Aviation (Commonwealth Union)_The collision occurred on Tuesday evening when JAL Flight 516 carrying 379 passengers and flight crew landed on the same runway, right behind the coast guard aircraft preparing for a take off, both engulfed in flames.
All the JAL’s Airbus A350-900 airliner occupants safely evacuated in 18 minutes. Although the captain of the coast guard’s much smaller Bombardier Dash-8 escaped with burns, his five crew members died.
Tokyo’s Haneda airport is almost back to its normal operations. On Monday flights resumed on a repaired runway at Tokyo’s Haneda airport a week after a collision between a Japan Airlines plane and a coast guard aircraft believed to have been caused by human error.
Colleagues of the five flight crew lined up and saluted to mourn for their deaths as black vehicles carrying the bodies drove past them. The victims’ bodies were to return to their families after police autopsies were conducted as part of a separate investigation into possible professional negligence.
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At the coast guard’s Haneda base, colleagues of the five flight crew lined up and saluted to mourn for their deaths as a black vehicle carrying their bodies drove past them.
The coastal runway is one of four at Haneda and its reopening means the airport is nearing the return to its normal operations.
On the night of the crash, Haneda reopened three runways but the last runway had remained closed for the investigation, cleanup of the debris and repairs.
The Transport Ministry stated that the runway reopened early Monday and the airport is ready for full operations.
The collision caused more than 1,200 flights to be canceled, affecting about 200,000 passengers during the New Year holiday period. On Monday the airport was crowded with passengers. All scheduled flights have resumed except for 22 JAL flights cancelled through Tuesday.
The investigation focuses on what made the coast guard flight crew believe they had a go-ahead for their takeoff while the traffic control transcript showed no clear confirmation between them and the traffic control. Traffic control staff assigned to the runway apparently missed an alert system when it indicated the unforeseen coast guard entry.
On Saturday, the Haneda airport traffic control added a new position that was specifically assigned to monitor the runway to step up safety measures.
A team from the Japan Transport Safety Board was interviewing traffic control officials on Monday as part of their investigation. So far, the six-member team has interviewed JAL flight crew members and recovered flight data and voice recorders from both planes, which are key to determining what led to the collision.
