Mariko Umemoto
Ramp Service Department, Tokyo District Office
JAL Ground Service Co., Ltd.
Ground Service is in charge of guiding aircraft on the tarmac, as well as loading and unloading containers. When special ground service vehicles are brought close to the aircraft, the unloading and loading actually causes the aircraft to sink down or rise up, which can result in the vehicle causing damage to the aircraft. We must pay careful attention when performing our job. The Recommendation Paper pointed out a lack of information exchange and sharing due to strong barriers between internal organizations, and the weakness of a safety organization that could not break through these barriers. It described JAL as having an organizational structure that prevented individual employee efforts from yielding results for the company overall. This was the greatest “human error” that endangered safety at JAL.

Even after the recommendations were released, some other problems came to light. However, major changes were made by giving the necessary authority to the department coordinating safety. The Corporate Safety Division was set up reporting directly to the president and headed by the Senior Managing Director, who is a representative director and former pilot familiar with the operational site.

Takako Wakabayashi
Departure Cargo Group
JAL Ground Support Haneda Co., Ltd.
My job is to weigh and check the safety of cargo to be loaded on aircraft. Since the positioning of the cargo is very important for the safe operation of aircraft, we always accurately weigh unit load devices (ULD), such as pallets or containers, and other cargo, and submit the information to the load planning department. Our pride and joy here at Narita Airport are ten scales of various sizes that can weigh anything from 10 tons down to 10 kilos or less. Before starting work these scales are all inspected to make sure they are working properly. Safety is an airline’s greatest corporate asset. At the beginning of the JAL Group Safety Charter, it states that safety in flight operations is the very foundation and social responsibility of the JAL Group. Nevertheless, this was the first time for a representative director of the Group to manage safety measures to ensure that the JAL Group could establish a safety organization strongly linked to the Group’s management.

The creation of this organizational structure began with reform based on understanding how the public viewed JAL. The first step was the creation of the Safety Advisory Group, followed by the establishment of the Safety Promotion Center in April 2006, both of which demonstrated JAL’s determination to keep lines of communication with society open.

The Safety Promotion Center put the wreckage of JAL flight 123 on display for the general public, along with handwritten messages from deceased passengers, and other artifacts. It was the world’s first exhibition of an aviation accident. The Safety Promotion Center became the symbol of JAL’s promise for safety. The center received 40,000 visitors over two years, and many of them were people from public enterprises such as railway and power companies. This showed a strong desire in society to find out what can be learned from the crash of flight 123, after 23 years. Moreover, it was clear that JAL has a unique presence that continues to attract special attention from the public.

This was something that JAL now understood well. That is why JAL has actively been exposing itself to external evaluation over the past three years, including through LOSA. In April 2007, JAL undertook the world’s most extensive LOSA, and the analysis results were received in the spring of 2008. The conclusion was that JAL was carrying out good operational management in Japan, a country with many environmental threats such as sudden weather changes and difficult topography.

However, the audit also pointed out large gaps in the skills of cockpit teams, and indicated that sometimes co-pilots did not speak up enough due to the captain taking too much control, a situation which can certainly lead to errors. Captain Morii, who was in charge of the LOSA, explained the following. “There are 36 airlines worldwide that have been evaluated by LOSA, and JAL’s error occurrence rate was lower than the average. However, the areas of deficiency were pronounced. We had to figure out how to strengthen measures to address these risks.”

It was decided that the aircraft mechanics at Narita Airport would directly explain departure delays due to maintenance to passengers. The JAL Group decided not to rely entirely on the airport customer service staff, and to strive for firsthand understanding of the feelings of passengers.

The head of the Corporate Safety Division also carried out a major change by holding regular press conferences for members of the media. Part of the reason was probably to increase the expertise of reporters in the face of advances in aircraft technology and operation systems. However, it also served as a way to obtain outside opinions, and to help maintain JAL’s efforts.

• *2. LOSA: The Line Operations Safety Audit is a monitoring program for daily safety in the cockpit developed by Texas University with the support of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). An authorized auditor enters the cockpit, monitors all the processes from departure to arrival, and records any risk elements of the flight, along with human errors. Based on this record, the program analyzes the problems and risks that affect the airline. From April to June 2007, JAL carried out the most extensive LOSA in the world on its 475 domestic and international flights.