At Tokyo Haneda airport, a Japan Airlines plane collided with a Coast Guard plane, killing five of six crew on the plane. All 379 people on board escaped the burning plane. Despite the evacuation of the 367 passengers and 12 crew, the blaze wasn’t extinguished until shortly after midnight, after burning for more than six hours. Japan Airlines says 14 people were injured on the plane, but none of the injuries were life-threatening.
Tetsuo Saito confirmed five Coast Guard crew members died, while the 39-year-old captain was injured but escaped. The officials said that the Japan Airlines (JAL) plane was trying to land normally when it collided with the Coast Guard’s Bombardier-built Dash-8 maritime patrol plane. Read below to get more information about the collision.
MIRACLE
Aviation experts and passengers praised the evacuation’s speed. Tsubasa Sawada, 28, said he heard an explosion about 10 minutes after everyone got off the plane. We could have died if we were late; I can only say it was a miracle.”
“I think the cabin crew did a great job… It’s a miracle all the passengers made it off.” During the evacuation, Japan Airlines crew members used megaphones to give instructions since the aircraft’s announcement system didn’t work.
When Kaoru Ishii called her daughter to explain the delay, she thought the flight was delayed.
“She said the plane caught fire and she got out by sliding,” Ishii said. “I was really relieved to hear she was okay.” Hokkaido’s New Chitose airport is where JAL’s aircraft departed.
THE CAUSE IS UNDER INVESTIGATION
Japan Airlines says the crew acknowledged landing clearance from air traffic control, repeated it for confirmation, and then conducted approach and landing.
As soon as we left New Chitose Airport and during our flight, there were no problems with the aircraft,” said a passenger.
The multi-channel recordings on liveatc.net didn’t immediately reveal the sequence of instructions before the crash.
The air traffic control monitoring website caught a controller telling approaching pilots: “Airport is closed, Haneda airport is closed.”.
The Japan Transport Safety Board, police and other departments are investigating the cause of the accident.
THE CHAOS AND CONFUSION IT CAUSED
In the collision, five people onboard the Coast Guard plane, a De Havilland Canada DHC-8, commonly known as the Dash 8, were killed, but it’s captain escaped with injuries.
According to Shigenori Hiraoka, head of the civil aviation bureau at the transport ministry, the collision happened when the passenger plane landed on runway C, where the Coast Guard plane was preparing to take off.
A former commercial pilot, Rodger Whitfield, said: “We just witnessed a miracle.”. It’s almost unbelievable how they got all those passengers off.
After hearing the thud of the initial impact, passengers on the Japan Airlines jet, which had arrived at about 5:47 pm local time from New Chitose Airport, spoke of their terror.
As the plane continued down the runway immediately after the collision, passengers could see flames at the back exterior of the plane through the cabin windows.