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JAL opens safety promotion center

The JAL Group has established a Safety Promotion Center featuring exhibits
from incidents and accidents primarily as an aid to encourage flight safety awareness among employees.Located in the maintenance district of Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, the Japan Airlines Safety Promotion Center will
open on April 24, 2006. It has been created in response to recommendations from a five man external panel of
safety experts established by JAL in 2005 and chaired by Kunio Yanagida, a well-known writer specializing in
scientific, aviation, and crisis management topics.
JAL has spent 180 million yen (US$1,525,400) in creating the facility, which has a staff of three.
Exhibits in the 622 square meter display space include photographs, charts and other items from a JAL
747-accident in August 1985. These items include the flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder and seats from
the aircraft, which was flying from Tokyo to Osaka when the accident happened. A major exhibit is the rear
pressure bulkhead from the aircraft (registration JA8119). This fractured in flight, severing hydraulic lines and
blowing off most of the aircraft’s tailfin, thus rendering the aircraft uncontrollable.
Documentation and information providing case histories of accidents and incidents for reference and study are
compiled at the Center in an archive, available for reference at anytime. The Center’s displays and documents will
be used for employee education and training and will also be available to serious researchers outside the company.
The center displays information on all accidents JAL has been involved in since its founding and also includes
materials showing what other airlines in Japan and throughout the world have learned from accidents, and how
they have applied their learning to improving safety.
The Safety Promotion Center is part of a new JAL Corporate Safety Division established on April 1st this year as
the core organization responsible for safety of the JAL Group. Kiyoshi Kishida, a former JAL captain and now
Senior Managing Director, is responsible for the new division’s activities.
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