HAL Flight 18 was a flight headed towards Wakkanai, Hokkaido which is the northernmost city in Japan. Due to unfortunate circumstances, the plane crashed on January 11th, 2011.
Passengers[]
The plane held 31 passengers and crew members including:
According to the newspaper and magazine articles, 27 of the passengers were found dead on January 17th [1] including Hotori who was in a snowfield. When the rescue team arrived, they found Kusuda Yuni as the sole survivor [2]. After the snow thawed, the decomposed corpses of three people were found on July 3rd, 2011. An avalanche occurred at 6:53 AM on January 17th, 2011 at the location where the bodies were found [3]. Although they could not be directly identified, the newspaper and magazine conclude that they must be Kokoro, Yomogi and Mayuzumi since the count matches the number of people missing from Flight 18 [4]
Crash and Rescue[]
The plane's signal was lost at around 3:30 PM on January 11 over the southern mountain range of Aomori Prefecture during the blizzard [5]. After catching fire, the plane crashed on Mount Akakura.
A search was launched to locate the aircraft, but was unsuccessful for 6 days [6]. The reason for their failure is that the plane flew undetected for 30 minutes, during which it covered more ground than predicted [7]. Since the plane moved through a mountainous area with no residents, nobody saw its flight path [8]. The blizzard combined with the solar winds made the investigation even more difficult [9][10].
On January 16th, the authorities received a call from a satellite phone (from Yomogi) claiming four passengers from Flight 18 were surviving in the shelter cabin on Mount Akakura [11]. Because of the solar winds, the odds of the satellite phone connecting were one in a million, and without the call, the authorities may have never pinpoint the location of the crash [12].
The rescuers were unable to make a move since the there was a severe storm from the 15th until the morning of the 17th, so they decided to wait for the storm to die down [13]. They found a break during the afternoon of the 17th and found Yuni. Yuni remained silent about the incident for a year, supposedly due to his mental instability [14].
In the end, the public is left with the following questions [15]:
- Why did the passengers leave the cabin
- What did Yuni see during the 7 days?
- Why does Yuni refuse to talk about it. Is he hiding some truth?
Reaction[]
The disappearance of the plane caused the public to speculate wildly about the cause. Guesses ranged from the natural to the supernatural. Some included it getting hit by a fighter plane or missile, while others believed it was kidnapped by a UFO, warped to another dimension or never existed to begin with [16].
Once the public learned that 3 of the passengers disappeared, some speculated that Yuni had killed the others in a fight for food [17].
References
- ↑ "On January 17th, 2011, 27 corpses, all from those among the 31 missing passengers and crewmembers, were discovered at the crash site.", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "A single survivor was also found. ――Kusuda Yuni.", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "Time passed, and July 3rd, 2011 soon arrived. The snow thawed, and the mountain's surface revealed the decomposed corpses of three people. From here on, it was just the same as the newspaper I read in the shelter cabin. "At 6:53 on January 17th, 2011, the three were caught in an avalanche and passed away."", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "Days later, the three were identified through the passenger list. Yomogi Seiji, Fuyukawa Kokoro and Mayuzumi Lin.... But their whereabouts remained unknown....", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "The control tower lost the plane's signal at about 3:30 PM on January 11th, 2011. Its last known location was in the sky over the southern mountain range of Aomori Prefecture.", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "The police and related bureaus assembled a special rescue team and immediately commenced the search for the fallen airframe and the passengers. However, despite the ongoing investigations and searches, not a trace of the wreckage could be found. More precisely, the search lasted six days. For about a week, the state of the investigation remained unchanged: "The whereabouts of the airframe are as of yet unknown."", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "1: Between the time the control tower lost sight of the aircraft and the time of the crash, there was a blank of over thirty minutes. During this time, Flight 18 appeared to have been flying at a low altitude, weaving its way through the mountain range. Herewith, the wreckage was found in a place far from the crash point predicted by the authorities.", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "2: Nobody observed Flight 18's low-altitude meandering. Flight 18 was making its way through a mountainous area in the dead of winter, a highly abnormal flight path. There were no private homes in the surrounding area, and nobody around who could have heard the sound of the crash.", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "3: Bad weather conditions. At the time, the entire Mount Akakura area was constantly subjected to bad weather. Therefore, conducting an investigation was difficult.", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "4: The effects of the solar winds. The most intense solar winds ever recorded in history.... This disturbance resulted in the malfunction of the reconnaissance satellites. The use of satellite photography was also impossible.", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "Early on the morning of the 16th, the authorities received a phone call from a man claiming to be a survivor of Flight 18. The gist of it was that there were four people in the shelter cabin on Mount Akakura in need of rescue. Immediately after that, the call was cut off. Tracing the call to its original, they found that the caller had made use of a satellite phone line.", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "But that line, used by the satellite phone, was also malfunctioning at the time due to the effects of the solar winds. The chances of getting a proper connection in the year 2011 was 1 in 1,000,000. Therefore, receiving a call from the survivors was an event that couldn't be described as anything short of a miracle. Incidentally, if not for that phone call, the authorities probably never would have been able to pinpoint the exact location of the crash in time.", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "But even so, from the 15th until daybreak on the 17th, the whole Mount Akakura was in the midst of a severe storm. They couldn't even fly the helicopter in that weather. The mountain rescue team could have gotten there on foot from the base of the mountain... but not without extreme difficulty. The shelter cabin was near the peak of Mount Akakura. No matter how skilled at climbing the team members were, in estimation it would have taken them a week or more to reach the cabin. In the end, there was no other option than to wait for the weather to improve.", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "The authorities interrogated Yuni about the circumstances of the accident. But Yuni was in an unstable mental state, and he remained obstinately silent.", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "Even if they knew that help was on its way, why and for what purpose did they leave the shelter cabin? What did Kusuda Yuni-kun see during those seven days? What did he go through? Why does he refuse to speak about it even now? Is he hiding some truth that he doesn't want revealed?", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ "The disappearance of the plane caused the public to speculate wildly about the cause. Guesses ranged from the natural to the supernatural. Some included it getting hit by a fighter plane or missile, while others believed it was kidnapped by a UFO, warped to another dimension or never existed to begin with", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)
- ↑ ""The three that suddenly vanished"――it became a rich source of material for the mass media. Public speculation began to fly once more. Some of them were pretty far-fetched; there were even those asking, "in the struggle over food, did Yuni kill the others and then bury them somewhere?!"", Satoru Chapter: Examine (Full Text)