A NEAR-CATASTROPHIC COLLISION at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport between a coast guard plane and a passenger jet is now being investigated by Japanese authorities.
Five people on the smaller aircraft were killed with just one survivor, but all 379 Japan Airlines passengers and crew escaped down emergency slides minutes before the Airbus was engulfed in flames yesterday.
The heavily damaged wreck of the airliner remains on the tarmac, with the wreckage of the coast guard’s DHC-8 aircraft lying several hundred metres away.
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 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.
It took eight hours to finally extinguish the fire.
One 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.
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.
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.
Dozens of domestic flights have been cancelled 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.
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.
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