Passenger took tragic final photo inside plane just seconds before deadliest crash in history

A passenger on board what turned out to be one of the deadliest single-plane crashes in history took a final photo before tragedy struck.

It's been 40 years since 520 people lost their lives in southern Gumma prefecture, Japan, northwest of Tokyo, when Japan Airlines flight 123 crashed into Mount Takamagahara.

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The plane had departed Haneda airport in Tokyo at 6:12pm local time and was scheduled to land just one hour later - but before it reached its destination, the pilots made a distress call to report they were losing altitude.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the flight had only been in the air for 12 minutes when the rear bulkhead at the back of the plane exploded, causing the pilots to lose control.

They continued to send distress calls and asked to be rerouted to the Tokyo airport, with the FAA noting that the pilots managed to keep the plane airborne for another 30 minutes.

Unfortunately, however, they were unable to make it back to an airport and the plane struck the mountain in the Kantō Range.

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Travelling on the eve of the Japanese holiday Bon, the flight was fully booked with 509 passengers and 15 crew members.

While on board, passengers snapped some pictures of the flight with no idea about the tragic events that were about to unfold.

The images have been shared on Reddit, and are marked with the date of the crash - 12 August, 1985.

The photos show the wing of the plane and a view over the land from the window, but there's one image which appears to be the last of the set.

It's clear something had already gone wrong when the photo was taken, as the plane's oxygen masks can be seen hanging down over the passengers.

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The tubes providing oxygen can be seen stretching across the rows of seats, and one crew member is visible in the aisle holding a yellow oxygen mask to her face.

Unfortunately, rescue efforts were not quick for the disaster due to the treacherous location where the plane had gone down.

The mountain was difficult to reach by land and on foot, and it wasn't until 14 hours after the crash that emergency rescue crews were able to reach the site by descending from helicopters.

Of the 524 people on board the plane at the time of the crash, only four people survived - marking the largest number of fatalities from the accidental crash of a single aircraft.

Two years after the crash, Japan's transport ministry stated that it was a faulty repair on the aircraft seven years earlier which had ultimately caused the fatal malfunction.