This is how the passengers of the plane that caught fire in Japan escaped | Transcription

A runway collision caused a fire on a Japan Airlines (JAL) flight at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The reasons for this are still a mystery to aviation experts, but the hassle-free rescue and evacuation has been readily described as “amazing” by some.

All 379 passengers and crew escaped from the Airbus A350. Flight JAL516, which took off from Sapporo, exploded in a fireball shortly after landing after colliding with a smaller Coast Guard aircraft. Five of the six crew members of the coast guard ship were killed.

Satoshi Yamake, 59, returned to the capital after visiting family in his hometown, where he works in the telecommunications sector.

As the wheels skidded across the asphalt, his thoughts turned to seeing his wife Mika again, before a noise and a bang shook him, causing him to turn around and see the burning engine outside his window.

According to the airline, a collision occurred almost immediately after landing at 5:46 PM local time (08:46 GMT).

The captain was cleared to land, but may not have seen the smaller Bombardier-made Dash-8 Coast Guard maritime patrol plane that was part of it, airline executives said at an evening news conference.

Authorities are investigating the circumstances of the crash, which aviation experts consider highly unusual.

Since the introduction of better procedures and ground monitoring, the aviation sector has managed to drastically reduce the number of accidents due to collisions or runway interference.

As the passenger plane came to a stop, the captain of the coast guard plane, Genki Miyamoto, 39, emerged from the rubble and radioed to his base.

“The plane exploded on the runway. I escape. The condition of the remaining crew members is unknown,” the Coast Guard said. The remaining five crew members, aged between 27 and 56, were killed.

The plane’s cabin quickly began to fill with smoke as some frightened passengers ran through the aisles and others held on to screaming children.

“Please get me out of here,” a woman shouted from the plane in a video shared with Reuters. “Why don’t you open (the doors)?” a child shouted.

“I really thought I was going to die,” said Tsubasa Sawada, 28, who returned from vacation in Sapporo with his girlfriend. “After the accident I laughed a bit at first when I saw sparks coming from the engine, but when the fire started I realized something else was going on.”

Flight attendants appeared to ask people to remain calm “Please cooperate,” according to the video shared with Reuters.

Outside, 115 firefighters were mobilized to battle a blaze that started in the tail of the plane and eventually engulfed the entire plane in a ball of flames.

Yamake, who was seated at the front, said that although some passengers were very nervous, the crew quickly deployed evacuation parachutes and people began to leave in an orderly manner. Your browser does not support iframes

The airline said the evacuation began almost immediately after the plane stopped and all passengers were brought to safety in less than 20 minutes.

Video footage shows passengers being quietly evacuated, apparently without hand luggage. Aviation safety officials have warned for years that stopping the collection of carry-on bags during an evacuation puts lives at risk.

“The cabin crew must have done an excellent job. Apparently there was no hand luggage. It was a miracle that all the passengers got off, said Paul Hayes, director of aviation safety at British aviation consultancy Ascend by Cirium.

A Japanese Transport Ministry official told a news conference that the airline’s evacuation procedures had been “correctly carried out.”

Sawada said an explosion occurred inside the plane about 10 minutes after landing. “All I can say is it was a miracle, we could have died if we were too late,” he explained.

“I want to know why this happened and I feel like I don’t want to get on a plane again,” he added.