Transport safety officers searched for a voice recorder from the severely burned fuselage of a Japan Airlines plane, searching for essential data on what induced a collision with a small coast guard plane on the runway at Tokyo’s Haneda airport.
On Saturday, heavy equipment labored for a second day to take away debris of the burned Airbus A320 for storage in a hangar to permit the runway to reopen. Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito mentioned officers have been aiming to reopen the runway Monday. Wreckage of the Japan Coast Guard plane had been cleared.
Saito mentioned the airport’s site visitors management operation would create a brand new place for monitoring plane motion on runways starting Saturday. There has been hypothesis site visitors controllers may not have paid consideration to the coast guard plane’s presence on the runway once they gave the JAL plane permission to land.
Six experts from the Japan Transport Safety Board on Friday walked by way of the mangled debris of the Airbus A350-900 that was mendacity on the runway looking for the voice data recorder.
JTSB experts have up to now secured each the flight and voice data recorders from the coast guard’s Bombardier Dash-8 and a flight data recorder from the JAL plane to seek out out what occurred in the previous few minutes earlier than Tuesday’s deadly collision.
All 379 occupants of JAL Flight 516 safely evacuated inside 18 minutes of touchdown because the plane was engulfed in flames. The pilot of the coast guard plane additionally escaped, however its 5 different crewmembers died. The coast guard plane was on a mission to ship aid items to survivors of highly effective earthquakes in central Japan that killed at the very least 100 individuals.
New particulars have additionally emerged from media footage at Haneda airport. NHK tv reported footage from its monitoring digicam arrange on the Haneda airport confirmed that the coast guard plane moved on to the runway and stopped there for about 40 seconds earlier than the collision.
In the footage, the coast guard plane is seen coming into the runway from the C5 taxiway, then shortly after the passenger plane touches down proper behind and rams into it, creating an orange fireball. The JAL airliner, coated with flames and spewing grey smoke, continues down the runway earlier than coming to a cease.
Transcript of the recorded communication on the site visitors management, launched by the transport ministry Wednesday, confirmed that the air site visitors controller instructed the coast guard plane to taxi to a holding place simply earlier than the runway, noting its No. 1 departure precedence. The coast guard pilot repeats the instruction, then presents thanks for the No. 1 slot. There was no additional instruction from the management permitting the coast guard to enter the runway.
The pilot instructed police investigators that his plane was struck simply as he powered up the engines after acquiring clearance to take off.
The small lights on the coast guard plane and its 40-second cease may need made it much less seen to the JAL pilots and air site visitors management. NHK additionally mentioned that air site visitors management officers might have missed an alert system for unauthorized runway entry whereas partaking in different operations.
The JTSB investigators on Friday deliberate to interview seven JAL cabin attendants to get their accounts, after their comparable interviews with the three pilots and two different attendants the day earlier than.
A crew from the plane producer, Airbus, was additionally becoming a member of the investigation, a requirement below worldwide aviation safety guidelines, in accordance with the board.
Aviation safety authorities from France, residence to Airbus’ predominant administration, and Canada, the place the maker of Bombardier planes is predicated, have been to cooperate within the investigation. Experts from the U.S. National Transport Board have been to offer assist with A320’s Honeywell-made flight and voice data recorders.
