2024-01-02 15:01:00
A plane with 379 people on board caught fire while landing at Tokyo-Haneda Airport, all passengers were evacuated. The cause was a collision with a military aircraft, five crew members of which died in the accident.
The images are impressive. A passenger plane caught fire on the runway of Tokyo-Haneda airport this Tuesday, January 2 at 5:47 p.m. local time (9:47 a.m. French time). According to initial information, it was Japan Airlines flight JL516 coming from Sapporo.
[Japan Airlines aircraft catches fire at Haneda Airport]
According to the Tokyo Airport Office of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, they have heard that a JAL passenger plane is on fire at Haneda Airport, but they are still confirming the information, including whether there are any passengers on board.https://t.co/UGWveQ1hVi#nhk_video pic.twitter.com/s4YDQhcfll— NHK News (@nhk_news) January 2, 2024
On live images from the airport, Passengers might be seen getting off the plane stopped on the runway before the cabin was completely charred. According to public television, the 367 passengers of this Airbus A350-941 were evacuated as well as the 12 crew members. The accident was caused by a collision with a Japanese coast guard plane that was en route to deliver aid to the quake-hit region. Five crew members of the military aircraft died in the collision, the captain apparently managed to escape. “It’s not clear whether there was a collision or not. But what is certain is that our plane is involved,” said a coast guard official at Tokyo-Haneda airport.
A team of experts from the French Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA) for civil aviation is expected this Wednesday in Japan to participate in the investigation into the reason for this collision between the Airbus A350 which had just landed at the airport and the Japanese Coast Guard Bombardier Dash 8 was preparing to take off. The French BEA indeed participates in the technical, so-called safety, investigation for aircraft abroad, particularly when it acts as the competent authority of the country where the aircraft was built. The A350 is produced in Toulouse, in the southwest of France. Japan Airlines has 16 copies.
For the moment, Tokyo-Haneda airport is closed, flights are diverted. It is one of the Japanese capital’s two international airports and one of the busiest in the world. Accidents involving airliners are extremely rare in this country. The most serious of these occurred in 1985, when a Japan Airlines plane crashed between Tokyo and Osaka, killing 520 people, one of the worst aviation disasters in the world.
Update: addition at 4 p.m. of the arrival this Wednesday of a team from the French BEA.
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