Photos: Runway safety concerns in focus as Japan probes Tokyo crash

Tokyo: Japanese investigators on Wednesday probed a near-catastrophic collision at Tokyo's Haneda Airport between a coast guard plane and a passenger jet that airline executives have said was given permission to land. Five people on the coast guard aircraft died, but all 379 passengers and crew escaped to safety down emergency slides minutes before the Japan Airlines Airbus was engulfed in flames late Tuesday.

The burned-out husk of the airliner, still sitting on the tarmac Wednesday, bore witness to just how narrow their escape had been. The captain of the coast guard plane - which had been carrying aid to the New Year's Day earthquake zone - was its lone survivor but suffered serious injuries.

Footage on Tuesday showed a ball of fire erupting and thick black smoke from underneath the airliner shortly after landing and coming to a halt on its nose after its front landing gear failed. Passengers could be seen sliding down inflatable slides as flames shot out from the rear of the aircraft in video posted to social media platform X.

As the plane was evacuated, dozens of fire engines with blue and red flashing lights tried to douse the flames but the entire plane was soon engulfed and it took eight hours to finally extinguish the blaze.

"As soon as we landed, the was a 'bang'. And I noticed a blaze rising from the right side," a female passenger on board told broadcaster NHK. "It was getting hot inside the plane, and I thought, to be honest, I would not survive." "I thought we landed normally. But then I realised I was smelling smoke. I looked outside and it was already burning," a woman with a small child told NHK. "I needed to protect my daughter. That was only thing in my mind."

Some domestic flights were operating on Wednesday morning from Haneda, one of the world's busiest airports, but dozens were cancelled. France's Airbus, which manufactured the JAL plane, said it would send a team of specialists to help Japanese authorities investigate.

LANDING CLEARANCE: Government officials pledged to investigate how the incident happened in a country that had not seen a serious commercial aviation accident for decades. Asked at a briefing late Tuesday night whether the Japan Airlines flight had secured landing permission from air traffic control, officials at the major carrier said: "Our understanding is that it was given."

People familiar with the investigation said the Japan Safety Transport Board (JTSB) would lead the probe with participation from agencies in France, where the airplane was built, and Britain where its two Rolls-Royce engines were manufactured.

Experts have cautioned it is too early to pinpoint a cause and stress most accidents are caused by a cocktail of factors. But investigators are widely expected to explore what instructions were given by controllers to the two aircraft, alongside a detailed examination of plane and airport systems. A ministry official told reporters in Japan on Tuesday that the A350 was attempting to land normally when it collided with the Coast Guard plane, also known as a Bombardier Dash-8.

One of the first tasks will be to recover black box recorders with flight data and cockpit voice recordings. Experts said the location of the accident means physical evidence, radar data and witness accounts or camera footage are likely to be readily available, easing the huge forensic task. "One obvious question is whether the coastguard plane was on the runway and if so why," said Paul Hayes, director of aviation safety at UK-based consultancy Ascend by Cirium.

The crash is the first significant accident involving the Airbus A350, Europe's premier twin-engined long-haul jet, in service since 2015. And according to preliminary 2023 data, the collision of the Coast Guard plane with a two-year-old jetliner three times its length follows one of the safest years in aviation. But it also comes after a U.S.-based safety group warned last month about the risk of runway collisions or "incursions".

The Flight Safety Foundation called for global action to prevent a new uptick in runway incursions as skies become more congested."Despite efforts over the years to prevent incursions, they still happen," CEO Hassan Shahidi said in a statement. "The risk of runway incursions is a global concern, and the potential consequences of an incursion are severe." Although ground collisions involving injury or damage have become rare, their potential for loss of life is among the highest of any category and near-misses are more common. A collision between two Boeing 747s in Tenerife in 1977, killing 583 people, remains aviation's most deadly accident.

'TECHNOLOGY GAP' : The Washington-based foundation has found that breakdowns in communication and coordination can play a role in runway crashes or near misses. But a shortage of electronics to avoid collisions on the ground, rather than in the air where software to trigger avoidance has been available since the 1980s, is also a concern.

The Federal Aviation Administration says some three dozen U.S. airports are fitted with a system called ASDE-X that uses radar, satellites and a navigation tool called multilateration to track ground movements. But National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy said in November the U.S. aviation network - a bellwether for airports worldwide - lacks sufficient technology to prevent runway incursions.

In 2018, Airbus said it was working with Honeywell on a system called SURF-A or Surface-Alert designed to help prevent runway collisions by giving pilots visual and audio warnings about approaching hazards on the runway. Honeywell Aerospace Technologies expects SURF-A, which is operational on its experimental test aircraft, to be certified and available to airlines gradually over the next few years, division CEO Jim Currier said by email. Far-reaching reforms of European and US air traffic networks that could accelerate the use of such computerised systems have faced chronic delays. Airbus did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Steve Creamer, a former senior director at the International Civil Aviation Organization, said preventing a landing aircraft striking a plane is among the top five global safety priorities. Although automated landings are increasing, experts say much still depends on visual checks by pilots who may be distracted by a high workload or the blur of a night-time runway.

"I think the investigation will focus a lot on the clearances ... and then also what the (JAL) crew could see. Could they physically see that airplane on the runway," said former U.S. air accident investigator John Cox. Lighting was an issue in a 1991 collision between a USAir plane and SkyWest Airlines aircraft at Los Angeles International Airport in California, for example. "One of the things that came out of that was that the USAir crew physically could not see the SkyWest Metroliner there. Although it was on the runway, the lighting was such that you physically couldn't see it," he said.