FIVE KILLED IN CRASH BETWEEN TWO PLANES ON TOKYO RUNWAY
▶ Japan Airlines Airbus A350 collides with coastguard aircraft while landing at Haneda airport
Five people were killed at Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport yesterday, in a runway collision involving a passenger jet and a coastguard aircraft bound for Japan’s earthquake-hit Ishikawa prefecture.
All 367 passengers and 12 crew on the Japan Airlines domestic flight from the northern island of Hokkaido managed to escape the Airbus A350, which burst into flames after the collision, shortly after 6pm local time.
But Japan’s Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito confirmed five of the six people on board the coastguard plane, which was heading to Niigata Airport in western Japan, were killed in the collision, while the pilot was severely injured.
A Transport Ministry official said the Japan Airlines plane was attempting to land normally when it collided with the coastguard’s Bombardier-built Dash-8 maritime patrol plane on the runway.
There had been no reports of engine or other problems on the aircraft before it landed, the official said.
“I felt a boom like we had hit something and jerked upwards the moment we landed,” a passenger on the Japan Airlines flight told Kyodo news agency.
“I saw sparks outside the window and the cabin filled with gas and smoke.”
At least 17 people on the Japan Airlines flight were injured, the NHK broadcaster quoted the Tokyo Fire Department as saying.
Security experts have described the evacuation of the passenger jet as a “miracle”. “The cabin crew must have done an excellent job,” Paul Hayes, director of air safety at UK-based aviation consultancy Ascend by Cirium, told AFP.
The airport, one of two international airports serving the Japanese capital, was closed for several hours.
Major Japanese airlines cancelled more than 100 flights from Haneda as a result of the collision, the cause of which is now being investigated.
This came a day after a series of powerful earthquakes rocked Ishikawa province in western Japan, causing a small tsunami, leaving buildings blazing and roads buckled, and killing at least 48 people.
Officials said 16 people were seriously injured in Monday’s earthquakes, which peaked at about 7.6 in magnitude.
Rescue workers yesterday searched for people feared trapped in rubble, amid about 155 aftershocks that are complicating recovery efforts.
The quake also caused a port fire and wrecked motorways, while damage to homes was so great that it could not immediately be assessed, officials said.
Japanese media reports said tens of thousands of homes were destroyed in the quakes and about 45,000 households were without power across the region, where temperatures dropped to freezing overnight. “Saving lives is our priority and we are fighting a battle against time,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said yesterday.
“It is critical that people trapped in homes get rescued immediately.
“We have to race against time to search for and rescue survivors of the disaster.”
The US Geological Survey said the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.5, while the Japan Meteorological Agency measured it at 7.6.
The Japanese agency said aftershocks continued to shake the region yesterday morning.
Japan’s Self-Defence Force has sent 1,000 soldiers to join rescue efforts, Mr Kishida said, emphasising they faced “largescale damage”. Details of damaged homes were still under investigation, he added.
Major Japanese airlines cancelled more than 100 flights from Haneda after the crash, with an investigation under way