It only took 18 minutes to evacuate the 379 passengers of Japan Airlines Flight 516 after their plane burst into flames just after touchdown at Tokyo’s Haneda airport Tuesday evening. A smaller coast guard Bombardier Dash-8 aircraft, preparing to take off to deliver urgent aid to quake-hit central Japan, was using the same runway when the two collided. The captain of the coast guard craft escaped with burns but his five crew members died.
The Associated Press collected accounts from officials and transcripts of traffic control communication. Here is a look at key moments leading to the collision.
TRAFFIC CONTROLS
Transcripts of the recorded communication, released by the transport ministry Wednesday, at 5:43 p.m., show airport traffic control and the JAL Airbus A350 establish communications four minutes before landing. Two minutes later, traffic control tells the JAL plane it’s allowed to land on the designated runway, 34R, with the pilot saying “cleared to land.”
Just 10 seconds later, the outgoing coast guard plane identifies itself, telling traffic control it’s on a taxiway to the runway. The traffic controller instructs it to “taxi to holding point C5” before the runway and says it gets No. 1 departure priority. The Bombardier repeats the instruction, then adds: “No. 1, thank you.”
The traffic controls make no further communication with either the JAL flight or the coast guard aircraft over the next two minutes until the crash, while communicating with two other flights.
NHK television airs footage from its monitoring camera set up at the Haneda airport showing the coast guard Bombardier moving from the C5 taxiway onto the runway, during the two-minute interval, and stopping there just before the collision.
A Japan Airlines plane is on fire on the runway of Haneda airport in Tokyo on Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024. The 379 passengers of Japan Airlines Flight JAL-516 didn’t expect their plane to burst into flames just as it was about to touchdown at…
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