The JAL Group established the Safety Advisory Group on August 3, 2005 in response to the Business Improvement Order issued to the company by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on March 17, 2005.

Over a five-month period following the establishment of the Safety Advisory Group, members conducted a series of interviews with JAL Group staff directly connected with a series of safety incidents, as well as other parties involved. Safety group members also observed flights and visited important work sites, including TAECO, a maintenance factory in Xiamen, China, to which JAL contracts maintenance work. In addition, the committee climbed Mount Osutaka (the site where JAL flight 123 crashed in 1985) and made an inspection tour of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport’s Air Traffic Services Department at Haneda Airport.

The Safety Advisory Group finalized the results of its investigations and analysis in a December 26, 2005 report entitled Recommendations Aimed at Revitalizing the JAL Group as a Company with High Safety Standards. The chairman of the group, Kunio Yanagida, conducted a series of lectures at JAL headquarters in Tokyo as well as at offices and operational bases in Sapporo, Haneda, Narita, Nagoya, Osaka, Fukuoka and Okinawa.

Kunio Yanagida (chairman), nonfiction writer; Yotaro Hatamura, professor, Kogakuin University; professor emeritus, Tokyo University; Shinichi Kamata, professor, National Defense Academy; Shigeru Haga, professor, Department of Psychology, College of Arts, Rikkyo University; Akinori Komatsubara, professor, School of Science and Engineering, Waseda University