JAL PLANE CRASH THOUGHT DUE TO BOEING <BA.N> FAULT
A Japanese government investigation team
believes that faulty repairs by Boeing Co caused the worst
single plane crash in history, one of the team said.
    Boeing Co is the manufacturer of the Japan Air Lines 747
jumbo jet which crashed into a mountain in Japan on August 12,
1985, killing 520 people. There were only four survivors.
    A Boeing spokesman, contacted by telephone at the firm's
headquarters in Seattle, Washington, told Reuters the firm
would probably have no comment to make until the Japanese
investigation team's report was officially released.
    The team investigator, a Japanese Transport Ministry
official who declined to be identified, said a failure by
Japanese aircraft inspectors to check the repair work done on
the plane by a Boeing team had provoked an internal debate in
the Ministry over inspection procedures.
    The Ministry official told Reuters that a report by his
team, which has already been sent in draft form to the U.S.
National Transportation Safety Board for comment, should be
released in late May. Under an international convention, the
draft must be submitted for final comments to the pertinent
authorities.
    Asked on Thursday about Boeing's role in the crash, a
Ministry spokesman declined comment.
    On September 6, 1985, Boeing issued an official statement
saying that repairs it had undertaken on the doomed Japan Air
Lines plane in 1978 were faulty.
    However, no official, direct connection was then made
between the faulty repairs and the crash.
    The Japanese investigation team says in its draft report
that it believes those faulty repairs were the cause of the
1985 accident, the investigator said.
    The Boeing statement after the crash said: "Examination of
the wreckage, the flight data recorder readout, the cockpit
voice recorder, and interviews with the surviving off-duty
flight attendant indicate that decompression occurred in flight
due to a rupture of the aft pressure bulkhead.
    "The Boeing examination of the bulkhead at the site of the
crash has revealed that a relatively small section of the
bulkhead splice, approximately 17 per cent, was not correctly
assembled during repairs which Boeing made after a 1978 landing
accident," the statement said.
    The repairs were required after a 1978 landing accident at
Osaka airport, in western Japan, in which the plane's tail
scraped the runway.
    The Japanese report also mentions the government inspectors
who in 1978 signed a certificate of airworthiness approving the
repairs, he said.
    Police had investigated four inspectors, including one man
who two weeks ago killed himself by drinking insecticide after
four days of police questioning.
    "None of the four had looked at Boeing's repair work," the
investigator said.
 REUTER
