All Nippon Airways Flight 61

All Nippon Airways Flight 61
JA8966, the affected aircraft, in 2010
Accident summary
Accident type	kidnapping
place	Tokyo
date	July 23, 1999
Fatalities	1
Survivors	516
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Boeing 747-400D
operator	All Nippon Airways
Mark	JA8966
Departure airport	Tokyo Haneda Airport
Destination airport	New Chitose Airport
Passengers	503
crew	14th
Lists of aviation accidents

The All Nippon Airways Flight 61 is a scheduled flight from Tokyo Haneda to New Chitose , on the one on 23 July 1999 Boeing 747-400D was kidnapped.

plane

The Boeing 747, four years old at the time of the hijacking, with the registration number "JA8966" completed its maiden flight on July 18, 1995, was delivered to All Nippon Airways ( ANA for short ) on December 11, 1995 and retired in January 2014.

The kidnapper

Yūji Nishizawa ( Japanese 西 沢 裕 司 Nishizawa Yūji ), born on September 8, 1970, was 28 years old and unemployed at the time of the kidnapping. He lived in the Edogawa district of Tokyo , was an aviation enthusiast and therefore knew a lot about cockpits. He attended the private Musashi Middle and High School in Nerima and later Hitotsubashi University . He suffered from depression and was taking large amounts of serotonin reuptake inhibitors .

Originally, Nishizawa had planned the kidnapping on July 22nd but was stopped by his parents, who found a knife and several plane tickets in his pocket. He had previously told them and his psychiatrist that he would travel to Hokkaido alone . In addition to flight 61, Nishizawa had also booked tickets for flight 83 to Naha and flight 851 to Hakodate .

The abduction

Flight 61 took off from Tokyo Haneda Airport for New Chitose Airport at 11:23 a.m. The crew of 14 and 503 passengers, including 14 children, were on board. Kidnapper Nishizawa got up shortly after takeoff, screamed loudly and threatened a flight attendant with a smuggled kitchen knife. He ordered her to take him to the cockpit.

At 11:25 a.m., two minutes after take-off, 51-year-old Captain Naoyuki Nagashima reported a kidnapping to air traffic control . Nishizawa first asked the captain to fly the machine to Yokosuka , whereupon the plane turned to the southwest. Now he ordered the plane to fly to Izu-Ōshima . At 11:38 a.m., Nishizawa expelled 34-year-old co-pilot Kazuyuki Koga from the cockpit.

At 11:55 a.m. Nishizawa killed the captain, took control of the aircraft and partially lowered the machine to a height of only 300 meters. Co-pilot Koga, who was aware of the danger, stormed the cockpit together with other passengers, including an ANA captain flying as a passenger. Nishizawa was overwhelmed and the two pilots raised the plane to a safe altitude. At 12:03 p.m., the co-pilot informed air traffic control that the kidnapper had been overwhelmed and the captain had died. The plane turned to Tokyo and landed safely at Tokyo Haneda Airport at 12:14 p.m. The kidnapper was arrested immediately and Captain Nagashima was pronounced dead while on board.

After the kidnapping

Tokyo Haneda Airport tightened security controls significantly. Kidnapper Yūji Nishizawa said he hijacked the plane to fly under the Rainbow Bridge and to perform loops and Dutch rolls . It is also suspected that he wanted to show how easy it was to hijack an airplane in Japan, because he had already recognized the security gap a month before the hijacking and warned the airport operator, but there was no response. It was later revealed that Nishizawa had Asperger's Syndrome . In March 2005, he was found only partially guilty of mental illness. Nishizawa was sentenced to life imprisonment that same year .

Captain Naoyuki Nagashima's family sued All Nippon Airways, the Japanese government and the kidnapper's family. They agreed in December 2007.

Web links

• Aircraft accident data and report in the Aviation Safety Network (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Boeing 747 - MSN 27442 - JA8966 (English), accessed on June 29, 2015