A fatal 1997 accident involving a United Airlines flight from Tokyo to Hawaii was probably caused by a type of turbulence that is hard to anticipate and the crew's failure to issue safety instructions in Japanese, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said.
Advice from the crew after takeoff to keep seat belts fastened was not given in Japanese even though most of the passengers were Japanese, resulting in more extensive damage than there would have been otherwise, the NTSB said in a recent report.
Flight 826, carrying 374 passengers and 19 crew members, left Narita airport at 9:05 p.m. on Dec. 28, 1997, bound for Honolulu.
About an hour and 40 minutes later, the plane encountered minor turbulence over the Pacific, followed one to two minutes later by so-called clear air turbulence, according to the NTSB.