Japanese Coast Guard plane denied take-off clearance before runway crash: report
Japanese authorities said Wednesday that a passenger plane that collided with a Coast Guard turboprop at a Tokyo airport was cleared to land, but the smaller plane was not cleared to take off, based on control tower transcripts.
All 379 people on board the Japan Airlines (JAL) Airbus A350 managed to evacuate after it burst into flames following Tuesday's crash of a De Havilland Dash-8 Coast Guard turboprop shortly after landing at Haneda Airport.
But of the six Coast Guard crew members who were about to depart on a flight in response to a major earthquake off Japan's west coast, five died, while the captain, who escaped the wreckage, was seriously injured.
Authorities have only just begun their investigation and uncertainty remains about the circumstances surrounding the crash, including how the two planes ended up on the same runway. Experts emphasize that it usually takes the failure of several safety rails before a plane crash can occur.
But transcripts of traffic control instructions released by authorities appeared to show that the Japan Airlines plane had been cleared to land, while the Coast Guard plane had been told to taxi to a holding point near the runway.
An official from Japan's Civil Aviation Bureau told reporters that there was no indication in the transcripts that the coast guard plane had been cleared to take off.
The captain of the turboprop plane said he entered the runway after being cleared to do so, a Coast Guard official said, while acknowledging that there was no indication in the transcripts that he had been cleared to do so.
“The Ministry of Transport submits objective materials and will fully cooperate with the investigation to ensure that we work together to take all possible safety measures to prevent recurrence,” Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito told reporters.
The Japan Safety Transport Board (JTSB) is investigating the accident, with the participation of authorities in France, where the Airbus plane was built, and Britain, where the two Rolls-Royce engines were manufactured.
The JTSB recovered the voice recorder from the Coast Guard plane, authorities said.
POLICE INVESTIGATION
Meanwhile, Tokyo police are investigating whether possible professional negligence led to deaths and injuries, according to various media, including Kyodo and the business newspaper Nikkei.
Police set up a unit to investigate and planned to interview those involved, a spokesman said, but declined to say whether they were investigating suggestions of negligence.
Parallel investigations into air crashes have raised concerns in the past about tensions between civilian safety investigations, which rely on open discussion of mistakes to help improve safety, and police-led investigations, which aim to identify the guilty .
“There is a high probability that there was human error,” said aviation analyst Hiroyuki Kobayashi, a former JAL pilot.
“Airplane accidents are rare due to a single problem, so I think this time too there were two or three problems that led to the accident.”
A message to pilots present before the accident suggested that a strip of traffic 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 U.S. regulators.
In a statement Wednesday, JAL said the plane recognized and repeated the landing clearance from air traffic control before approaching and landing.
All passengers and crew were evacuated within 20 minutes of the crash, but the plane, which burst into flames, burned for more than six hours, the airline said.
The Coast Guard aircraft, one of six based at the airport, was intended to transport aid to regions hit by Monday's magnitude 7.6 earthquake that killed 64 people, leaving survivors faced freezing temperatures and prospects of heavy rain.
The accident forced the cancellation of 137 domestic and four international flights on Wednesday, the government said.
But emergency flights and high-speed train services have been requested to ease congestion, Transport Minister Saito said.
Michael Daniel, a former U.S. accident investigator, said investigators will make recommendations.
“The most important thing is the situational awareness: what would they have told the pilot when he didn't want to reach the runway, and what was the understanding of air traffic. Did the controller give them permission to take off? A lot of that information will come once they start looking at the cockpit voice recorder and the air traffic tapes.”
First print: January 4, 2024 | 12:27 pm IST