Without Warning
The Deadliest Single Plane Crash Had One Cause
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In 1978 a Boeing 747 scraped its tail on a runway in Osaka. The repair that followed killed 520 people seven years later.
It is still the deadliest single-aircraft accident in history.
The fix itself was written correctly. A Boeing engineer specified one wide splice plate, wide enough to take two rows of rivets.
What actually got installed was one narrower plate and a filler strip. Along…