On November 22, 1968, Japan Air Lines (JAL) Flight 2, a Douglas DC-8-62 named Shiga, made an accidental water landing in the shallow waters of San Francisco Bay. The aircraft was on a scheduled flight from Tokyo to San Francisco. Often called the “Asoh Defense” incident or the “SFO Water Landing,” it remains a legendary story not just for the survival of everyone on board, but for what happened to the aircraft afterward.
In thick fog and low visibility, Captain Kohei Asoh mistakenly believed he was over the runway. Instead, the plane touched down roughly 2.5 miles (4 km) short of San Francisco International Airport (SFO).
Miraculously, all 107 occupants (96 passengers and 11 crew) survived without a single injury. The landing was assisted by an unusually high tide, which provided enough cushioning for the impact while keeping the exit doors above the waterline. Passengers and crew evacuated via lifeboats and were towed to the nearby Coyote Point Yacht Harbor by the Coast Guard and police. Captain Asoh was the last to leave the aircraft.
The incident is most famous for Captain Asoh’s blunt accountability during the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation. When asked what went wrong, he reportedly stated: “As you Americans say, I f---ed up.”
This rare act of “radical honesty” became known in leadership and business management as the “Asoh Defense.” Because he took full responsibility without shifting blame to technical issues or weather, he was not fired, but merely demoted and sent for retraining; he eventually returned to flying for JAL until his retirement.
Unlike most ditched jetliners, the Shiga was not a total loss. The aircraft was salvaged from the bay 55 hours after the incident. United Airlines repaired the plane at a cost of approximately $4 million. It was returned to JAL in March 1969 and continued to fly for several years under a new name, Hidaka. It was later sold to Airborne Express and was finally scrapped in 2001.
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