Japan Airlines employees raise safety concerns after multiple incidents – AeroTime

Pilots and ground handling staff at Japan Airlines (JAL) have expressed concerns about deficiencies in training and difficulties in communicating with more experienced staff following a series of recent safety incidents at the airline.

As for the pilot workforce, many pilots took early retirement during the pandemic. The airline has since hired flight crew to fill the open cockpit positions, but this has resulted in a flying environment where few pilots know each other, often meeting in the cockpit for the first time.

Such an environment makes it difficult for pilots to communicate and interact with each other in a country where a hierarchy based on seniority is still deeply rooted in the national psyche, anonymous sources at the airline say.

Likewise, during the pandemic, many ground handling employees aged between 30 and 50 left JAL to find employment elsewhere as they did not expect the aviation industry to recover in the short term, effectively breaking the connection between older and younger employees. Where once older employees acted as mentors to new hires, the dynamic has shifted to having less experienced employees to train newcomers, creating an experience gap in the workforce.

Although JAL has declined to officially comment on allegations of safety issues at the airline, the Japanese airline addressed the shortage of skilled workers at its shareholders meeting in early June 2024.

“We failed to create an environment where ground staff could ensure safety despite all the stresses, and that led to this series of incidents,” said Munekazu Tachibana, the airline’s senior vice president of corporate safety and security.

JAL’s operations have come under increased scrutiny since the accident at Tokyo Haneda Airport (HND) in January 2024, when one of its Airbus A350s was destroyed on the runway after colliding with a Japan Coast Guard aircraft. Although the incident was in no way the fault of JAL’s crew, the accident has brought additional scrutiny to the airline regarding its own safety processes and procedures.

Other incidents

In November 2023, a JAL aircraft crossed the runway at Seattle-Tacoma Airport (SEA) without clearance. In a subsequent safety report to the Japanese government, the airline stated that the captain had misunderstood the air traffic controller’s instructions and that although the co-pilot doubted that they had clearance to take off, he said nothing for fear of overruling the captain.

In May 2024, a JAL pilot at Fukuoka Airport (FUK) in southwestern Japan allegedly failed to correctly repeat air traffic controller instructions and subsequently crossed a runway holding line and entered the airport’s active runway without the control tower’s authorization.

In another incident, also in May 2024, the wingtips of two JAL aircraft touched at Haneda Airport as one was pushed back from the terminal to prepare for takeoff while the other moved forward to take up an adjacent parking position.

Then, on June 22, 2024, an Embraer 170 of J-Air (a subsidiary of JAL) bound for Osaka-Itami returned to Aomori Airport in the north of the country after a signal from the cockpit indicated that one of its engines had caught fire.

The Japanese Ministry of Transport stated in March 2024 that it was difficult for JAL to find enough pilots, as many of them are currently over 50 years old and will retire around 2030. The majority of the airline’s co-pilots are between the ages of 20 and early 40s. JAL employs around 2,000 pilots.

On June 24, 2024, the Ministry of Transport also announced that it plans to strengthen measures to prevent runway overruns. This includes installing an acoustic function and a message that sounds on air traffic control screens when there is a risk of two aircraft colliding. In addition, the ministry is considering increasing the number of air traffic controllers to increase safety.