Five dead on coastguard plane after Japan Airlines collision

[DrWilly]

We're bringing an end to our coverage of the Japan Airlines plane collision at Tokyo's Haneda Airport now.
The incident saw hundreds of people escape a burning plane, coastguard members killed and firefighters battling the flames for many hours.
Shortly after 17:45 local time (08:45 GMT) a Japan Airlines Airbus A350 collided on the runway with an aircraft belonging to the Japanese Coastguard.
All of the 379 passengers and crew on board the commercial plane from Sapporo, a city in the northern Japanese island Hokkaido, had a miraculous escape as it became engulfed in flames.
But, tragically five of the six crew onboard the coastguard plane were killed.
They had been preparing to deliver aid to people affected by Monday's powerful earthquake - which caused devastation in parts of Japan's north coast.
Officials are now investigating what communications took place between the passenger plane and flight control at a Haneda Airport.


Five dead on coastguard plane after collision with jet on Haneda Airport runway - BBC News

[DrWilly]

Japan Airlines: Hundreds survive after plane bursts into flames on Tokyo runway

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A Japan Airlines plane burst into flames after a collision with a smaller coastguard aircraft on the runway at Tokyo's Haneda airport.


All 379 passengers and crew on board were evacuated, but five of the six crew on the coastguard plane died, police said. The captain was injured.


Flames engulfed the airliner after it landed, skidding on the blazing runway.


Fire crews spent hours dousing the blaze. The airliner came from Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido.


Air safety experts have praised the crew for safely evacuating all the passengers. All four of Haneda's runways were closed after the incident, disrupting travel plans for thousands of passengers.


Japan Airlines Flight 516 had departed from Sapporo's New Chitose airport at 16:00 local time (07:00 GMT) and landed at Haneda shortly before 18:00.


Video showed it bursting into flames as it sped down the runway after landing.


"I felt a boom like we had hit something and jerked upward the moment we landed," one passenger told Kyodo news agency. "I saw sparks outside the window and the cabin filled with gas and smoke."


Passengers escaped via an evacuation slide and ran across the tarmac to safety, footage and photos showed.


Officials said the flight crew had reported no problems before landing. Exchanges with flight controllers are under investigation.


What caused the collision remains unclear. The coastguard said an investigation was under way to establish how and at what time the two aircraft came into contact with each other.

• Five dead on coastguard plane after Tokyo crash - follow live
• Dramatic videos show how plane is overcome by fire at Haneda airport

A Japan Airlines statement said flight JL516 had been "involved in a collision with a Japan coastguard aircraft during its landing at Haneda Airport, resulting in a fire on the runway".


"We want to assure you that all passengers and crew on our flight were safely evacuated. Our thoughts and prayers are with the deceased members of the Japan coastguard."


The coastguard aircraft - a De Havilland Dash 8 turboprop - was heading to help with rescue and relief efforts following Monday's earthquake in Ishikawa. It was one of four planes on a mission to the quake site.


TV footage showed several fire trucks at the scene as smoke and flames billowed from the Airbus. Footage from inside the aircraft showed passengers surrounded by thick smoke. The passenger plane effectively burnt down to its fuselage.


One woman posted a picture of a huge crowd watching the scene unfold. "I was on board. I'm safe. Thank goodness," she wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.


But within hours of the blaze, police in Tokyo had confirmed reports that the five coastguard crew members had died and said the pilot was severely injured.




Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the authorities were trying to make sure the accident did not impede deliveries of earthquake relief supplies.


"This is a great regret as the crew members performed their duties with a strong sense of mission and responsibility for the victims of the disaster area," he said.


At least 14 of the passengers and crew who were taken off the Japan Airlines flight suffered minor injuries, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK, citing fire officials.


Flights at Haneda - one of two international airports serving Japan's capital - were grounded and many diverted to other airports in Japan while emergency services tackled the fire. All but one runway - where the collision took place - opened later on Tuesday evening, the transport ministry said.


It is the first major accident involving an A350, one of a new breed of aircraft built largely of advanced materials such as carbon fibre-reinforced plastic. Airbus is sending a team of specialists to assist in the investigation in Japan.


There was also praise for the efforts of the Japan Airline crew and pilots.


"Their focus is on safety. They are the last people to evacuate the airplane and on face value, it looks like they have done an incredible job," Prof Graham Braithwaite, director of transport systems at Cranfield University in the UK, told the BBC.

Japan Airlines: Hundreds survive after plane bursts into flames on Tokyo runway - BBC News

[misskit]

Japan probes plane inferno after ‘miracle’ escape

Japanese investigators on Wednesday probed a near-catastrophic collision at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport of a coast guard plane and a passenger jet that killed five people, with almost 400 others narrowly escaping a raging inferno.


All but one of the six people on the smaller aircraft were killed, but all 379 Japan Airlines passengers and crew escaped down emergency slides minutes before the Airbus was engulfed in flames late Tuesday.


The blackened husk of the airliner, still sitting on the tarmac Wednesday, bore witness to just how dangerous their escape had been. Several hundred metres (yards) away lay the remains of the coast guard’s DHC-8 aircraft.


The captain of the coast guard plane — which had been bound for the New Year’s Day earthquake zone in central Japan — was its lone survivor but suffered serious injuries.


Footage on Tuesday showed a ball of fire erupting from underneath the airliner shortly after landing and coming to a halt on its nose after its front landing gear failed.


As people slid to safety, dozens of fire engines with blue and red flashing lights sprayed the flames, but the entire fuselage was soon ablaze. It took eight hours to finally extinguish the fire.


“It was getting hot inside the plane, and I thought, to be honest, I would not survive,” one female passenger told broadcaster NHK.


“I thought we landed normally. But then I realised I was smelling smoke,” a woman with a small child told NHK. “I needed to protect my daughter. That was the only thing in my mind,” she added.


Another passenger described surviving the crash as a “miracle”. “I bounced off my seat from the impact when we landed,” the 28-year-old man told Nikkei Asia.


“We made it just in the nick of time. It’s a miracle we survived.”


– Landing clearance –


Takuya Fujiwara from the Japan Transport Safety Board told reporters that the flight recorder and the voice recorder from the coast guard plane had been found, but those of the passenger jet were still being sought.


“We are surveying the situation. Various parts are scattered on the runway,” Fujiwara said, adding that the authority planned to interview several people involved.


Asked at a briefing whether the Japan Airlines flight had landing permission, officials at the major carrier said: “Our understanding is that it was given.”


But JAL and the land ministry declined to comment directly on exchanges between flight controllers and the two planes, citing the ongoing investigation.


In a recording from Haneda’s control tower apparently made in the moments before the collision, available on a site that broadcasts live air traffic signals, a voice is heard advising JAL’s flight to “continue approach”.


NHK reported that the control tower had instructed the coast guard plane to hold short of the runway.


But the broadcaster also quoted an unnamed coast guard official as saying that the pilot, Genki Miyamoto, 39, said immediately after the accident that he had permission to take off.


– Airbus investigators –


Dozens of domestic flights were cancelled on Wednesday from Haneda, one of the world’s busiest airports, but international arrivals and departures were little affected.


Airbus said it would send a team of specialists to help investigate. The passenger plane had arrived from New Chitose Airport serving Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido. Those on board included eight children.


Prime Minister Fumio Kishida praised the deceased crew members on their way to help the victims of the quake that killed at least 62 people. “These were employees who had a high sense of mission and responsibility for the affected areas,” he said Tuesday.


In 1985, a JAL jumbo jet flying from Tokyo to Osaka crashed, killing 520 passengers and crew, in one of the world’s deadliest crashes involving a single flight.


The world’s worst civil aviation disaster also happened on the ground when two Boeing 747s collided at Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife in 1977, killing 583 people.


“I can’t speculate on what happened here but human error will probably be found as a contributing cause,” Doug Drury, aviation expert at Central Queensland University, told AFP.


“Airlines are required to be able to empty an airplane of all passengers and crew within 90 seconds. The flight crews train for events quite frequently in simulation and it is a complicated process that as we saw was completed without fail,” he said.


“A key component here was that no one tried to grab their carry-on bags.”

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