Word: takahama
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...weather was humid but not unusual as Flight 123 lifted off runway C-15-L at Haneda and climbed through a light cloud cover. At the controls was Captain Masami Takahama, 49, who had flown for JAL since 1966 and was so highly regarded that he had been transferred from international to domestic routes four years ago so that he could help train new pilots. The rest of the crew included a co-pilot, a flight engineer and twelve cabin attendants. There were 509 passengers aboard the 747SR, a short-range version of the jumbo. JAL and All Nippon Airways...
...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 produced a yawing and rolling motion as though Flight 123 were cutting figure-eights...
...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...
Pilots gave high praise to Captain Takahama for keeping his stricken 747 in the air for at least 32 minutes after the tail damage was sustained over Sagami Bay. "In spite of such terrible conditions, the plane was kept aloft by engine thrust only," said Mitsuo Nakano, JAL's deputy chief of 747 pilots. "That is an incredible performance." A U.S. expert, Captain Homer Mouden of the Flight Safety Foundation in Arlington, Va., agreed. "The crew exhibited great courage and skill in trying to keep it sea flying," he said. But the odds loose," a United Air Lines pilot said...
...weak economy and the wrenching opening up of Japan's markets, tatami prices are half what they were 10 years ago. Farmers can't pay off the loans they were once encouraged to take. "Thirty farmers have committed suicide the past four or five years," says Yoshiharu Takahama, a town assembly member...