Prosecutors demanded prison Wednesday for two air traffic controllers charged with professional negligence by nearly causing a midair collision between two Japan Airlines jumbo jets.
Hideki Hachitani, 31, for whom one year behind bars was sought, and Yasuko Momii, 37, for whom 1 1/2 years was demanded, have pleaded not guilty at the Tokyo District Court.
The 2001 incident over the Pacific off Shizuoka Prefecture caused about 100 passengers and crew members on one of the planes to be injured. The controllers are charged with inflicting injuries on 57 passengers who filed a complaint with police.
Hachitani, who was training under Momii at the Tokyo Air Traffic Control Center in Saitama Prefecture, mixed up the flight numbers when he gave instructions to the two planes, prosecutors said.
The planes, which had already approached each other, came even closer as a result. One of the pilots had to put his plane into a dive, leading to the injuries to the passengers.
The accident occurred at 4 p.m. Jan. 31, 2001, when Flight 907, a Boeing 747 bound for Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, from Tokyo's Haneda airport, and Flight 958, a DC-10 en route to Narita from Pusan, South Korea, came close to each other.
Hachitani tried to avoid a collision but ended up giving the wrong order to the 747 to descend because he had mistaken it for the other plane, the prosecutors said.
The 747 captain followed the instruction instead of the cockpit collision warning system, which had ordered an ascent, and the plane came close to colliding with the DC-10.