Accident In Tokyo Today

[Cris Luczak]

Myoriginal guesstimate-illustration showed a collision point about midway down runway 34 Right at Haneda. Evidence now indicates that the Japan Air Lines plane smashed into the top of the Japan Coast Guard plane, which was sitting on the runway, at roughly the spot shown by the red oval on the Google Earth image below, near where taxiway C5 and C6 enter the runway. The red arrow shows the inbound path of the landing airplane.

On current evidence, the Japan Air Lines plane had been properly cleared to land on Runway 34R. It is possible the pilots in the JAL cockpit did not see the Coast Guard plane sitting on the runway until the very last instant before impact, or perhaps at all.

-As mentioned yesterday, the PPrune site, a professional-pilot discussion zone, is full of info and opinions, some of which are wild speculation but many of which are useful. The enormous discussion thread starts here.

-An absolutely astonishing YouTube video shows the tragedy as it occurs. If you look at this Haneda live-cam footage very, very carefully, starting at around time 2:40 you will see the taillights of a small plane taxiing from right to left, toward its position on the runway. All evidence suggests that is the doomed Coast Guard plane. By around time 3:03 it stops, apparently on the runway, and you can still faintly see its tail lights. Around time 3:20, the descending Airbus comes into view, from the right. Over the next 18 seconds you will be thinking No! No! as its heads straight into the smaller, barely visible plane. You will see the instant of impact and resulting fireball.

After the collision, fires also broke out on the large JAL Airbus. But the airline crew organized all passengers to leave the plane, via emergency exits and safety slides. According to initial reports, some aboard the Airbus might have been injured, but all 367 passengers and 12 crew members apparently survived.

If the Airbus had not withstood the initial impact, or if it had burst immediately into flames, or if its flight crew had not managed to slow and steer it along the runway after the collision, or if its cabin crew had not calmed and guided the passengers to leave the plane, this could have been a disaster on a much greater scale. Or: if the passengers had been on a typical flight in China, where in our experience they pay much less attention to flight-crew instructions than in Japan, it might have been harder to stage an organized departure from the plane. And: if the aircraft it hit had been not a small plane with an also-small crew but instead another fully laden airliner, this might have entered the annals of tragedy alongside the highest-casualty aviation disaster ever, nearly 50 years ago in Tenerife.

How could this be? The runway lights were bright, at night, and could make it hard to see wingtip lights in unexpected locations; the Coast Guard plane was relatively small; the Airbus windshield would have been showing a \u201Cheads up display\u201D of the landing path, which could obscure weak lights on the runway; the controller appears not to have cautioned the crew about previously departing traffic or other complications; etc.

Latest evidence suggests that controllers had intended the Coast Guard plane to taxi to Runway 34R, but not on to the runway. This is a fundamental life-and-death distinction in aviation, with lots of language and procedures designed to underscore the difference. \u201CHold short\u201D when you\u2019re not supposed to enter the runway; \u201Cline up and wait\u201D when you are cleared to enter the runway but not to take off; \u201Ccleared for takeoff\u201D when it\u2019s time to go.

Apparently the controller intended the Coast Guard plane to \u201Chold short\u201D\u2014to taxi up to runway, but stay clear of it\u2014and for whatever reason the Coast Guard crew believed it had been told to \u201Cline up and wait.\u201D (That is, to taxi right onto the runway, and stay there.) This will certainly be a center of investigation.

At Tokyo\u2019s Haneda airport today, at least five people were killed when a large airliner and a small Japan Coast Guard plane collided on a runway. The airliner, a huge Airbus 350 operated by Japan Airlines (JAL), was just touching down on Haneda\u2019s runway 34 Right (or 34R). From above it slammed into the Coast Guard plane, a DeHavilland-Canada DHC Dash-8, which for still-unknown reasons was sitting on that same runway.

The Coast Guard plane immediately burst into flames and was scraped along the runway, as shown in the CCTV screen shot of the instant of impact, above. The characters at the upper right of the image say \u201CHaneda,\u201D the airport\u2019s name. At least five people aboard that Coast Guard plane were killed; its pilot was reported to have initially survived.

My long-time friend Bruce Williams, who is an accomplished pilot, flight instructor, and early participant in the development of Microsoft\u2019s Flight Simulator, sent me an email just now on exactly this point:

Although the information currently available is sketchy, this event is an example of what I dread will be the next big aviation event with mass fatalities\u2014a collision on the ground, like Tenerife. Had this crash involved two packed airliners\u2014well, you understand the consequences. It\u2019s astonishing that everyone got off the A350 safely.

Instead, as the entire aviation system expands, humans have become the weakest links in the accident chain, as so many recent close calls make clear. Air traffic controllers everywhere in the U.S. are working 6-day weeks and lots of overtime. We\u2019re pushing new pilots onto flight decks at unprecedented rates. These human challenges are much more difficult to address than the old engineering problems.

And, as you\u2019ve noted in the past, the pressures on the system peak during the critical takeoff and landing phases. We simply don\u2019t have enough on- and off-ramps to the highways in the sky, and there\u2019s no easy, quick way to address that problem, given both the time required to build new runways, and the political and societal pressures that make such projects so difficult even to begin.

A fiery runway collision at a Tokyo airport stunned the world Tuesday with dramatic imagery. All of the airline passengers survived, but five crew members on a Coast Guard plane involved in the accident were killed. Neil Connery of Independent Television News reports, and Geoff Bennett discusses how passengers managed to make it out alive with aviation correspondent Miles O'Brien.

A fiery runway collision at a Tokyo airport stunned the world today with dramatic imagery. What's more stunning, hundreds of passengers survived and managed to get off safely. But five crew members on a Coast Guard plane involved in the accident were killed.

Fire spreads along the Airbus A350 carrying 379 people, this the scene inside, panic as the flames get nearer. The pilot manages to keep control, bringing the aircraft to a gradual halt, as smoke begins to fill the cabin. As cabin crew respond, one child calls out: "Please get me out of here quickly."

It's a miraculous escape. With everyone now off, fire crews battle flames so fierce they burn through the plane's structure. Five people on board the Coast Guard aircraft, which collided with the Airbus, were killed. Its pilot survived, but suffered severe injuries. It was taking aid to victims of yesterday's powerful earthquake.

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