A Japan Airlines Airbus A350 caught fire on Tuesday, January 2, on a runway at Tokyo-Haneda International Airport, after colliding on the ground with a Japanese coast guard plane. Five of the six occupants of this plane died, according to the Japanese Minister of Transportation. The 379 occupants of the other plane were evacuated.
First modification:
2 min
Five members of the Coast Guard died after their aircraft collided with a commercial flight at a Tokyo airport. The sixth occupant is alive, but was seriously injured. This is the captain of the aircraft, a Dash-8 maritime patrol plane manufactured by Bombardier, reported the Minister of Transport, Tetsuo Saito.
As for the other plane, all 379 occupants (367 passengers and 12 crew) were evacuated, but 17 were injured.
The event occurred when Japan Airlines flight 516, coming from Sapporo (north of the country), collided with the coast guard plane, which had just landed at 5:47 p.m. local time (9:47 GMT) in Haneda, one of Japan's two international airports, and one of the commercial flight's engines caught fire.
One of the passengers speaking to NHK said:
There was a thud and I thought it was a hard landing, but I didn't know there was an accident.. no clear announcement was made to run away
Debris covered the runway and more than 70 fire trucks were deployed to the scene to put out the fire, according to NHK, and all airport runways were closed. Both JAL and All Nippon Airways (ANA) canceled all flights arriving and departing Haneda.
Although the causes of the accident are still being investigated, Yoshio Seguchi, deputy director of the Japan Coast Guard, said in a press conference today that they received a report from the captain of the ship, who reported that “the plane exploded on the runway and that he managed to escape.”
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's office set up a liaison group to gather information, and asked relevant portfolio ministers to make “every effort to investigate the collision.”
The Coast Guard plane was heading to its base at Niigata airport in order to deliver humanitarian aid to people affected by the 7.6 magnitude earthquake, which shook the west of the country on Monday and left at least 48 deceased.
Accidents involving passenger planes are extremely rare in Japan. The most serious of these occurred in 1985, when a Japan Airlines plane crashed between Tokyo and Osaka. 520 people died in that accident.
With EFE, AFP and local media
#Japan #dead #hundreds #evacuated #planes #collide #Tokyo
