On August 12, 1985; during a holiday in Japan where citizens travel to their ancestral homelands to honor their deceased ancestors; a domestic flight from Tokyo-Narita to Osaka was scheduled to take place.

The airliner, a Boeing 747; had encountered technicalities while in the air, to the point where the Pilot and the Co-Captain could no longer control the aircraft. Yakota Air Base, a U.S Air Force base had offered for the aircraft to land on their runway; but they ignored the radio call from the U.S Air Force and continued to bank on Tokyo Air Traffic Control to guide them back to Tokyo-Narita.

Eventually, the aircraft lost control; both of the aircraft’s engine had been ripped off by the way of encountering branches on trees, and the plane eventually crashed on Mount Osutaka, in the Ueno prefecture of Japan.

Tensions amongst the Japanese public were very high immediately following this airliner incident, and the United States Government had sent out investigators from the NTSB as “guest investigators” to assist the Japanese government in investigating this airliner incident. Engineers employed by Boeing were dispatched to Japan as well.

The culprit of this incident was an improper repair job on the bulkhead that did not conform to Boeing’s approved repair methods, and was repaired 7 years earlier when their airliner was involved in another incident 7 years earlier in 1979- a tailstrike incident.

Personally, I admire the engineers at Boeing who had designed the 747 and at Airbus who had designed the A320 for successfully being able to design a two-story aircraft.

Boeing had considered building a two-story, 500+ seat, four engine aircraft to compete with the Airbus A320; but they had scrapped that project in 1993.