The aircraft reached at 6:53 p.m., at which point the captain reported an uncontrollable aircraft for the third time. Shortly afterward, the controller asked the crew to switch the radio frequency to 119.7 to talk to the Tokyo Approach ("Japan Air 123, switch the frequency to 119.7 please!"), and while the pilots did not acknowledge the request over the radio, they did as instructed (Captain: "Yes, Yes, 119.7" Co-pilot: "Ah, Yes, number 2" Captain: "119.7" Co-pilot: "Yes" Flight Engineer: "Shall we try?" Co-pilot: "Yes"). Tokyo Approach then contacted the flight via the SELCAL system, briefly activating the SELCAL alarm again until the flight engineer responded to Tokyo's request. At this point, the captain asked the flight engineer to request their position (Captain: "Request position" Flight Engineer: "Request position"). At 6:54 p.m., this was reported to the flight as 45 miles northwest of Haneda, and 25 miles west of Kumagaya. At 6:55 p.m. the captain requested flap extension, and the co-pilot called out a flap extension to 10 units, while the flaps were already being extended from 5 units at 6:54:30. This began to cause the aircraft to begin to bank to the right, possibly due to an imbalance in the lift between the left and right flaps. Power was increased at the same time. However, a differential thrust setting caused engine power on the left side to be slightly higher than the right side. This contributed to further increasing the bank angle to the right.