TOKYO — A passenger plane burst into flames as it landed at a Tokyo airport Tuesday, after a collision with a coast guard aircraft that killed five people, officials said.
All 379 passengers and crew members made it out of the Japan Airlines plane, Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito said at a news conference. The coast guard pilot escaped, but five crew members were killed, he added.
The coast guard aircraft was flying earthquake relief to Niigata prefecture on the country’s west coast after a series of strong tremors killed at least 55 people and left widespread damage, Saito said. There was no immediate information about the cause of the accident, he added.
Dramatic footage from the Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed plumes of orange fire and black smoke engulfing the passenger jet as it landed at Haneda Airport in the country’s capital.
Video showed the plane’s side and areas around the wing on fire as it taxied on the runway, before the fire spread to the cabin and rescue crews rushed to the tarmac. A local fire department deployed at least 70 firetrucks and other vehicles to extinguish the fire, NHK added.
The passenger plane had entered the airport’s runway and then crashed into the coast guard plane on the runway, said Shigenori Hiraoka, the director general of the ministry’s civil aviation bureau.
The Transport Safety Board will investigate immediately, he said at a joint news conference with coast guard officials. French accident investigators are also headed to the scene, the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety said on X.
The plane was an Airbus A350, Japanese media reported.Kyodo News via AP
A passenger on the Japan Airlines plane described how the cabin was engulfed in smoke within minutes.
Anton Deibe, 17, of Sweden, told NBC News that the plane was about to land when he looked to his left and saw “flames all over the windows.”
“The plane starts to shake and all the lights turn dark and everyone starts screaming in Japanese, and I can’t understand anything,” said Deibe, who was traveling with his parents and sister. “My first thought was that maybe we had hit a bird; I had no clue. But the plane continued to shake, and then we touched down on the ground. And it felt like we’d like slide.”
“The black smoke started to infiltrate the cabin … and you had a hard time breathing. So I took my hoodie, the only piece of equipment I still have left — everything else is burned down — and covered my face,” he said. “Then, after a while, they finally they opened the doors, and everyone, they ran out and then you had to jump out of the plane.”
NHK reported the plane was JAL Flight 516, which had taken off from New Chitose Airport in the northern Japanese region of Hokkaido at 4:15 p.m. local time (2:15 a.m. ET), according to FlightAware.
Japan Airlines said it was interviewing the crew.
“The plane entered the runway in a normal manner and started normal landing procedure before there was impact and caused this accident, wehave confirmed up to this point. Butanything beyond that, the investigation is ongoing,” Managing Executive Officer Tadayuki Tsutsumi said at a news conference.
NBC News aviation analyst John Cox said Tuesday that investigators will look at air traffic control tapes to figure out what happened as the JAL flight was cleared to land and for some reason the Japanese coast guard plane was on that same runway.
“They’re going to want to interview the captain who survived the coast guard flight. They’re going to interview the crew of the JAL flight. So they’re going to look at all the air traffic — the air traffic transmissions as well as to see what the airplanes actually did, if those instructions were properly followed,” he said.
Yoshio Seguchi, an official from the coast guard, expressed his condolences.
“The loss of the life of our irreplaceable employee is a matter of the utmost regret,” he said.
Haneda Airport, also known as Tokyo International Airport, was the busiest airport in the Asia Pacific region in 2023, according to global flight data provider OAG.
In 2023, a series of high-profile near-collisions and close calls at U.S. airports prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to host a safety summit. Cox said the Japan crash is likely to reinforce the National Transportation Safety Board’s concerns.
Arata Yamamoto reported from Tokyo and Larissa Gao from Hong Kong.
Arata Yamamoto
Arata Yamamoto has been a NBC News producer in Tokyo since 1993.
Larissa Gao
Larissa Gao is a fellow on NBC’s Asia Desk, based in Hong Kong.
Reuters, Jay Blackman and Marlene Lenthangcontributed.