Plane evacuation called ‘miraculous’
Japan Airlines crew praised after collision kills 5
TOKYO — As flight attendants yelled with a megaphone, urging passengers to evacuate, an eerie orange glow burned outside the windows of Japan Airlines Flight 516.
The jet had just landed and collided with a coast guard aircraft in Tokyo. And the passenger plane had become a fireball, streaking down the runway.
Through skill and luck — one expert called it “a miraculous job” — the flight crew of the Japan Airlines plane evacuated all 367 passengers and 12 crew members safely at Haneda Airport near Tokyo Bay, according to Japan’s transport minister, Tetsuo Saito.
But five coast guard members, who had been headed to help with the earthquake relief in western Japan, were killed, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said during a news conference. NHK, the public broadcaster, later said 14 people had been injured on the passenger plane.
“The root cause of this accident is not known yet,” Saito said at a news briefing, adding that the country’s transport safety board and other agencies would work to determine what had happened.
Video aired by NHK shows a fireball streaking across the tarmac as the plane touched down.
As frightening as that looked from outside the plane, it was even scarier inside, said Anton Deibe, a 17-year-old Swede who was on the plane with his family, as quoted in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
He told the newspaper his family did not understand exactly what was happening or the announcements, which he said were in Japanese.
His father, Jonas, told the newspaper, “The entire cabin was filled with smoke within a few minutes,” adding: “We threw ourselves down on the floor. Then the emergency doors were opened, and we threw ourselves at them.”
“The smoke in the cabin stung like hell,” Anton told Aftonbladet. He said that once they got out of the plane, he and his family had run out “onto the field.”
“It was chaotic,” he added. “We are all completely in shock,” he said. “I don’t think we understood what had happened.”
Footage of the accident showed flames coming out the windows of the collapsed plane, making it seem impossible that everyone made it out safe.
Ed Galea, a professor and director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group at the University of Greenwich in Britain, called the Japan Airlines plane evacuation “a miraculous job.”
When the plane came to a stop, the nose gear collapsed, pitching the aircraft nose down with its tail up. Galea said in an interview the footage showed passengers were evacuated from two of the exits at the front of the plane, and one exit at the back. Some of the “passengers essentially had to climb a hill in smoke,” he said. “A cabin crew stood at the back waving a torch, urging them to come forward.”
Maggie Kuwasaki, a Japan Airlines spokesperson, said in an email that because of the fire, only three doors were used for evacuation. Japan Airlines crews are trained to evacuate all passengers within 90 seconds, Kuwasaki said. The crew was able to confirm that all passengers had evacuated by 6:05 p.m., she added.
Trisha Ferguson, chief executive of the Interaction Group, a company that designs airplane safety cards, said the fact that all the passengers managed to safely disembark in what could have otherwise been a deadly accident demonstrated successful cooperation between passengers and staff.
“The crew was spectacular in their reaction times,” said Ferguson, an aviation industry expert with 28 years of involvement in passenger safety education. “What they did was amazing,” she added.
As part of safety testing of new airplanes, airlines must demonstrate that all passengers can be evacuated in 90 seconds. In the 1970s and 1980s, emergency training was mainly focused on the crew, Ferguson said, but in the 1990s and 2000s, new emphasis was placed on educating passengers how to react in emergencies.
In this case, passengers could see the smoke, giving them incentive to move faster and leave behind their luggage. When passengers stop to take their luggage during an evacuation, the process is slowed, Ferguson said.
“It really is a miracle that they got everyone out,” she said.
‘Weareall... in shock. I don’t think we understood what had happened.’
ANTON DEIBE Swedish passenger