After landing, smoke filled the cabin and flames licked the windows, but the Japan Airlines crew got all 367 passengers safely off the aircraft in an orderly fashion — and just in time.
Panic-stricken passengers begged to be let off, footage from the scene on Tuesday at Tokyo International Airport showed.
“Honestly, I thought we wouldn’t survive. So I texted my family and friends to say that my plane is burning, right now,” a woman told broadcaster NHK.
Photo: AFP
After arriving from Hokkaido in the north, the Japan Airlines Airbus collided with a Japanese coast guard plane and caught fire as it sped down the runway.
It careened to a halt after the front landing gear failed, but all passengers and crew escaped down two emergency slides before the plane was engulfed in flames.
The smaller coast guard vessel was heading to deliver aid to earthquake-hit central Japan. Five of the six personnel died. Those on board Japan Airlines plane feared that could have been their fate.
“It felt like we abruptly hit something. Then the fire started, like: ‘Bang,’” a male passenger told broadcaster TBS.
“The smell of smoke was in the air, and the doors were not opening. So I think everyone panicked,” a female passenger said.
Eight children were on board the passenger plane. In one video clip, a young voice can be heard shouting: “Please let us out. Please. Please open it. Just open it. Oh, god.”
The plane landed at 5:46pm and everyone was off just under 20 minutes later, Japan Airlines told a briefing on Tuesday night.
Aviation experts said it was a carefully rehearsed and executed evacuation that stopped the plane from turning into a death trap.
“Passengers seemed to have followed instructions in a textbook manner,” said Terence Fan, an airline industry expert from Singapore Management University, with others praising those on board for leaving their cabin bags behind. “This is exactly what evacuation policies are designed for — the airframe itself is not meant to survive the blaze, ultimately.”
David Kaminski-Morrow, air transport editor at aviation news Web site FlightGlobal said: “I wouldn’t personally call the successful evacuation of the JAL [Japan Airlines] flight a ‘lucky escape’, although the passengers might believe so.”
Instead, he added, an efficient evacuation showed “what can be achieved by evacuating promptly and efficiently.”
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other