Wednesday, September 28, 2011

All Nippon Airways Boeing 737-700, JA16AN, Performing Flight NH-140. Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. Incident occurred September 6, 2011.




ANA Incident UPDATE #1

Japan Economic Newswire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge 
TOKYO, Sept. 28 -- (Kyodo) _ EDS

Updating number of passengers that complained of feeling unwell, adding ANA's disciplinary action, other information.

An All Nippon Airways jetliner briefly flew almost belly up when it nosedived off Shizuoka Prefecture en route to Tokyo early this month, the Japan Transport Safety Board said Wednesday.

Flight 140 from Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, with 117 crew and passengers aboard, managed to land at Haneda airport in Tokyo despite dropping around 1,900 meters from a height of about 12,500 meters in 30 seconds. Two flight attendants were slightly hurt, while six passengers later complained of feeling unwell.

The safety board's head, Norihiro Goto, told a news conference that data from the Boeing 737-700's digital flight recorder showed that in the incident on the night of Sept. 6, the twin-engine jet rolled to the left and descended after slightly rolling to the right when a co-pilot mistakenly operated the rudder trim knob in the cockpit.

The narrow-body aircraft continued to roll until it reached 131.7 degrees to the left, leaving it almost belly up, according to the board. Its nose pointed down as much as 35 degrees at one point.

"The centrifugal force (exerted by the maneuver) may have helped lessen the impact on the passengers," Goto said, adding that darkness outside may have prevented those aboard realizing that the plane had turned almost upside down.

The passengers are believed to have been buckled up at the time.

Following the revelation that the airplane had flown almost belly up, Shin Nagase, a senior executive vice president of All Nippon Airways Co., said at a separate news conference, "We deeply apologize for causing tremendous trouble and anxiety to our passengers." ANA reprimanded four officials with stern warnings on Sept. 7, including Mitsuo Morimoto, senior executive vice president in charge of safety promotion, and Koichi Uchizono, president of Air Nippon Co., an ANA group company that operated the flight.

The unintended maneuver was caused when the co-pilot, in trying to unlock the cockpit door for the captain who was returning from a rest room in the cabin, mistook the rudder trim knob for the cockpit door lock switch nearby.

By the time the co-pilot stabilized the aircraft, it was close to heading in the opposite direction, according to the safety board.

The incident occurred at 10:50 p.m. on Sept. 6 while the aircraft was flying over the Pacific about 40 kilometers south of Hamamatsu.

The transport safety board is investigating the incident, including the maneuver the co-pilot apparently performed to stabilize the jetliner.

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