The images shown by the Japanese broadcaster NHK look like an inferno. Flames burst from the windows of a passenger jet, huge clouds of black smoke rose. Everything at Tokyo Haneda Airport this Tuesday looks like a devastating catastrophe that hardly any of the passengers are likely to have survived.
What happened? At around 6 p.m. Japanese time, 10 a.m. in Germany, several Japanese media outlets unanimously report that a passenger plane collided with a Japanese Coast Guard aircraft on its approach to land.
On board the passenger plane – one A350 Japan Airlines had 367 passengers and twelve crew members. The plane came from the island of Hokkaido in northern Japan and took off there at around 4 p.m. local time. According to initial information, all occupants survived the accident.
The pilot and five other people are said to have been on board the coast guard aircraft. The pilot is said to have been seriously injured and the five other people on board are said to be dead. This is what the Japanese media reports. The crew’s mission: to bring material to the earthquake zone on the west coast of Japan.
There are live recordings that show the moment of the accident. You can see a plane that has touched down on the runway. Suddenly there is a huge fireball and the machine, which is now in flames, continues to roll. Another fire remains in the place where the fireball opened.
TBS also published footage showing the evacuation of the plane. The images show passengers exiting the plane via an emergency slide while the fire is extinguishing the fire. All runways at Tokyo Haneda, the country’s largest airport, were closed after the accident.