TOKYO: Japanese investigators on Wednesday probed a 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 on Tuesday.
The blackened husk of the airliner, still sitting on the tarmac on 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.
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.
The Transport Ministry released the transcripts of flight controllers’ communications, which approved the JAL flight to land while telling the coastguard plane to go to a spot near the runway.
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 were cancelled on Wednesday from Haneda, one of the world’s busiest airports, but international arrivals and departures were little affected.
The passenger plane had arrived from New Chitose Airport serving Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido. — AFP
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