Japan Air Lines Flight 123
1985 aviation accident in Japan
Japan Air Lines Flight 123 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Tokyo to Osaka, Japan. On the evening of Monday, August 12, 1985, the Boeing 747 flying the route suffered a severe structural failure and explosive decompression 12 minutes after takeoff. After flying under minimal control for 32 minutes, the plane crashed in the area of Mount Takamagahara, 100 kilometres (62 mi; 54 nmi) from Tokyo.
The aircraft, featuring a high-density seating configuration, was carrying 524 people. The initial crash killed all 15 crew members and 460–490 of the 509 passengers on board. An estimated 20 to 50 passengers survived the initial crash but died from their injuries while awaiting rescue, leaving only four survivors; 520 people died as a result of the crash. The crash is the deadliest single-aircraft accident in aviation history, and it remains the deadliest aviation incident in Japan.
Japan's Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission (AAIC), assisted by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, concluded that the structural failure was caused by a faulty repair by Boeing technicians following a tailstrike seven years earlier. When the faulty repair eventually failed, it resulted in a rapid decompression that ripped off a large portion of the tail and caused the loss of all hydraulic systems and flight controls.
Background
Aircraft
The Boeing 747SR-46 with registration JA8119 was built and delivered to Japan Air Lines in 1974.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Japan Air Lines Flight 123” as 1985 aviation accident in Japan. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 1985 aviation accident in Japan. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18173. Authority coordinates are 36.001, 138.694. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1985 and 1974.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Japan Air Lines Flight 123” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.