The Japan Airlines plane collision was 20 minutes of horror, but the industry will learn invaluable lessons

The Japan Airlines plane collision was 20 minutes of horror, but the industry will learn invaluable lessons
  • PublishedJanuary 6, 2024

As investigators gather information on the fiery collision of a Japan Airlines flight and Coast Guard plane at Tokyo’s Haneda airport this week, a picture is starting to emerge of what went wrong.

Five of the six crew on board the Coast Guard’s turboprop Dash-8 were killed when it was struck by the Airbus A350 as the passenger plane came in for landing on Tuesday evening.

Remarkably, all 367 passengers and 12 crew were safely evacuated from the commercial plane before the fuselage burst into flames on the tarmac.

The Japan Airlines crew has been applauded for executing a “textbook” evacuation that potentially saved hundreds of lives, but the incident has put the airport’s safety procedures in the spotlight.

At the time of the crash, Haneda Airport was operating in “mixed mode”, allowing flights to arrive and depart from the same runway.

Several other flights, including other commercial passenger planes, had been queued for take-off on the same runway where the fatal crash occurred.

Communications between air traffic control and the two aircraft in the minutes before the crash suggest that only one plane had been given clearance to use the runway.

The surviving Coast Guard pilot initially stated that he had been cleared for take-off before entering the runway.

But a transcript released by Japan’s Transport Ministry on Wednesday showed no records of this.

It included confirmation that the Japan Airlines flight was clear to land, while the Coast Guard plane had been directed only to proceed to a holding point.

A safety alert sent to aircraft in the surrounding region also showed that warning lights used to indicate whether taxiways leading to the main runway were open or closed had not been working at the time of the crash.

There are some suggestions that fatigue could have been a factor that contributed to a miscommunication with air traffic control.

Reuters reported this week that the Coast Guard plane had completed several emergency flights delivering aid to earthquake zones in the 24 hours before the collision.

The Japan Transport Safety Board is conducting a formal investigation into the crash, with cooperation from Japan Airlines, the Coast Guard, and Airbus technical advisors.

Police are also carrying out a separate inquiry into whether professional negligence played a role in the collision.

In the meantime, aviation experts are urging passengers to heed the lessons from this disaster.

How quick-thinking cabin crew evacuated 367 passengers in 20 minutes

Videos taken by passengers onboard the plane show a scene of unfolding horror.

As smoke fills the cabin, an orange glow can be seen outside the windows.

 “Please get me out of here!” one woman says.

“Please, why don’t you just open [the doors],” a child rather politely inquires.

Despite the potential for mass panic, the flight attendants can be heard urging everyone to “please cooperate” and evacuate the plane without stopping to collect their carry-on luggage.

They had everyone down the inflatable slides and off the plane within 18 minutes of the collision.

Witnesses say just 10 minutes after the last person left the craft, it was engulfed in flames.

Plane in flames
The Japan Airlines plane was engulfed in flames. (Reuters: Issei Kato)

In its certification, Airbus Air was required to prove that its A350 aircraft could be evacuated in less than 90 seconds using just two exits.

The certification process involves recruiting volunteers, some of whom carry dolls the same size and weight as children, to carry out a simulated evacuation.

While the escape from JA516 took much longer than 90 seconds, it appears that the flight crew had to spend time assessing which exits on the plane were safest to use.

One of the exits was engulfed in flames, so the passengers only had three means of escape instead of four.

Silvia Pignata, a senior lecturer in aviation at the University of South Australia, said the safe evacuation of all passengers on board was “miraculous”, and noted that the crew may have been slowed down by difficult circumstances.

“First of all, the cabin crew had to ask the pilots for permission to be able to open the exits, so that’s an issue that perhaps can be looked at in the future,” she told the ABC.

The cabin crew also had to resort to using megaphones after the internal public address system stopped working.

Dr Pignata praised the passengers on board for swiftly following directions and leaving luggage behind, suggesting that cultural factors may have made all the difference.

“In Japanese culture, people really respect authority,” she told the ABC.

“They [were] probably more compliant than if this incident had happened in a more Western country, where people aren’t so [inclined to] adhere to rules, regulations and commands.

“So I think there was also a cultural aspect that enabled the evacuation to be undertaken so smoothly.”

Aviation experts have long warned that stopping to retrieve bags during an evacuation can be the difference between life and death.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) conducted a survey of passengers and flight attendants involved in 46 different evacuations in 2000.

The NTSB found that almost 50 per cent of people in an evacuation had tried to take a piece of luggage with them.

Those surveyed said that passengers retrieving bags was the biggest cause of delays.

People slide down an emergency exit slide from a 747, some carrying duty free bags
After an evacuation of a Cathay Pacific flight in 2011, passengers were seen evacuating with luggage in tow.(China Out/AFP)

Flight attendants reported ending up in screaming matches with people holding up everyone else’s chance of escape because they wouldn’t leave without their belongings.

In one evacuation, a passenger tried to take their guitar with them.

When hundreds of people board a space as narrow as a plane, much will be out of their control.

The one thing they can do is pay attention to the onboard safety briefing, follow the flight crew’s command, and leave their luggage behind if told to evacuate.

How the aviation industry has learned from previous disasters

Japan’s airports are some of the busiest in the world, and the nation’s major carriers have been consistently rated among the safest in recent years.

That largely blemish-free record is perhaps a result of the tragic lessons learned from the horror crash of Japan Airlines flight 123, the deadliest single-aircraft disaster in aviation history.

In 1985, a 747 carrying more than 500 passengers from Tokyo to Osaka suffered a sudden structural failure and crashed into Mount Takamagahara, killing all but four people on board.

A black and white photo of soldiers at a plane crash site
The Flight 123 crash remains the deadliest single aircraft disaster in history. (AP: Katsumi Kasahara)

Investigators later determined that a faulty repair job had caused the flight deck to lose control 12 minutes from take-off, sending the plane into an erratic 30 minutes of twists and Dutch rolls before it hit the tree line and burst into flames.

Wreckage of the plane’s fuselage was spread across the rugged mountainside, with pieces discovered as recently as 2022, more than three decades after the fatal crash.

The company’s president resigned in the wake of the disaster, while an engineer who had inspected the plane before it crashed and a maintenance manager involved in negotiating compensation payouts later died by suicide.

Japan’s government, the airline and manufacturer Boeing, which was found to have been responsible for the faulty repair job that led to the crash, paid out millions in compensation to victims’ families.

In 2006, JAL opened an exhibition at Haneda Airport to memorialise those lost in the crash and demonstrate its commitment to restoring its reputation for safety and earning back the trust of its passengers.

While it would take years to financially recover, its reputation for safety did improve — in fact, until this week, no Japanese carriers had been involved in a fatal crash since 1985.

Mechanical faults, poor procedures and human error have led to other disasters in the intervening years — including runway collisions bearing striking similarities with this week’s crash.

In 1991, a USAir Boeing 737 collided with a SkyWest Airlines turboprop aircraft on the runway at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), killing 35 people on board.

The smaller plane had been positioned ready for takeoff on the same runway as the 737 came in for landing.

The official investigation into that crash found that the probable cause was a failure in communications from air traffic control.

As a result, the NTSB recommended several changes, including the use of different runways for take-offs and landings and clearer guidelines around communication from the control tower.

A burned out fuselage
Two planes collided on the runway at Los Angeles airport in 1991. (AP: Nick Ut)

The dual runway recommendation was implemented, with LAX dedicating two runways for arrivals and two for departures under normal operations.

However there are still occasions where mixed use is allowed on some runways, and it’s a relatively common practice, particularly at smaller airports.

Dr Pignata also noted that the runway at Haneda Airport had been operating in mixed mode at the time of the crash, which may have increased the risk of a collision.

Ultimately, she says these types of incidents rarely occur as a result of one failure.

“With human factors, it’s never just one error that occurs, it’s a whole combination of factors, because there are so many layers of defence in the aviation industry,” she said.

“It’s only when all the holes in the defences line up that a tragic incident such as this can occur.”

She said in any event, the aviation industry would no doubt learn from this collision as it has done in the past.

This will be another opportunity for the aviation industry to improve safety

While hurtling in a tin can 7,000 metres above the Earth is bound to stoke some fear in all of us, flying remains extremely safe.

In the US, Europe and Australia, it is significantly safer to fly in a plane than it is to drive a car, according to a 2020 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The odds of being in a plane accident are about one in 1.2 million, while the chance of being in a fatal car crash is about one in 5,000.

Every airline accident is a potential tragedy.

But it’s also an opportunity for the industry to learn, and figure out ways to improve.

Airbus has dispatched a team to Japan to help investigate the incident.

The fire is also being seen as a key test of the safety of composite materials used in modern aircraft compared to conventional airliner fuselages, which are made of aluminium.

carbon composite skin is much more lightweight than metal, and is therefore more fuel efficient.

Airbus has previously said it believes the carbon fibre exterior “is more ‘burn through’ resistant than a metallic equivalent”.

Experts will now converge on Haneda Airport to study the burned out wreckage of the plane, and to examine every available piece of footage of the blaze.

But passengers should rest assured that these types of accidents are still rare.

“Flying by air is still the safest type of transport — the number of planes that are constantly in the air, and the number of passengers that are being transported, really reinforces the safety of the industry,” Dr Pignata said.

“Japan Airlines has such a high safety record as do so many of the airlines in Australia as well.

“Having so many passengers able to evacuate the plane so quickly, and with minimal injury, just reinforces the high standard of training that’s provided to airlines, cabin crew and flight crew.”

She said it should perhaps serve as a reminder for all airline passengers to pay attention to safety instructions and follow directions of the cabin crew.

“Don’t be so complacent and ignore all the messages. Because if you’re in an emergency situation, you could have so little time, and it’s high stress.

SOURCE: ABCNEWS

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