The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism issued a business improvement advisory to Japan Airlines (JAL) on December 27.
This decision was made following an incident on December 1, where the captain and co-pilot of JAL flight JL774 from Melbourne to Tokyo/Narita excessively drank the day before the flight, leading to a departure delay of 3 hours and 11 minutes. The measures to prevent reoccurrence, including an appropriate alcohol test, were not sufficiently implemented, following a serious warning in May.
Despite being aware of the drinking restrictions set in the operational regulations, both the captain and co-pilot ordered one glass of sparkling wine each and three bottles of red wine, excessively exceeding the limit. The captain suggested to the co-pilot that they should only declare the consumption of one bottle of red wine for the previous day, and they colluded to conceal the true amount until admitting to the excessive drinking on the evening of December 3.
Moreover, before the pre-departure briefing, the captain and the co-pilot carried out a pre-duty alcohol test. After starting the pre-departure briefing, the co-pilot continued self-testing until alcohol was no longer detected, avoiding proper pre-duty alcohol testing. Although a staff member from the airport personnel was present during the self-tests, detailed information was not properly conveyed to the operations department, which mistakenly deemed it a false detection and therefore did not take necessary measures such as replacing the flight crew. This co-pilot had a past incident related to alcohol detection.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has directed JAL to report back with measures to prevent recurrence by January 24, 2025.
JAL states, “Having received a serious warning in May and causing another inappropriate incident related to alcohol in just half a year, we take the loss of customer trust very seriously and will redouble our efforts to prevent recurrence.”
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This article was generated using automatic translation by GPT-4 API. The translation may not be accurate.
