Incident: JL1183 emergency landing at Haneda

There was another Japan Airlines incident in Japan on February 3 2010. This time it was JAL flight 1183 from Haneda to Memanbetsu Airport. The Boeing 737-800 registered as JA325J returned to Haneda shortly after takeoff due to engine problem. No one was injured.

The plane with 121 passengers and 6 crew members onboard at 08:20 on February 3. There were abnormal sounds a minute after takeoff. The plane was climbing at around 300 metre at that time. The temperature of the exhaust from the left engine was rising. The crew therefore shut down the left engine and return to Haneda at around 08:38. Runway A has to shut down for 14 minutes due to this emergency landing.

Initial investigation found metal debris and oil leakage were found in the left engine (so there's probably fire during the initial climb). This could be caused by the metal sucked into the engine during takeoff, maintenance issue, or any things else. It's still up in the air. I hope this is not a maintenance issue (hey your new CEO just visited Haneda facility the day before! :P). The last thing you want is incidents like this which will further damage the JAL brand and most importantly could be fatal! And the 73H is one of the newest deliveries to JAL. It was delivered in December 2009!

The only good news in this incident is there were 121 passengers onboard. A 73H with V30 configuration has 165 seats (20J 145Y). So the flight load is 73.3%! It could be better but last year this route only had an average load factor of 60.6% in February! Hopefully JAL can keep having higher load factor like this :)

Sources:
Yomiuri Online (in Japanese)
News 24 (video of the news report in Japanese)