pressurization system, which was always notified in the air about the well-being of the crew members?! And now I hear his voice: “Crew, tighten up the oxygen masks, report on your health!” No! This is a lie in the name of preserving the positions of the commanders, hiding the true cause of the death of five crew members and the loss of the combat vehicle.
Years passed. Until my death, grief for my lost friend and his crew will not leave me. I often dream about him. I dream of his face, tense at work, his eyes intently watching the instruments, his hands in leather gloves not letting go of the steering wheel.
I asked all the comrades from the former regiment with whom the flight service later brought me together about the details of this incident. Everyone agreed on one thing - the authorities hid the true cause of this disaster, but no one could know it for sure; they only expressed their assumptions.
Fellow soldiers who tried to “talk” the navigator, the survivor who was able to reveal the true cause of the incident, with the help of cognac and vodka, could not squeeze anything out of his lips, sealed by the command.
When the rescue team, in the snowy mountains, on a frosty February day, took the ship's navigator, who had landed by parachute, from the scene of the death of the crew, he was not wearing a headset! The headset could only be torn off from his head in one case, if it was not fastened. Consequently, during the flight the navigator was not wearing an oxygen mask, which is attached to the headset, and was breathing cabin air, but did not lose consciousness! Repeatedly during flights, I, as the navigator of the ship, had to unfasten the oxygen mask with the permission of the commander; it prevents me from leaning tightly against the rubber tube of the radar sight screen, and prevents me from clearly seeing the flare from ground landmarks and targets. So it’s possible for a navigator to find himself without a mask at any stage of the flight.
Being already retired, I told my neighbor, a retired colonel, about my disbelief in the results of the investigation of this disaster, with whom we shared common hobbies for literature and, in the past, joint service. Already ready for his imminent departure from life, stricken by cancer, he told me the true reason that led to the tragic death of the friend of my youth:
“You are right, Valera, in not recognizing this false version of this catastrophe. The engineering and technical staff installed “KPZh-30” with unacceptable alcohol vapor residues in it! Those who cleaned the oxygen equipment, which was important for the life support of the crew in flight, did not comply with the requirements laid down in the instructions and installed KPZh-30 on the aircraft without purging it until it was completely cleared of alcohol vapors. The flight lasted 52 minutes. The crew breathed oxygen mixed with alcohol vapor during the flight and were simply poisoned! This is the second case in our Air Force where people died due to such a violation bordering on a crime. The first such incident with the death of the crew happened so long ago that they stopped remembering it or, as this time, hid the true cause of the disaster in order to save the “skins” of those responsible. Due to the official position I held in those years, I was aware of the true cause of this disaster. Most of the flight and engineering personnel were then given false information about the causes of that disaster. To blame the dead so as not to destroy the families of many living people - this principle has always been pursued by the Air Force. Until now, no one knows how many of the first cosmonauts died in space before Yuri Gagarin’s flight.”
The era of digital civilization has arrived. I found on the Internet everything I could find about the effects of alcohol vapor on the human body when inhaled, and made conclusions about how pilots could behave under the influence of alcohol that penetrated into the blood and brain of a person directly through the lungs, bypassing the stomach. The performances are terrible!
During the initial intoxication, a person’s muscular activity is activated and the pilots could do anything, unreasonably “dragging the helm,” increasing and decreasing engine speed, taking the plane beyond critical angles of attack and roll, beyond unacceptable flight speeds. Subsequently, a person intoxicated by alcohol vapor falls asleep and may simply die! I know of two cases of people dying in the air when: one - he drank heavily on the eve of the flight as a passenger; the other took a flat bottle of cognac into the air so as not to get bored on a long flight in his single-seat suspended cabin and did not have a task for this flight in his specialty. There were even more cases of loss of consciousness in flight by those who took off “with a hangover”, having managed to “skip” the pre-flight medical control.
For the rest of my life, I imagined myself in the place of the ship’s navigator on that ill-fated flight, trying to “see” the actions of the pilots poisoned against their will by alcohol fumes.
The cause of a similar plane crash in the Air Force, which killed people many years earlier, was either hidden or forgotten. Lack of awareness of the incident by the flight and technical crew led to its repetition many years later. I don’t remember that when checking the equipment before departure, the instructions required sniffing the oxygen supplied to the masks from the KPZh-30. “Yes, he always smells of alcohol!” – anyone who has flown will say.
Traffic police officers are equipped with a device that detects the presence of alcohol in the body of vehicle drivers, but aircraft crews do not have a device that can determine before departure the presence of alcohol in the oxygen that they will breathe in flight. Maybe the breathalyzers of traffic police officers are suitable for such monitoring of oxygen equipment on airplanes and can protect flight crew from forced intoxication in flight?! Then why is no such check carried out?!
Once every six months, the KPZh-30 is removed from each aircraft. Every six months they are washed with alcohol to remove dirt and fats from the system (pure oxygen can ignite when combined with fats!) Then “KPZh-30” is purged with air under a certain pressure, dried before being filled with liquid oxygen. This means that a similar tragedy can be expected every six months if the engineering and technical staff violates the requirements for their maintenance established by the instructions.
How can you hide the truth about the true causes of disasters from people whose lives depend on their awareness?! In my twenty-two years of service in aviation, I have never heard of such alcohol poisoning - through the oxygen system!
Later, I asked many colleagues whether they had to deal with the presence of alcohol vapor in oxygen equipment during flight? And I heard: “We once fell out of the plane with the whole crew under the canopy, having flown over the aircraft after it was repaired at the aircraft factory! The day before, the authorities accused the aviation technicians of saving alcohol when flushing KPZh-30 for the sake of flushing their stomachs with it, so they left enough alcohol vapor in the KPZh to prove that this is not so.”
I also discovered on the Internet an altercation between the navigator of the ship who had ejected at the time and one of his colleagues, who tried to accuse the deceased commander of the ship and his crew members of illiterate action during the depressurization of the aircraft cabin at high altitude:
Navigator to the “Accuser”: “I would never have written what I am writing now, but you affected our crew, and there is no one else to answer.” I continue to be ironic about the system for determining the best crew, but at the time of the disaster, our crew was determined to be the best in the regiment. KK* had his mask on and fully pulled up. And he lost consciousnessfor a completely different reason before my eyes.
I also spent two years as a navigator for an innocently accused crew commander and, too, joining the navigator who survived a terrible accident, I can defend him without naming his name. Our deceased commander was a competent pilot, he knew aerodynamics and aircraft better than many of his colleagues, he was a first-class pilot who valued the lives of the people he lifted into the air. We repeatedly got into difficult situations with him in the air, from which we got out of them competently. Once we avoided an obvious collision in the air with a huge Aeroflot airliner. Then the air traffic controllers made a mistake, bringing the sides together at the point of intersection of our route with the air route at the same level (same flight altitude), without separating the planes according to the time of its intersection. The commander was the first to see the IL-62 approaching us and dived under it. I even saw the faces of the passengers pressed to the windows, we were so dangerously close.
“Killed! Killed!” – the commander’s wife shouted, running to the regiment headquarters after learning about the death of her husband, the father of two preschool-age boys, and four other members of his crew. How right she was when they tried to convince her of something completely different.
* Air Force– air Force.
* KK – ship commander.
* "sheet" (in the Air Force)– diagram, drawing, visual teaching aid, made on a Whatman paper measuring 220 cm by 180 cm.
* "KPZh-30"– liquid oxygen is stored on the aircraft in oxygen gasifiers arranged likeDewar vessels (KPZh-30, SKG-30, etc.).
As a result of an aircraft accident, the following several factors often have a damaging effect on the body of the victim simultaneously or in rapid succession, and the effect of one factor often overlaps with another:
1) dynamic and shock overloads;
2) counter air flow;
3) explosive decompression;
4) atmospheric electricity;
5) thermal effects;
6) toxic products of combustion and pyrolysis;
7) blunt objects located inside the aircraft;
8) blast wave;
9) external parts of the aircraft;
10) running engines;
11) high-altitude decompression;
12) shaking, vibration.
When an aircraft collides with an obstacle, it can cause overloads reaching very large values on the order of tens and even hundreds of g units. At the same time, the body is lifted off the back of the chair and held in place by seat belts. Depending on the magnitude of the overload, the consequences for victims can be of a different nature - from functional respiratory and circulatory disorders associated with the relative movement of the internal organs of the chest and abdomen, and loss of consciousness - to mechanical damage from seat belts in the form of abrasions, bruises, sometimes skin tears and soft tissues, spinal injuries, and in the event of an aircraft collision at high speed with an obstacle or the ground - in the form of gross damage to all tissues at the level of seat belts up to the separation of the upper torso. In the latter case, as a rule, subsequent significant destruction of the head and torso occurs as a result of the impact of these parts of the body on objects located in front.
Radial accelerations and corresponding overloads occur when trying to recover from a dive in emergency situations. In these cases, there is a significant displacement of soft tissues, internal organs and especially blood in large vessels, accompanied by a sharp disruption of breathing, blood circulation, functions of the central nervous system, visual impairment, loss of consciousness, as well as traumatic damage to tissues and vital organs.
When the overload is directed in the direction of the head and legs, a significant part of the circulating blood (up to 1/4 of the total mass) moves into the vessels of the abdominal cavity and extremities, as a result of which the work of the heart is disrupted, anemia of the brain develops with loss of consciousness. The outcome in such a situation will depend on the duration of the unconscious state and the flight altitude at which the loss of consciousness occurred. As a result of displacement and deformation of the internal organs and tissues of the abdominal cavity and a sharp overflow of them with blood, multiple hemorrhages can be observed in the intestinal mesentery, under the capsule and in the ligaments of internal organs, and loose fatty tissue.
Overloads directed from the legs to the head are much more difficult for a person to bear. Already at an acceleration of about 4-5 g, there is a strong rush of blood to the head, accompanied by redness and swelling of the face, nosebleeds, multiple small hemorrhages in the skin of the face, conjunctiva of the eyes, membranes and substance of the brain. A sharp increase in intracranial pressure leads to rapid loss of consciousness and death. In this case, fractures of the upper and lower extremities, compression fractures of the spine, fractures of the base and vault of the skull, and injuries to the soft extremities may be observed.
The oncoming flow of air at high flight speeds (800-1000 km/h or more) has the properties of a solid body, since the pressure force of the air flow under these conditions exceeds the weight of a person by 50-70 times. The oncoming air flow can tear off household items and clothing. When the oxygen mask breaks, a sharp deformation of the soft tissues of the face occurs with extensive hemorrhage and their detachment from the underlying bones, rupture of the corners of the mouth, and damage to the eyeballs. A jet of air penetrating under high pressure into the upper respiratory tract and esophagus can lead to barotrauma of the lungs and stomach; reflex breathing disorder and cessation of oxygen supply causes acute oxygen starvation. As a result of hands falling off the armrests and legs from the footrests,
scattering of limbs, accompanied by dislocations, sprained joint ligaments, muscle tears, and hemorrhages.
Explosive decompression is observed in flight at an altitude of over 8-9 thousand meters as a result of emergency depressurization of the cabin. As a result of a sharp drop in pressure, a person may experience barotrauma of the lungs and hearing aid, as well as gas embolism. Barotrauma of the hearing aid is accompanied by rupture of the eardrum, damage to the auditory ossicles, hemorrhage in the tissue of the middle and inner ear and the tympanic cavity.
With pulmonary barotrauma, there is liquid blood in the respiratory tract, acute swelling of the lungs, multiple focal hemorrhages and ruptures of the lung tissue. Along with the large-focal nature of changes in the lung tissue along the branches of the bronchi, small ruptures and hemorrhages are also observed.
Blunt objects located inside the aircraft are the main damaging factor when the aircraft falls and hits the ground. In this case, deformation and destruction of its structure occurs, as well as mutual displacement of people on the plane and the objects surrounding them. The resulting shock overloads, depending on the speed and angle of impact of the aircraft, can exceed hundreds and even thousands of times the impact forces on victims observed in ground transport accidents.
The result of shock overloads of enormous force can be gross destruction of the body with separation of individual parts of it (head, limbs, pelvic area) with extensive ruptures and crushing of the skin and soft tissues, crushing of bones, opening of body cavities and crushing, separation, displacement of internal organs or their ejection out.
The blast wave is the most powerful damaging factor resulting from a fuel explosion in fuel tanks or a terrorist attack. Most often, the first explosion occurs when the plane hits the ground, sometimes in the air after touching the ground. When falling jet plane to the ground in a dive followed by an explosion, the crater can reach a depth of several meters. A powerful blast wave causes complete destruction of aircraft structures and bodies. In this case, the remains are found both in the crater itself and outside it, scattered over an area with a radius of up to 300-500 m. When an explosion occurs in the air after touching the ground, the remains of people who were on the plane are scattered at a distance of up to 3 km in the direction of flight and up to 1.5 km to the sides from the explosion site.
When the body is completely destroyed as a result of an explosion, individual small flaps of skin without abrasion of their edges, auricles with part of the temporal bone, pieces of internal organs, bone fragments with scraps of soft tissue, and sometimes hands, feet or parts thereof are usually found. During a terrorist attack, extensive injuries with detachments of body parts, multiple through and blind shrapnel wounds are received by persons located directly near the explosion site, while others most often die as a result of mechanical damage when the plane subsequently crashes and hits the ground.
As a result of the action of the flame, ignition of clothing, burns of the body, as well as post-mortem burning of corpses can occur, reaching extreme degrees with charring of soft tissues and bones until they are incinerated. Sometimes a fire is preceded by an explosion; in these cases, the remains of corpses are exposed to thermal effects.
- When did you start searching for the bodies of Tu-154 passengers?
We were given the alarm sometime around 7am on Sunday. We waited another 30 minutes for the coordinates of the main search area - this information came from air traffic controllers. We went out to sea on boats. Soon helicopters from the search and rescue service of the Ministry of Defense appeared in the sky, then they began to approach small ships and ships with divers.
- When was the first body discovered?
I didn't watch the clock. In addition, about 10 boats were working at once. We recovered the first body about three hours after the start of the operation following a tip from a helicopter. About one and a half kilometers from the coast.
- And who was it?
A woman of about 40. A tightly closed red suitcase floated next to her.
- Judging by your answer about her age, she was not disfigured?
She didn't have eyes...
- Were her clothes intact?..
She was wearing a badly torn cloak... And she was all broken... it seemed like she had no bones... We lifted two more from the water about a kilometer from the shore. Two military men, in uniform... Also torn... Young. Well, thirty, thirty-five years... And broken and broken bodies... That’s it, I can’t talk anymore, it’s hard... And there’s a lot of work.
- Did you notice any traces of burnt on the clothes or on the bodies?
The devil knows... The clothes are wet... And it’s hard to judge by the skin on the face - it’s burned or torn off on something hard when hit...
The plane, it turns out, fell apart while still in the air. This version is also supported by the fact that the Tu-154 chassis was found near the coast
EXPERT OPINION
“Either an explosion or a strong blow to the water”
Military forensic expert Captain II Rank Alexander KOLESNIKOV answers KP’s question
Photo of the fuselage fragments of the fallen Tu-154 recovered from the bottom of the Black Sea
As a result of a search operation in the Black Sea, part of the fuselage was pulled out of the water crashed plane Ministry of Defense Tu-154. Specialists from the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Emergency Situations are working at the site of the plane crash - near Adler, almost opposite the airport.
The middle part of the fuselage was discovered approximately 1.8 kilometers off the coast of Sochi at a depth of approximately 25 meters. The fragment pulled out of the water reaches approximately five meters in length and five in width, Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent Vladimir Velengurin reports from the site of the search and rescue operation.
Specialists from the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Emergency Situations are working at the crash site.
The middle part of the fuselage was discovered approximately 1.8 kilometers from the coast.
As the participants in the operation told KP, before falling into the water the plane was on a glide path towards the water - the runway is located perpendicular to the coastline.
The recovered fragment lay at the bottom at a depth of approximately 25 meters.
Rescuers pulled part of the fuselage of the fallen Tu-154 Ministry of Defense aircraft out of the water.
The fragment pulled out of the water reaches approximately five meters in length and five in width.
On that ill-fated day, at 18:00, a Japan Airlines Boeing 747SR-46 was preparing to fly from Tokyo to Osaka. The flight was a short flight and was supposed to last 54 minutes. Thanks to a special modification of the aircraft model, the board could accommodate 550 passengers.
At the time of takeoff, JAL Flight 123 12 had 509 people and 15 crew members on board. The aircraft commander was most experienced pilot- 49-year-old Masami Takahama, who worked for the airline for 19 years. The co-pilot was 39-year-old Yutaka Sasaki with 10 years of experience.
At 18:12 the plane took off from Tokyo Haneda Airport. At 18:24 at an altitude of 7200 meters, one of the flight attendants asked the commander if it was possible to begin serving passengers. After receiving an affirmative answer, a loud sound like an explosion was heard in the cabin. The cabin was filled with white smoke.
The pilots' alarm went off, warning them of a sudden drop in pressure inside the fuselage. They could not understand what had happened and assumed that the landing gear doors had been torn off. The flight engineer reported a hydraulic system malfunction.
The ship's commander decided to turn the plane around and return to Tokyo, but when the co-pilot tried to turn the steering wheel, it turned out that the Boeing was uncontrollable.
The ground controller received a message with the number “7700”, meaning that the plane was in distress. The crew and passengers put on oxygen masks, which are activated in the event of depressurization of the aircraft.
The pilots tried with all their might to reverse course, but the situation worsened every minute - the plane began to sway along all three axes with increasing amplitude, entering the terrible “Dutch step” mode.
Panic began in the cabin, the passengers began to feel ill. They prayed, cried, tore pages out of notebooks and wrote farewell letters to loved ones.
At this time, the pilots in the cockpit tried to regain control of the aircraft using engine thrust alone. By differentiating the thrust of the left and right turbines, the crew still managed to turn the liner in the direction of Tokyo.
Controllers on the ground offered various options for emergency landing aircraft, but the pilots did not have to choose - they could lose control at any second.
Attempts to begin a descent in the Mount Fuji area failed. At 18:41 the plane again became uncontrollable and made a circle with a radius of 4 km over the city of Otsuki. The pilots managed to regain control.
At 6:47 p.m., the ship's commander told dispatchers that the plane was out of control and was about to crash into a mountain. But the crew again managed to avoid a collision. However, immediately after this, the plane began to rapidly lose altitude. Having flown over the Izu Peninsula and Suruga Bay, the Boeing found itself in a mountainous area, which made the chances of a happy completion of the flight minimal.
But even in this situation, the crew continued to try to control the engine thrust, although at one point the plane almost fell into a tailspin. Using maximum engine thrust and flap release from the emergency electrical system, the crew managed to level the Boeing. However, the liner, lowering its nose, rushed to the next peak.
The plane commander leveled the car, but there was no time left to avoid another collision with the mountain. The wing hit the tops of trees - the plane overturned and at 18:56 at high speed crashed into the wooded slope of Mount Otsutaka at an altitude of 1457 meters, 112 kilometers northwest of Tokyo. A fire broke out at the scene of the disaster.
A US Air Force C-130 discovered the crash site 30 minutes after the crash. The coordinates were transmitted to the Japanese, but the arriving rescue helicopter found that the wreckage lay on a steep slope, making landing in this area difficult.
Moreover, there was a fire there - the helicopter commander decided to return to the base, reporting that no traces of survivors were found.
Rescuers arrived 14 hours later, not expecting to find anyone alive, but there were four alive: 26-year-old Yumi Ochiai, 34-year-old Hiroko Yoshizaki with her 8-year-old daughter Mikiko, and 12-year-old Keiko Kawakami.
Yumi Ochiai worked as a flight attendant for Japan Airlines, but at the time she was on a private trip. It was she who provided the most information about what was happening on board.
Rescuers found 12-year-old Keiko on a tree - the girl was thrown out during the plane crash. Her father was also alive for some time, but he could not stand the 14-hour wait.
There were many survivors, but in addition to their injuries, they suffered from severe hypothermia after a night on the mountain without receiving help.
Black boxes and numerous letters from the victims to their relatives were found at the scene of the disaster.
Japan experienced a real shock - relatives of the victims destroyed the offices of Japan Airlines, and its employees avoided appearing in crowded places. The airline's president resigned without waiting for the results of the investigation, and the head of the technical service at the airport committed hara-kiri.
But why did the plane crash? On August 13, 1985, a Japanese Self-Defense Force destroyer picked up fragments of the Boeing's vertical and horizontal tails floating in Sagami Bay. This meant that during the flight the plane lost its fin and elevators.
With such breakdowns, the plane is doomed. Moreover, it should have crashed almost immediately, but the pilots managed to keep it in the air for another half hour. Their skill saved four lives - there could have been many more people saved if not for the 14-hour wait.
And the main question: why did the plane lose its tail mid-flight?
It turned out that back on June 2, 1978, due to a pilot error, JA8119’s tail hit the runway Osaka Airport, as a result of which the tail pressure frame was damaged - the bulkhead separating the tail passenger cabin of the airliner, in which approximately constant air pressure is maintained, from the unpressurized tail section of the aircraft.
The repairs were carried out in Japan - it was necessary to strengthen the damaged halves of the pressure frame using a solid reinforcement plate secured with three rows of rivets. But instead of installing a single reinforcement with three rows of rivets, the technicians used two separate reinforcing elements, one of which was secured with a double row of rivets, and the second with just a single row.
The repair team decided that “it will do just fine” - and indeed, the plane successfully continued flying. But during takeoffs and landings, the loads gradually destroyed the metal at the drilling sites. The catastrophe became inevitable - the only question was when it would happen.
On August 12, 1985, the pressure frame could not withstand the pressure from the next takeoff and finally collapsed, breaking the pipelines of the hydraulic systems. Air from the cabin under high pressure hit the cavity of the vertical tail stabilizer, knocking it out like a cork from a bottle of champagne. The plane lost control.
After the disaster, Japan Airlines took a very long time to restore its reputation, and the Boeing Corporation tightened the rules for repairing aircraft and carried out urgent inspections of its aircraft around the world. But people’s lives could not be returned.
