United Accused Of Slowing Investigation Without Passenger List, Agency Couldn’t Find Uninjured Turbulence Survivors

Japan’s Transport Ministry accused United Airlines on Wednesday of slowing the investigation into a jumbo jet’s deadly plunge in turbulence by refusing to turn over the passenger list.

United acknowledged there had been confusion over the list - which it blamed on a deluge of requests from different Japanese agencies - but said it was cooperating and forwarding the passengers’ names to authorities.

“We’re in the process of providing a current passenger manifest, or passenger list, to the … lead Japanese investigating authority,” said Richard Martin, a spokesman at United Airlines’ headquarters in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village. “The National Transportation Safety Board is doing so as well.”

A United representative in Japan had said earlier that the airline was following company policy in not turning over the list to the Transport Ministry. “We respect the privacy of our customers,” spokesman Hideki Isayama said.

The drop, about 1-1/2 hours into the plane’s flight from Tokyo to Honolulu, killed one woman and injured more than 100 other people.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which asked for Japanese help in the investigation, is trying to find out - among other things - whether the seat-belt sign was lit before the turbulence hit Flight 826.

Some passengers say the sign was off. United Airlines says it was on. The board said it could not be sure until investigators spoke with the crew.

Of the six passengers interviewed by Japanese investigators so far, none said the seat-belt sign was on, said Makoto Kitazawa, a member of a Transport Ministry committee investigating Sunday’s accident.

The committee has been unable to interview uninjured passengers because United has not given it their names, he said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. panel was to inspect the plane itself. The Boeing 747 left for Las Vegas on Wednesday night from Tokyo, where it returned after flying into the turbulence.

The plane’s interior has been left as it was, said Chikayoshi Hirasawa, head of the Transport Ministry’s office at Tokyo’s international airport. Hirasawa declined to comment on a report by the Japanese news agency Kyodo that the plane was 25 years old and would be scrapped.

In Washington, the NTSB said information from the flight recorder showed the plane was severely buffeted by turbulence, but actually dropped much less than originally thought - 100 feet, rather than an initial estimate of 1,000 feet.

The board said that while cruising at 31,000 feet, the plane was struck with an upward force of 1.8 times the force of gravity and a sideways push of about one-tenth the force of gravity.

Six seconds later, the plane dropped with a downward force about 80 percent of gravity, with the passengers feeling nearly weightless for about a half-second.