Misplaced Pages

Japan Air Lines Flight 472 (1972)

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
(Redirected from Japan Airlines Flight 472 (1972))
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages)
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (December 2009) Click for important translation instructions.
  • View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article.
  • Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Misplaced Pages.
  • Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
  • You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Misplaced Pages article at ]; see its history for attribution.
  • You may also add the template {{Translated|ja|日本航空ボンベイ空港誤認着陸事故}} to the talk page.
  • For more guidance, see Misplaced Pages:Translation.
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Japan Air Lines Flight 472" 1972 – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
(Learn how and when to remove this message)
1972 aviation accident in Bombay, India For the hijacking of Flight 472 in 1977, see Japan Air Lines Flight 472 (1977).
Japan Air Lines Flight 472
JA8013, the aircraft involved in the accident in 1969, with a previous livery
Accident
Date24 September 1972 (1972-09-24)
SummaryRunway excursion due to pilot error
SiteJuhu Aerodrome, Bombay, India
19°05′57″N 72°50′20″E / 19.09917°N 72.83889°E / 19.09917; 72.83889
Aircraft
Aircraft typeDouglas DC-8-53
Aircraft nameHaruna
OperatorJapan Air Lines
IATA flight No.JL472
ICAO flight No.JAL472
Call signJAPAN AIR 472
RegistrationJA8013
Flight originLondon Heathrow Airport, London, United Kingdom
StopoverFrankfurt Airport, Frankfurt, Germany
1st stopoverLeonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport, Rome, Italy
2nd stopoverBeirut Rafic Hariri International Airport, Beirut, Lebanon
3rd stopoverMehrabad International Airport, Tehran, Iran
4th stopoverSantacruz Airport, Bombay, India
5th stopoverDon Mueang International Airport, Bangkok, Thailand
Last stopoverKai Tak Airport, Hong Kong
DestinationHaneda Airport, Tokyo, Japan
Occupants122
Passengers108
Crew14
Fatalities0
Injuries11
Survivors122

Japan Air Lines Flight 472 was a flight from London to Tokyo via Frankfurt, Rome, Beirut, Tehran, Bombay, Bangkok and Hong Kong. On September 24, 1972, the flight landed at Juhu Aerodrome near Bombay, India instead of the city's much larger Santacruz Airport (now Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport) and overran the runway, resulting in the aircraft being written off after being damaged beyond economic repair.

Aircraft

The aircraft involved was a Douglas DC-8-53, registration JA8013. The aircraft was c/n 45681. It had first flown in 1964.

Accident

The flight departed London 20 minutes late. By the time it left Tehran for Bombay, it was 80 minutes behind schedule. The crew planned to execute an ILS approach to Santacruz Airport, Bombay. However, the air traffic controller (ATC) asked the crew, "Can you see the runway?", to which they replied, "Yes, we can". Since the weather was good around the airport that day, the ATC instructed, "VFR approach please".

After this, Flight 472 flew past Runway 09 on the west side of Santacruz Airport while descending, and executed a 360-degree turn in order to approach again from the west and land. However, when it did land at 06:50 local time (01:20 UTC), it was in fact landing on Runway 08 of Juhu Aerodrome. Juhu is 3.7 kilometres (2.3 mi; 2.0 nmi) west of Santacruz, and for use by small aircraft only. Runway 08 of Juhu was only 1,143 metres (3,750 ft) long, too short for the large aircraft operating Flight 472.

After deploying the thrust reversers, the captain realized the mistake and immediately deployed spoilers and applied maximum braking power, but an overrun was inevitable. The DC-8 overshot the runway, breaking off both engines on the port wing, and damaging the front and main landing gear, causing the nose of the aircraft to dive into the ground. The wreckage caught fire, but the fire was soon put out by fire extinguishers.

At the time of the accident, there were 14 crew and 108 passengers on board. The aircraft was damaged beyond economic repair. 2 cockpit crew and 9 passengers (all non-Japanese) were reported injured. It was the second Japan Airlines accident in India, coming just two months after the fatal crash of Japan Air Lines Flight 471 in Delhi.

Cause

The accident was attributed to pilot error. However, the Indian authorities were also blamed for operating an airport for small aircraft so close to Santacruz, causing confusion (see similar incidents below). Another factor was that during the 360-degree turn Flight 472 faced the sun and morning mist, and the cockpit crew lost sight of the runway. When they suddenly saw the runway of Juhu Aerodrome, they mistook it for the runway of Santacruz, and landed on it.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Accident description". Aviation Safety Network. Retrieved 24 December 2009.
  2. "Lotnicze pomyłki: Boeing na Krzesinach" [Aviation mistakes: Boeing at Krzesiny]. lotniczapolska.pl (in Polish). Archived from the original on 2016-08-18. Retrieved 2016-06-30.
Aviation accidents and incidents in 1972 (1972)
Jan 7 Iberia Flight 602Jan 21 Turkish Airlines DC-9 crashJan 26 JAT Yugoslav Flight 367Feb 22 Lufthansa Flight 649Mar 3 Mohawk Airlines Flight 405Mar 14 Sterling Airways Flight 296Mar 19 EgyptAir Flight 763Apr 18 East African Airways Flight 720May 4 Aeroflot Flight B-608May 5 Alitalia Flight 112May 8 Sabena Flight 571May 16 Svetlogorsk An-24 crashMay 18 Aeroflot Flight 1491May 30 Delta Air Lines Flight 9570Jun 12 American Airlines Flight 96Jun 14 Japan Air Lines Flight 471Jun 15 Cathay Pacific Flight 700ZJun 18 British European Airways Flight 548Jun 24 Prinair Flight 191Jun 29 Lake Winnebago mid-air collisionJul 2 Pan Am Flight 841Jul 5 Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 710Jul 31 Delta Air Lines Flight 841Aug 14 Königs Wusterhausen disasterAug 16 Burma Airways Thandwe crashAug 31 Aeroflot Flight 558Sep 15 Scandinavian Airlines System Flight 130Sep 24 Japan Air Lines Flight 472Sep 24 Sacramento Canadair Sabre accidentOct 1 Aeroflot Flight 1036Oct 13 Aeroflot Flight 217Oct 13 Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571Oct 27 Air Inter Flight 696YOct 29 Lufthansa Flight 615Oct 30 Aero Trasporti Italiani Flight 327Nov 10 Southern Airways Flight 49Nov 15 Ansett Australia Flight 232Nov 28 Japan Air Lines Flight 446Dec 3 Tenerife Spantax Convair CV-990 crashDec 8 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 708Dec 8 United Air Lines Flight 553Dec 8 Pakistan International Airlines Flight 631Dec 20 Chicago–O'Hare runway collisionDec 23 Braathens Flight 239Dec 29 Eastern Air Lines Flight 401Dec 31 Puerto Rico DC-7 crash
1971   ◄    ►   1973
Aviation accidents and incidents in India
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
JAL Group
International
Regional
LCC
Former
History
JAL accidents and incidents
Services
People
Categories:
Japan Air Lines Flight 472 (1972) Add topic