The collision between planes at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on Tuesday killed five people on a Japanese Coast Guard plane, but surprisingly no casualties were reported on the Japan Airlines passenger plane given the enormous blaze.
“A few seconds before landing, I suddenly felt a warm feeling on the left side of my face,” says Anton Deibe (17) from Sweden, who was on the flight from Sapporo to Tokyo with his parents and sister. “I looked to my left and saw flames and black smoke in all the windows. The plane started shaking, all the lights went out, and everyone started screaming.” A female passenger adds: “At first I thought we might have hit a bird. But then I saw the fire and knew something else must have happened.”
“What happened next felt like an eternity,” Deibe says. “We saw fire trucks coming and very quickly started spraying water on the device. But the fire only grew bigger. Black smoke also started entering the cabin, making it difficult for us to breathe.”
At that time, a first factor already played a role in the protection of passengers: the material with which the aircraft was made. “Passenger aircraft today are built to withstand crashes to a certain extent,” says aviation safety expert Robert Sumwalt. “The interior is made with carbon composite fibers resistant to fire, so it does not burn as quickly as in older aircraft, which used conventional aluminum.”
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The burning passenger plane. — © EPA-EFE
“Honestly, I thought we wouldn’t survive”
“The cabin crew kept saying ‘Please stay calm’, but several passengers started to panic. It was dark, the fire was getting bigger and bigger, and it was getting warmer and warmer. To be honest, I didn’t think we would survive.”
“Then the emergency doors finally opened, and everyone rushed for the exits,” Deibe said. “We jumped down, walked onto a grassy area, and just kept walking away. When I looked back, I saw that the plane had been completely destroyed by the fire. I lost almost everything I brought with me to Japan in the fire.”
Twenty minutes after the collision, all occupants of the plane were safe. Thanks to the second factor: cabin crew training. “The images of the disaster show how the passengers leave their hand luggage for what it is and quickly but calmly jump onto the emergency slides. Everyone is focused on getting out of the plane. That indicates good training.”
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Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. — © AP
40 year old trauma
Japanese airlines are known for their good safety record, especially Japan Airlines. The result of an almost 40-year-old trauma: a 1985 plane crash in which a company plane crashed on its way to Osaka, resulting in 520 fatalities. To date, the deadliest disaster in history involving only one aircraft.
“The effect on Japan Airlines was profound,” says British transport systems professor Graham Braithwaite of Cranfield University. “In a culture like Japan, they took their responsibility very seriously and wanted to prevent something like that from ever happening again.” When the management of Japan Airlines realized in 2005 that many employees knew little about the disaster, they opened a room in the company headquarters with parts of the wreckage. Everyone had to know how important safety is. That corporate culture persists to this day: they are very strict in carrying out their procedures. That is one of the reasons why they performed so well in this case.”
In the end, only fourteen people were injured in the incident, four people had to be taken to hospital for treatment.
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© Reuters