Today's Runway Collision in Japan (UPDATED)
Today's Runway Collision in Japan (UPDATED)
What is known about this tragedy. Plus what is suspected. What is still a mystery. And, most urgently, what is to be learned.
From SkyTV, the instant after an Airbus 350 flown by Japan Air Lines descended into a small Japan Coast Guard airplane on the runway at Haneda airport near Tokyo. Everyone aboard the Airbus was saved; most of those on the Coast Guard plane died in the resulting fireball. (Image from SkyTV.)
DAY-AFTER Updates
Here is new information since my original posting last night.
1. Where the planes were.
My original guesstimate-illustration showed a collision point about midway down runway 34 Right at Haneda. Evidence now indicates that the Japan Air Lines plane smashed into the top of the Japan Coast Guard plane, which was sitting on the runway, at roughly the spot shown by the red oval on the Google Earth image below, near where taxiway C5 and C6 enter the runway. The red arrow shows the inbound path of the landing airplane.
2. What the pilots and controllers knew.
On current evidence, the Japan Air Lines plane had been properly cleared to land on Runway 34R. It is possible the pilots in the JAL cockpit did not see the Coast Guard plane sitting on the runway until the very last instant before impact, or perhaps at all.
How could this be? The runway lights were bright, at night, and could make it hard to see wingtip lights in unexpected locations; the Coast Guard plane was relatively small; the Airbus windshield would have been showing a “heads up display” of the landing path, which could obscure weak lights on the runway; the controller appears not to have cautioned the crew about previously departing traffic or other complications; etc.
Latest evidence suggests that controllers had intended the Coast Guard plane to taxi to Runway 34R, but not on to the runway. This is a fundamental life-and-death distinction in aviation, with lots of language and procedures designed to underscore the difference. “Hold short” when you’re not supposed to enter the runway; “line up and wait” when you are cleared to enter the runway but not to take off; “cleared for takeoff” when it’s time to go.
At all airports I’ve ever seen, there are bright red signs to alert you that you’re about to turn onto a runway. Here is an example, courtesy of AOPA:
If you saw this you’d know (a) that you are on Taxiway G (yellow lettering, on black background); (b) that immediately ahead of you is Runway 10-28 (red background, with white lettering), with Runway 10 to your left and Runway 28 to your right; and (c) you damned well better know what you are doing before you move forward, into the red.
At many big commercial airports, like Haneda, there are also special flashing signals to alert crews when they’re about to take this fateful step.
Apparently the controller intended the Coast Guard plane to “hold short”—to taxi up to runway, but stay clear of it—and for whatever reason the Coast Guard crew believed it had been told to “line up and wait.” (That is, to taxi right onto the runway, and stay there.) This will certainly be a center of investigation.
3) Where can you look for more info?
-As mentioned yesterday, the PPrune site, a professional-pilot discussion zone, is full of info and opinions, some of which are wild speculation but many of which are useful. The enormous discussion thread starts here.
-The Aviation Herald site has very useful updates, and sobering photos and recordings.
-An absolutely astonishing YouTube video shows the tragedy as it occurs. If you look at this Haneda live-cam footage very, very carefully, starting at around time 2:40 you will see the taillights of a small plane taxiing from right to left, toward its position on the runway. All evidence suggests that is the doomed Coast Guard plane. By around time 3:03 it stops, apparently on the runway, and you can still faintly see its tail lights. Around time 3:20, the descending Airbus comes into view, from the right. Over the next 18 seconds you will be thinking No! No! as its heads straight into the smaller, barely visible plane. You will see the instant of impact and resulting fireball.
The video is here:
4) What is to be learned?
That process is just beginning. But one pilot-commentator on PPrune noted the JAL skill in evacuating its passengers and said:
Perhaps future safety briefings need to be a lot more blunt:
”In Tokyo, everyone left their bags and stuff behind … and everyone got out alive.”
What follows is the original post.
What just happened?
At Tokyo’s Haneda airport today, at least five people were killed when a large airliner and a small Japan Coast Guard plane collided on a runway. The airliner, a huge Airbus 350 operated by Japan Airlines (JAL), was just touching down on Haneda’s runway 34 Right (or 34R). From above it slammed into the Coast Guard plane, a DeHavilland-Canada DHC Dash-8, which for still-unknown reasons was sitting on that same runway.
The Coast Guard plane immediately burst into flames and was scraped along the runway, as shown in the CCTV screen shot of the instant of impact, above. The characters at the upper right of the image say “Haneda,” the airport’s name. At least five people aboard that Coast Guard plane were killed; its pilot was reported to have initially survived.
After the collision, fires also broke out on the large JAL Airbus. But the airline crew organized all passengers to leave the plane, via emergency exits and safety slides. According to initial reports, some aboard the Airbus might have been injured, but all 367 passengers and 12 crew members apparently survived.
About twenty minutes after the collision, with those aboard safely disembarked, the gigantic JAL Airbus was entirely consumed by fire and destroyed.
Could this have been worse?
Yes. Very, very much worse.
If the Airbus had not withstood the initial impact, or if it had burst immediately into flames, or if its flight crew had not managed to slow and steer it along the runway after the collision, or if its cabin crew had not calmed and guided the passengers to leave the plane, this could have been a disaster on a much greater scale. Or: if the passengers had been on a typical flight in China, where in our experience they pay much less attention to flight-crew instructions than in Japan, it might have been harder to stage an organized departure from the plane. And: if the aircraft it hit had been not a small plane with an also-small crew but instead another fully laden airliner, this might have entered the annals of tragedy alongside the highest-casualty aviation disaster ever, nearly 50 years ago in Tenerife.
My long-time friend Bruce Williams, who is an accomplished pilot, flight instructor, and early participant in the development of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator, sent me an email just now on exactly this point:
Although the information currently available is sketchy, this event is an example of what I dread will be the next big aviation event with mass fatalities—a collision on the ground, like Tenerife. Had this crash involved two packed airliners—well, you understand the consequences. It’s astonishing that everyone got off the A350 safely.
The commercial aviation world has effectively eliminated the tragic crashes that only a couple of decades ago claimed so many lives.
Technical failures of engines and other key systems rarely result in catastrophes. We have learned much about avoiding dangerous weather.
Instead, as the entire aviation system expands, humans have become the weakest links in the accident chain, as so many recent close calls make clear. Air traffic controllers everywhere in the U.S. are working 6-day weeks and lots of overtime. We’re pushing new pilots onto flight decks at unprecedented rates. These human challenges are much more difficult to address than the old engineering problems.
And, as you’ve noted in the past, the pressures on the system peak during the critical takeoff and landing phases. We simply don’t have enough on- and off-ramps to the highways in the sky, and there’s no easy, quick way to address that problem, given both the time required to build new runways, and the political and societal pressures that make such projects so difficult even to begin.
Now, more of the who-what-when details.