All Nippon Airways Flight 61 is a flight from Tokyo International Airport (Haneda Airport) in Ota, Tokyo, Japan, to New Chitose International Airport in Chitose, Japan, near Sapporo.

On July 24, 1999, the Boeing 747 on this route was hijacked soon after it took off, at about 11:25 A.M. The jet was flying over the Boso Peninsula in the Chiba Prefecture. It was carrying 503 passengers, including 14 children, as well as 14 crew members at the time. The knife-wielding man forced the flight attendant to let him into the cockpit.

He then made 34-year old copilot Kazayuki Koga get out of the cockpit. He told Captain Naoyuki Nagashima to land the airplane at the Yokota Air Base in Tokyo. At 12:09 P.M., crew members subdued the man, but the pilot had been fatally stabbed in the neck. A 60-year old female passenger from the Chiba Prefecture, who was on the flight, reported that passengers clapped after the hijacker was subdued.

Copilot Koga got back into the cabin and told the air traffic controllers, "It's an emergency. The captain was stabbed. Prepare an ambulance." The man said that he hijacked the plane because he wanted to fly one. The plane made an emergency landing at Haneda Airport at 12:14 P.M. The hijacker, Yuji Nishizawa was arrested on the spot. Nishizawa was, at the time, a 28-year old unemployed man from the ward of Edogawa in Tokyo. A doctor confirmed the death of Nagashima, of Yokohama, thirty minutes after he died.

See also

• List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
• Tokyo International Airport (Haneda Airport)
• Hijack
• Aircraft hijacking

External links

• Family demands 280 mil. yen over ANA hijacking death - Mainichi Shimbun article (English)
• ANA jet hijacker faces life behind bars - Mainichi Shimbun article (English)
• Hijacker fatally stabs ANA pilot - Mainichi Shimbun article (Japanese)