According to the latest details reported by local media, a Japan Airlines plane was engulfed in flames after all 379 passengers and crew members escaped. The pilot was initially unaware that the plane was on fire.
The passenger plane collided with a Coast Guard aircraft after landing at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on Tuesday night. All but one of the six people on board the small plane were killed.
Video taken by passengers showed a ball of fire suddenly erupting from the plane before it came to a stop, and the fire began to spread from underneath the plane.
But the Japan Airlines pilot in the cockpit was unaware of the fire until he was notified by the crew, state broadcaster NHK reported.
According to NHK, the chief flight attendant reported to the cockpit that the plane was burning because the crew needed permission to open the emergency exits.
The video shows that by this time, the cabin was filled with smoke, the temperature was getting higher, babies were crying, and people were begging for the door to be opened.
In one video clip, a young voice can be heard shouting: “Please let us out. Please. Please open it. Just open it. Oh my God.”
There were eight emergency exits, but due to the fire, evacuation began from two slides at the front of the aircraft.
JAL said only the other exit at the left rear was not affected by the fire, but the intercom system was no longer functioning, so commands could not be issued from the cockpit.
The cabin crew at the back decided that the passengers urgently needed to exit the plane through the rear door, so they opened it anyway, just like they were trained to do. They use loudspeakers and their own voices to give instructions to passengers.
The evacuation of the entire plane took 18 minutes, and the pilot was the last person to step onto the tarmac at 6:05 p.m.
Soon after, the entire plane was engulfed in flames as dozens of fire trucks tried to put out the blaze. The process ended up taking eight hours.
The airline said a dog and cat, both pets, had to be left on the plane and died.
Investigators from Japan, France, Britain and Canada were probing the crash on Thursday, with the charred remains of the two planes still scattered on one of Haneda Airport’s four runways.
The Coast Guard plane’s flight recorder and voice recorder have been recovered, but the passenger plane’s flight recorder and voice recorder are still being sought.
The Transportation Department on Wednesday released communications records from flight controllers showing they approved the landing of the JAL flight.
But the Coast Guard aircraft was reportedly directed to a location near the runway.
Earlier on Wednesday, NHK reported that pilot Genki Miyamoto, 39, said immediately after the accident that he had been cleared to take off.
Japan Airlines estimated the collision would cause operating losses of about 15 billion yen ($105 million).
But the company said the loss of the aircraft would be covered by insurance, adding that it was assessing the impact on profit forecasts for the year ending March 31.
JAL shares rose 0.5% on Thursday, with a muted reaction to the crash as trading resumed after the New Year holiday. The initial decline was as high as 2.4%.
AFP and Reuters contributed to this report
