Flight 629 (March 26th, 1953)

Flight 629 was flown on March 26th, 1953, and was a normally scheduled flight from Lynwood to Clarence on a DC-6 registered LYD606, with 73 passengers and 4 crew members on board. It started off as a normal flight with takeoff going smoothly, but shortly after getting to cruising altitude, a bird strike occurred causing the inner-right engine to catch fire. The passengers erupted into a panic, and the pilots needed to make a choice. Either land at the very small Pembroke Plantation airport only a few nautical miles away or try and safely land at Clarence as scheduled which was slightly further away. The pilot of the flight, who happened to be 5JA’s first pilot, Felix Parker, made the choice to land at Pembroke Plantation.

The landing was safe, and all 77 people on board survived with no injuries. This flight had been 5J Airlines’ first major incident, and people respected and admired Parker's brave choice to land at the small airport. As a result of the incident, business did take a small hit, and LYD605 would need to undergo maintenance to fix the broken engine. Lancer chose Parker to do safety training for all future pilots, to teach them what to do to avoid emergencies and what to do in case of emergencies. 5J Airlines would become a much safer airline after this incident, and LYD606 would be put back in service by May of 1953. 

Flight 7876 (June 7th, 1964)

Flight 7876 was flown on June 7th, 1964, and was a flight from Lynwood to Amaras served by a Convair 880 registered LYD885. It had 96 passengers on board along with 6 crew members, and had started off normally. Takeoff was smooth, and the climb out of Lynwood had begun. During the climb however, the pilots noticed power decreasing and soon depleting in the two left engines. Over the coast of Harden, an emergency was declared and the captain of the flight Henry Miller made preparations to land at Harden International. The descent and line-up was challenging with the dead weight of the two powerless engines, but Miller managed to miraculously get on track for landing. However, when he tried to deploy the gears, the crew was horrified to realize they weren’t extending. This landing was going to be rough, and right before landing, the people of the plane were told to brace for impact.

The impact on landing was extremely rough, and without the brakes on the gears the plane didn’t slow down in time. The plane would skid off the runway and only stop at the beach, thankfully where no one had been. Emergency services immediately came to the flight’s aid, and out of the 102 souls on board, 8 would lose their lives while almost everyone on the aircraft had injuries. This had been the first 5J Airlines flight with fatalities, which would lead to a strong hit to business. James Lancer made a statement on the crash and gave his condolences to the families of those lost in the crash, and that the airline would strive to be safer. LYD885 would be taken back to Lynwood so investigators and maintenance crews could try and figure out what happened in detail. After 3 days of investigation, it was said the cause of the engine loss was due to the fuel fittings becoming brittle after not being checked in maintenance. The gear failure was caused by hydraulic system failures, leading to the gears becoming stuck. The maintenance crew who worked on LYD885 just three days before the flight denied seeing any issues, saying that they let the plane off as it had to be. While some would dispute and be suspicious of this, the case was done, and LYD885 would be repaired and back in service by December of 1964. 

Flight 938 (November 2nd, 1964)

Flight 938 was flown on November 2nd, 1966, and was a flight from Meihua to Umibutsu, which then went from Umibutsu to Bilibadi. It was served by an L-188 registered ME5588 with 76 passengers and 3 crew members on board. The flight happened soon after the Kyokan base of operations was placed in Meihua, which led to multiple 5JA aircraft being re-registered in Meihua to the fully 5JA-operated 5J Airlines Kyokkou subsidiary company. Some pilots chose to move from Lynwood operations into the Kyokkou operations along with the aircraft they flew, with new pilots from Meihua also being hired. The Oconian pilots had to learn about the vastly different southern Kyokan weathers, and in a very quick manner so 5JA could start steady operations entirely in Kyokkou by 1967. Flight 938 was a normally scheduled flight only a few weeks after the base in Meihua was founded, and it was operated by one of the multiple L-188s being newly stationed in Kyokkou for regional flights in the south of the continent. ME5588’s pilots chose to move with their plane into the new continent and had learned about some of the various differences between Oconia and Kyokkou fairly quickly.

In the early morning of November 2nd, 1964, ME5588 took off on its journey which would start from Meihua and at Umibutsu at around noon as Flight 937 and then make its way to Bilibadi to get there by the early evening as Flight 938. The first leg of the trip went well, with some slight rain and a nice landing at Umibutsu at 12:28pm local time. The plane would then leave for Bilibadi at 3pm, but an issue soon arose. The Umibutsu ATC gave a warning to all flights in the area about a possible typhoon that was currently on course for the south of Eiko. However, Samuel Lee, the pilot of ME5588, took this warning with a grain of salt, and decided to continue on with the flight. The co-pilot Peter Owens was worried about this choice but went with Lee’s judgement due to them flying together in harsh weather before. Unfortunately for them, this would be far harsher than they had ever faced. While climbing, the typhoon swept the sea near Eiko, where Flight 938 had been, and the heavy winds began interfering with the flight. Lee and Owens could see where this was going, so they made an emergency flight detour to Kashio for safety, but the typhoon was too fast for the L-188 still climbing, and the storm started dragging the plane in. The pilots fought desperately with the storm, giving it all that they could, and eventually the storm would weaken and finally let them out. However, to their shock, part of the wing had been torn off by the sheer strength of the storm. Keeping the plane flying was an incredible challenge, and on their way to Kashio for the emergency landing, it was ever-more difficult to control the aircraft. Miraculously, the pilots somehow managed to land at Kashio semi-safely with about half of the people on board having injuries relating to the time so close to the storm and the landing being rough.

As a result, 5J Airlines Kyokkou went dormant for multiple months on flying from Meihua, leading only flights from the Oconian hubs to fly into Kyokkou lands. The company was shown clearly that pilots were going to need heavy training from established Kyokan pilots to fly efficiently in the continent, which was set up by January of 1965. For the reckless choice of ignoring the storm warning, Samuel Lee and Peter Owens were both dragged back to Lynwood where the CEO James Lancer and Staff Manager Paul Reagan scolded them fiercely. They were berated for the incident being easily avoidable by simply complying with the ATC's radio call, and choosing to ignore it put not only the business but the 79 souls on board at major risk. Owens chose to profusely apologize for complying with it and was given the choice to continue being a copilot after a forced leave and weather training. Lee however doubled down and tried to justify his choices by screaming at Lancer and Reagan for saying they were "incompetent higher-ups” for being so harsh to him for a “well-thought-out choice”. This didn’t lead him to being praised however, but instead to him being fired and even slapped by Reagan for being quote; “an idiot who should’ve never gotten his pilot license”, which made Lancer, and the rest of the company laugh till they cried. For Samuel Lee however, being mocked, slapped, and fired wasn’t very nice. 

Flight 208 (November 17th, 1972)

Flight 208 was flown on November 17th, 1972, and was a flight from Lynwood to Auchenburgh operated by a DC-10 registered LYD105 with 217 passengers and 6 crew on board. The flight was extremely important as it was the very first flight ever of a 5J Airlines DC-10, which 3 of were purchased to see if the trijet was a good fit. The flight was highly anticipated, and LYD105, nicknamed “Kitesboro’s Luxury-Liner” was the star of the show going to Auchenburgh. The flight started well, with ground crew setting the plane off with no issues, and the DC-10 started the climb. However, about 70 nautical miles into the journey, something went wrong. The tail engine burst into a ball of flames, and the flight crew rushed to report an emergency. The pilot, Jared Wilson, made the call to land at Rawaki airport, and they were on track to land.

However, during the descent, the right wing’s engine faced the same fate as the tail engine and burst into flames. The pilots tried desperately to stay on track while being only several miles off the coast of Rawaki, but then, the impact came into the ocean. The landing was rough into the sea with the crushing waves, with 110 passengers and 2 crew members including the co-pilot losing their lives. The Rawaki Coast Guard managed to get to the crash in time to get the survivors off the aircraft, with everyone having injuries ranging from broken bones to concussions. LYD105 would be taken to Rawaki to be decommissioned and examined thoroughly in an investigation to determine the cause of the crash. During the investigation, the fuel was found to have been tampered with and contaminated, leading the engines to burst into flames. After this discovery, the ground crew of Flight 274 were quickly taken into Lynwood police custody and interrogated for motives. After interviewing each of the crew from that day, Richard Andrews, the man in charge of filling LYD105 with fuel, confessed to accidentally contaminating the fuel with rainwater and disinfectant soap. Richard was immediately fired and charged with failure to report a hazard and involuntary manslaughter for the 112 souls lost in the flight. He was sentenced 25 years in prison for the crimes and would never get a job in the aviation industry again.

For 5J Airlines, the incident hit the airline extremely hard. James Lancer made a statement about the incident, apologizing deeply to and praying for the families of the victims, while stating all of the families would be re-imbursed with refunding their family member’s tickets along with a 2,500 UOD compensation. Even though the crash wasn’t caused by the DC-10 itself, all 5JA DC-10 orders and talks for DC-10s would cancel due to the horrible press the aircraft had given the airline and other airlines at the time. 5JA would soon choose the L-1011 for its trijet option in 1973 and would end up using it all the way until 2004. The tragic fate of Flight 208 would leave LYD105 to be repaired and sold to an Avalonian airline as 5JA’s first, last, and only ever DC-10.

Flight 205 (February 28th, 2007)

Flight 205 was flown on February 28th, 2007, which was flying the Lynwood to Valois route on an A340-500 registered LYD354 with 267 passengers and 10 crew on board. The flight was a regularly scheduled journey that the A340-500s had been put on since their arrival to the airline in 2004, and LYD354 had served it for its entire service life in the airline. During the entirety of the flight, it had been smooth sailing, with pilots Jackson Turner and Edward Combs making sure everything stayed that way. On approach to Valois however, a shocking amount of birds would cause the outer right engine to burst into flames and lose power completely. Due to the A340’s other three engines, the pilots were easily able to keep it steady on approach, and were able to have a safe but slightly rough landing. In total, all 277 souls on board were alright, and only a few injuries were recorded.

The 5JA executives were made aware of the situation by the time the flight had ended, and under the then CEO Steve Robinson’s order, the incident was to be kept hush-hush with the public. This was because Robinson felt that if the incident reached the Oconian news outlets, it would tarnish 5JA’s image and reputation. The crash would be publicized by Arlaise news outlets but barely reached Oconian ones as a result. Shockingly, the grandson of 5JA’s founder Jacob Lancer was supposed to be the copilot of the flight, but had called in sick after getting food poisoning the day before. He often flew LYD354 with pilot Jackson Turner on the Valois route, and once he had heard from him about it, he was shocked nothing was said in the Isles. In the 2009-2010 Lawsuit against Steve Robinson, Flight 205 would be brought up as one of the reasons 5JA was given the FOAB blacklist and was used as evidence for Robinson’s poor management of the airline. 

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