A Japan Airlines plane caught fire on Tuesday on a runway at Tokyo-Haneda International Airport in Japan, according to images from Japanese public television NHK, which like other local media reported a collision with another aircraft. . The 367 passengers and 12 crew members of the airliner were evacuated according to NHK. Among the passengers were eight children, according to Japanese news agency Kyodo.
However, five of the six people who were on board the other aircraft involved in the accident, a Japanese coast guard plane, died, according to NHK. The sixth occupant managed to leave the aircraft.
70 fire engines deployed
In images taken at 5:47 p.m. local time (08:47 GMT), the Japan Airlines plane could be seen taxiing on the tarmac before a large explosion ignited and left a trail of flames behind the aircraft, which stopped a little further away. According to several local media, it was the airliner JAL 5016, an Airbus A50-900 coming from Shin-Chitose airport near Sapporo (northern Japan), which would have hit a plane of the guards. Japanese coasts.
“It is not clear whether there was a collision or not. But what is certain is that our plane was involved,” a coastguard official at the airport told AFP. Tokyo-Haneda. Japan Airlines said its plane hit the other aircraft shortly after landing, according to the Kyodo news agency, adding that Japan’s Transport Ministry was investigating the accident. Debris also littered the runway and more than 70 fire engines were deployed on site, according to NHK.
One more drama
Tokyo-Haneda is one of the Japanese capital’s two international airports and one of the busiest in the world. Accidents involving airliners are extremely rare in Japan. The most serious of these occurred in 1985, when a Japan Airlines plane crashed between Tokyo and Osaka, killing 520 people, one of the worst aviation disasters in the world.
Japan was also already stunned on Tuesday by the immense earthquake which occurred the day before in the Noto peninsula, in the center of the country, and which left at least 48 dead according to a new provisional report from local authorities.