Japan Airlines (JAL)

Is Japan Airlines safe?

Yes. JAL's last accident with passenger deaths was in 1985, and the most recent test of its crews ended with all 379 people walking away from a burning aircraft. We score it 84. Two things keep it below its rival ANA: the loss of an A350 in the Haneda runway collision, and a string of pilots who drank before duty.

The Haneda collision, 2 January 2024

After dark, JL516, an Airbus A350-900 from Sapporo, landed on runway 34R at Tokyo Haneda and hit a Japan Coast Guard Dash 8 that was standing on the runway, about to fly relief supplies to the earthquake zone on the Noto peninsula. The A350 slid about 1.7 km with its nose crushed and its belly on fire before running off the side of the runway. Five of the six Coast Guard crew died; their captain survived with serious burns.

On the A350, the public address system had failed. Only three of the eight doors were used, and the crew got all 367 passengers and 12 crew out before the fire destroyed the aircraft. One passenger was seriously hurt and four slightly.

The Japan Transport Safety Board (JTSB) has published two interim reports, in December 2024 and December 2025, but no final report yet. They say the Coast Guard crew believed they had been cleared to enter the runway, that the controller did not notice the Dash 8 standing there, and they are examining how the tower used its runway occupancy monitoring system. They are still analysing why the A350 crew did not see the Dash 8 until just before impact. In April 2026 the JTSB warned that the portable megaphones on the A350 were too weak to be heard through the cabin, an issue it said could affect other aircraft types.

The A350 was written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary, so the collision counts as a hull loss on JAL's record. Its share of the blame is not yet settled.

JL123 and the older record

JAL's history includes the deadliest single-aircraft accident ever. On 12 August 1985, the rear pressure bulkhead of a Boeing 747SR failed on a flight from Haneda to Osaka; 520 of the 524 people on board died when it hit a mountain in Gunma. Boeing had repaired the bulkhead wrongly after a tail strikeTail strikeWhen the tail of an aircraft touches the runway during take-off or landing, usually because the nose was raised too far or too early.More in the glossary seven years earlier. JAL displays wreckage from the crash at its safety centre at Haneda.

Before that, JAL had a run of fatal crashes in the 1970s, including Delhi and Moscow in 1972 and Kuala Lumpur in 1977, and the 1982 Haneda crash of JL350, in which a mentally ill captain put the engines into reverse on approach and 24 people died. Since 1985, no passenger has died in a JAL accident.

The alcohol problem

This is the weak point, and it keeps coming back. The Civil Aviation Bureau issued business improvement orders to JAL in December 2018 and October 2019, both over drinking pilots, and a strict warning in May 2024. In December 2024 it issued a business improvement recommendation after the captain and the second captain rostered on JL774 from Melbourne on 1 December drank beyond company limits the day before, delaying the flight, and then agreed on a false story. The ministry found that pre-flight alcohol checks had not been done properly and that the measures JAL had promised after the May warning were not working.

Then, on 28 August 2025, a captain due to fly JL793 from Honolulu to Nagoya was taken off the flight after drinking the day before, despite having told JAL he had stopped drinking. Three flights were delayed, by up to 18 hours according to Aviation Wire, which also reported that about ten of his self-test records had been altered. The ministry issued another strict warning on 10 September 2025, and JAL said it would dismiss the captain.

No JAL flight has had an accident linked to alcohol, and every case was caught on the ground. But the pattern shows a company that has struggled to make its own rules stick.

What JAL flies

JAL's fleet table lists 220 aircraft in its full-service group at 30 June 2026. The 162 JAL jets are 28 Airbus A350s (11 A350-1000s and 17 A350-900s), 45 Boeing 787s, nine Boeing 777-300ERs, 24 Boeing 767-300ERs and 56 Boeing 737-800s; the rest are 52 regional aircraft and six freighters. The 777s are being replaced by A350-1000s, three of them in the last year. JAL has 38 Boeing 737-8s on order for its domestic fleet, plus A321neos, A350-900s and 787-9s. JAL does not publish an average fleet age in these results. ZIPAIR and Spring Japan add 14 more aircraft.

Many domestic JL flights are flown by group airlines with their own certificates: J-Air (Embraer jets), Japan Air Commuter (ATR turboprops and Embraer jets) and Japan Transocean Air (737-800s, Okinawa). None has had a fatal accident in our window.

How to fly JAL more safely

• Wear your seat belt whenever seated. Turbulence seriously injured JAL cabin crew in April 2024, September 2024, December 2025 and July 2026, and a passenger on a Japan Air Commuter flight in December 2025.
• In an evacuation, leave your bags. JL516 is the best recent example of why: the cabin was full of smoke within minutes, and the crew's shouted commands worked because passengers followed them.

How we scored it

Oversight (90) and the operating environment (86) are strong. The accident record (86) loses points for the A350 written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary at Haneda, even though no one on board died. Serious incidents (72) cost the most, because of the repeated alcohol warnings. Compare Korean Air, which also scores 84.