Word: aircrafting
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...requested. About three minutes later, Tokyo told the crew where the plane was: "You are now 72 nautical miles from Nagoya. Do you want to land at Nagoya?" A coastal city, Nagoya is 160 miles southwest of Tokyo. But the crew wished to get back to Haneda. The aircraft was now climbing again, back to 24,500 ft., and slowing only slightly...
...Ochiai found that the oxygen supply for the mouth masks had run out, but she had no difficulty breathing. The aircraft's purser now told the passengers that there was an emergency. Ochiai helped the on-duty attendants instruct the passengers on how to strap on their life preservers and assume a head-down, forward-leaning position for a possible crash landing. Then, she said, the plane went into a Dutch roll, dipping one wing, then the other. Apparently, Captain Takahama was trying to steer the aircraft by alternately increasing power to the left and the right engines. The maneuver...
...Ochiai was surprised to see Mount Fuji out a left window. "I thought the plane was heading back to Haneda," she said. Actually, radar operators saw the aircraft make a wide circle at this point, fully 360°, near Japan's sacred mountain, which was far north of the planned course to Osaka...
...craft was down to 9,850 ft. By 6:49 p.m., the 747 had dropped to 7,880 ft., and now came the first clear sound of fear from the cockpit. "Waaah!" a crew member shouted into the microphone, an exclamation of surprise and alarm in Japanese. Mysteriously, the aircraft began climbing again, to 9,160 ft. Captain Takahama was apparently fighting for altitude. By 6:54 p.m. the 747 had reached 11,400 ft. and was 55 miles northwest of Haneda. Advised of this location, a crewman responded, "Roger." It was to be the last transmission...
Horrified controllers had watched the disabled aircraft drop to below 10,000 ft. and then, at 6:57 p.m., disappear from their radar screens altogether. The 747, still heading north rather than east, had plunged into a slope of 5,400-ft.-high Mount Osutaka, a pine-covered granite peak. Weighing more than 350 tons, the plane buried much of its fuselage in a steeply angled ridge at an altitude of 4,700 ft. Flames spurted into the sky as the impact ignited fuel tanks; even the metal scraps burned fiercely as the 747 sliced through the trees...