Japanese plane crash: Five crew members killed, hundreds evacuated safely

TOKYO (AP) — A large airliner and a Japan Coast Guard plane collided on the runway at Tokyo's Haneda Airport on Tuesday and burst into flames, killing five people on board the Coast Guard plane, officials said.

Transport Minister Tetsu Saito confirmed that all 379 people on board Japan Airlines flight JAL-516 exited safely before the Airbus A350 completely burst into flames.

Saito said the pilot of the Coast Guard Bombardier Dash-8 plane escaped but the five crew members died. Officials said that the plane was preparing to take off to deliver aid to an area affected by a strong earthquake on Monday.

Television footage showed an orange fireball erupting from the Japan Airlines plane as it collided during landing, and the plane then spewed smoke from its side as it continued onto the runway. Within 20 minutes, all passengers and crew members were down the emergency chutes to escape.

While firefighters were trying to put out the fire using streams of water, the area surrounding the wing of the passenger plane caught fire. The fire spread throughout the plane, which eventually collapsed. The fire was extinguished after about six hours.

Tuesday's accident was the first serious damage to an Airbus A350, among the industry's newest large passenger jets. It entered commercial service in 2015. Airbus said in a statement that it would send specialists to assist Japanese and French officials in investigating the accident, and that the plane was delivered to Japan Airlines in late 2021.

The Minister of Transport said that the A350 plane took off from Shin Chitose Airport near the city of Sapporo.

The fire is likely to be seen as a major test case for fuselages made from carbon fiber composites, such as the A350 and Boeing 787, rather than traditional aluminum skins.

“We don't know a lot about how composite materials burn,” safety consultant John Cox said. “This is the most catastrophic composite aircraft fire I can think of. On the other hand, the fuselage was protecting (the passengers) from a really terrible fire, and it didn’t burn for a while and didn’t let everyone out.”

The A350 was making a “normal entry and landing” on the runway, JAL CEO Tadayuki Tsutsumi said at a news conference late Tuesday, without specifying how it collided with the Coast Guard plane. Noriyuki Aoki, who is also JAL's CEO, said the airline confirms that the flight had permission to land from aviation officials.

Police are expected to investigate the incident on suspicion of professional negligence, NHK television reported.

Coast Guard spokesman Yoshinori Yanagishima said its Bombardier Dash-8 plane, based in Haneda, was scheduled to head to Niigata to deliver relief supplies to residents affected by the typhoon. Deadly earthquake In the area on Monday. The Dash-8 turboprop engine is widely used on short-haul flights and passenger flights.

Coast Guard Deputy Commander Yoshio Seguchi told reporters that the Coast Guard pilot informed his base that his plane exploded after colliding with the commercial plane.

Shigenori Hiraoka, head of the Civil Aviation Bureau at the Ministry of Transport, said the collision occurred when the JAL plane landed on one of Haneda's four runways where the Coast Guard plane was preparing to take off. Transportation safety officials were analyzing contact between flight control officials and the two planes and planned to interview JAL officials to determine the cause of the collision.

Hiraoka praised JAL for “taking appropriate measures” to safely evacuate all passengers and crew members.

“The entire cabin was filled with smoke within a few minutes,” Swede Anton Deby, 17, a passenger on the Japan Airlines plane, told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. We threw ourselves on the ground. Then the emergency doors opened and we threw ourselves at them.