Airlines (Commonwealth Union)_TOKYO — Japanese authorities said on 3rd January (Wednesday), that a passenger jet that collided with a Coast Guard turboprop at a Tokyo airport had been given permission to land, but based on control tower transcripts, the smaller plane had not been cleared for take-off.
All 379 people aboard the Japan Airlines (JAL) Airbus A350 managed to evacuate after it erupted in flames following the crash on Tuesday with a De Havilland Dash-8 Coast Guard turboprop shortly after landing at Haneda airport.
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But while the captain, who escaped the wreckage, was badly injured, five died among the six Coast Guard crew who were due to depart on a flight responding to a major earthquake on Japan’s west coast.
Authorities have only just commenced their investigations and there remains uncertainty over the circumstances surrounding the crash, including how the two aircraft ended up on the same runway. Experts stress that it normally takes the failure of multiple safety guardrails for an airplane accident to happen.
But transcripts of traffic control instructions released by authorities appeared to show the Japan Airlines jet had been granted permission to land while the Coast Guard aircraft had been told to taxi to a holding point close to the runway.
An official from Japan’s civil aviation bureau informed reporters there was no indication in those transcripts that the Coast Guard aircraft had been granted permission to take off.
The captain of the turboprop plane stated that he had entered the runway after receiving permission, a Coast Guard official said, while acknowledging that there was no indication in the transcripts that he had been cleared to do so.
Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito told reporters that the transport ministry was submitting objective material and will fully co-operate with the investigation to ensure working together to take all possible safety measures to prevent a recurrence.
The Japan Safety Transport Board (JTSB) is investigating the accident, with participation by agencies in France, where the Airbus jet was designed, as well as Britain, where its two Rolls-Royce engines were manufactured. Where the Coast Guard Dash-8 was originally built by Bombardier, in Canada, the TSB safety agency said it would also take part.
Authorities said that the JTSB has recovered the voice recorder from the coast guard aircraft.
Police enquiry
Tokyo police are meanwhile investigating whether possible professional negligence led to deaths and injuries, several media outlets, including Kyodo and the Nikkei business newspaper, said.
A spokesperson said that police have set up an investigation unit at the airport and plan to interview those involved, declining to say whether they were examining any suggestions of negligence.
Parallel air crash investigations have raised concerns over tensions between civil safety investigations in the past, which rely on open discussion of errors to help improve safety, and police-led enquiries, which are designed to apportion blame.
Aviation analyst Hiroyuki Kobayashi, who is a former JAL pilot said there was a strong possibility there was a human error. He said since aircraft accidents very rarely occur due to a single problem, he thinks that this time too there were two or three issues that led to the accident.
A notice to pilots in force before the accident suggested that a strip of stop lights embedded in the tarmac as an extra safety measure to prevent wrong turns, was out of service, according to a copy of the bulletin posted by US regulators.
“This is something the investigators will look at,” said US aviation safety consultant John Cox.
JAL said in a statement on Wednesday, that the aircraft recognised and repeated the landing permission from air traffic control before approaching and touching down.
Although passengers and crew were evacuated within 20 minutes of the crash, the aircraft, engulfed in flames, burned for over six hours, the airline said.
The Coast Guard aircraft, one of six based at the airport, had been due to transport aid to regions hit by Monday’s earthquake of magnitude 7.6 that has killed 64 people, with survivors facing freezing temperatures and prospects of heavy rain.
On Wednesday, the accident forced the cancellation of 137 domestic, and four international flights the government said.
But high-speed rail services and emergency flights were requested to ease the congestion, Transport Minister Saito said.
A former US accident investigator, Michael Daniel, said investigators will be looking to make recommendations.
“The main thing is the situational awareness: what is it they would have told the pilot holding short of getting on a runway… And then what was air traffic’s understanding. Did the controller give them clearance to take off?… A lot of that information will come out when they start reviewing the cockpit voice recorder as well as the air traffic tapes.”
