As flames flared, order reigned on a Japan Airlines plane

As smoke filled the cabin of Japan Airlines Flight 516 after its fiery landing in Tokyo on Tuesday, the sound of a child’s voice rose above the din of confusion on board. “Please let us go quickly!” the child begged, in a polite form of Japanese, despite the fear that washed over the passengers as the flight attendants began shouting instructions.

In the minutes that followed, even as the flames that would eventually engulf the JAL plane flickered outside the windows, order was maintained. The escorts evacuated all 367 passengers through the three exit doors deemed safest and sent them down the emergency slides one by one, without serious injuries. Most left everything behind except the phones that would capture the harrowing scenes for the world to see.

While a number of factors contributed to what many call a miracle at Haneda Airport: a well-trained crew of twelve; an experienced pilot with 12,000 hours of flying experience; advanced aircraft design and materials – the relative absence of panic on board during the emergency procedure may have helped most.

“Although I heard shouting, most people were calm and did not get up from their seats, but continued to sit and wait,” said Aruto Iwama, a passenger who gave a video interview to the newspaper. The guard. “That’s why I think we had an easy escape.”

A day after the JAL fire, caused by a runway collision with a Japanese Coast Guard aircraft, clues began to emerge about what led to the disaster, which killed five Coast Guard members en route to assist in the earthquake relief in western Japan.

In a transcript of communications between the air traffic control tower and both the JAL aircraft and the Coast Guard aircraft, it appeared that the commercial flight was cleared to land, while the Coast Guard aircraft was instructed to “taxi to a holding point” next to the aircraft. landing strip.

Officials were trying to determine why the Coast Guard plane ended up on the runway. Takuya Fujiwara, an investigator with the Japan Transport Safety Board, told reporters that the agency had retrieved the voice recorder – or so-called black box – from the coast guard plane, but was still looking for the recorder from the Japan Airlines plane.

Video footage of the JAL plane landing appeared to show it bursting into flames as it plunged off the runway, making it difficult to believe anyone could have left the flight unscathed.

Still, the fuselage withstood the flames pouring from the engines during the 18 minutes that elapsed between the plane’s landing, at 5:47 p.m., and the time the last person left the plane, at 6:05 a.m., said Yasuo Numahata, a spokesman for Japan Airlines. , said during a news briefing on Wednesday. Those 18 minutes, he said, included a hover of about two-thirds of a mile over the runway before the plane came to a stop and the evacuation slides could deploy.

Experts said that while crews are trained – and passenger planes are tested – for cabin evacuations within 90 seconds in an emergency landing, the technical specifications of the 2-year-old Airbus A350-900 most likely gave those on the flight a little more time to escape.

Firewalls around the engines, nitrogen pumps in fuel tanks that help prevent immediate combustion, and fire-resistant materials on seats and floors most likely helped keep the rising flames at bay, said Sonya A. Brown, associate professor of aerospace design at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

“Having a certain level of fire resistance makes initial progress slower,” said Dr. Brown in a telephone interview. “If we have things that reduce the spread, we can increase the chances of getting everyone out safely.”

In an email, Sean Lee, an Airbus spokesman, said the A350-900 was equipped with four emergency exits and slides that could be used to exit from either side of the aircraft. He said the plane had floor lighting on both sides of the aisles and that “the fuselage is largely composed of composite materials, which provide the same level of fire resistance as aluminum.” Aluminum is generally considered to provide a high level of fire protection.

As well as the aircraft’s construction, clear flight crew instructions and passenger compliance would have played an important role in the safe evacuation, said Dr. Brown.

“Truly, the Japan Airlines crew performed extremely well in this case,” said Dr. Brown. The fact that passengers did not stop to collect carry-on bags or otherwise delay the exit was “really critical”, she added.

Yasuhito Imai, 63, a business executive from a Tokyo suburb who was flying back from northern Hokkaido prefecture, told Jiji Press, a telephone company, that the only thing he took from the plane was his smartphone.

“Most of us had taken off our coats and were shivering from the cold,” he said. Despite some children crying and others screaming, he said, “we were able to evacuate with virtually no panic.”

Tadayuki Tsutsumi, an official with Japan Airlines, said the most important part of the crew’s performance during an emergency was “panic management” and determining which exit doors were safe to use.

Former flight attendants described the rigorous training and exercises crew members undergo to prepare for emergencies. “When training for evacuation procedures, we repeatedly used smoke/fire simulation to ensure we were mentally prepared for real-life situations,” wrote Yoko Chang, a former cabin crew member and trainee crew instructor, on an Instagram post.

Ms. Chang, who did not work for JAL, added that airlines require cabin crew members to take an evacuation exam every six months.

Japan Airlines’ Mr Numahata said 15 people were injured during the evacuation, none of whom were seriously hurt. Kazuki Sugiura, an aviation analyst in Tokyo, said such results were notable.

“In a normal emergency, a lot of people get injured,” Mr. Sugiura, who has studied aviation accidents for more than 50 years, said in an interview. “The evacuation slides are moved by the wind and passengers fall out of the exits one after another, causing people to fall to the ground and often get injured.”

As to whether a miscommunication between the air traffic control tower and one of the planes could have caused the collision, Mr Sugiura said that “it is difficult to speculate what happened.” The Coast Guard pilot “could have misunderstood air traffic control instructions,” he added.

What is clear, said Dr. Brown, is that “we should not have had an airplane preparing to take off and another airplane landing on the same runway at the same time.”

She said the crew members of the Coast Guard plane, a Bombardier Canada DHC-8-315, were most likely killed “in the actual collision itself” when the two planes collided, as the Coast Guard propeller plane was much smaller than the passenger jet. Jet.

Hiroshi Sugie, a former Japan Airlines pilot, said runway incursions, where two planes end up on the same runway, are all too common. “Human error can happen at major airports,” he said.

Since a fatal 1991 accident in Los Angeles in which a Boeing jet collided with a smaller turboprop plane, pilots have been required to verbally repeat all air traffic control tower instructions, according to Mr. Sugie.

Mr Numahata, the Japan Airlines spokesman, said the captain of Flight 516 had verbally confirmed the clearance to land and repeated it to the tower. The Coast Guard crew also confirmed instructions to proceed to the holding point.

Reporting was contributed by Kiuko Notoya and Miharu Nishiyama from Tokyo and Jin Yu Young from Seoul.