A timeline of key moments leading to Japan planes colliding. Human error is seen as a possible cause

It most effective took 18 mins to evacuate the 379 passengers of Japan Airlines Flight 516 after their airplane burst into flames simply after landing at Tokyo’s Haneda airport Tuesday night. A smaller coast guard Bombardier Dash-8 plane, getting ready to take off to ship pressing help to quake-hit central Japan, was once the usage of the similar runway when the 2 collided. The captain of the coast guard craft escaped with burns however his 5 team contributors died.

The Associated Press gathered accounts from officers and transcripts of site visitors regulate communique. Here is a have a look at key moments leading to the collision.

TRAFFIC CONTROLS

Transcripts of the recorded communique, launched by way of the delivery ministry Wednesday, at 5:43 p.m., display airport site visitors regulate and the JAL Airbus A350 identify communications 4 mins earlier than touchdown. Two mins later, site visitors regulate tells the JAL airplane it is allowed to land at the designated runway, 34R, with the pilot pronouncing “cleared to land.”

Just 10 seconds later, the outgoing coast guard airplane identifies itself, telling site visitors regulate it’s on a taxiway to the runway. The site visitors controller instructs it to “taxi to holding point C5” earlier than the runway and says it will get No. 1 departure precedence. The Bombardier repeats the instruction, then provides: “No. 1, thank you.”

The site visitors controls make no additional communique with both the JAL flight or the coast guard plane over the following two mins till the crash, whilst speaking with two different flights.

NHK tv airs photos from its tracking digicam arrange on the Haneda airport appearing the coast guard Bombardier shifting from the C5 taxiway onto the runway, all over the two-minute period, and preventing there simply earlier than the collision.

LANDING AND COLLISION

At 5:47 p.m., about 40 seconds after the Bombardier is seen at the runway, the JAL flight touches down proper in the back of coast guard plane and rams into it, growing an orange fireball in opposition to the evening sky. The a lot smaller Bombardier is briefly engulfed in fireplace, whilst the A350 — coated in flames and spewing grey smoke — continues down the runway for roughly 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) earlier than coming to a forestall, the place fireplace engines and emergency employees scramble to put out the fireplace.

Emergency procedures in cabin are already in movement.

EVACUATION

The JAL flight team begins emergency reaction. The standard cabin announcement gadget malfunctions, in accordance to JAL, and the team is shouting into a megaphone to be certain that all passengers pay attention their directions.

Flight attendants many times urge passengers to keep calm and to go away their assets in the back of whilst making their approach towards the nearest of the one 3 usable emergency exits — two frontward ones and the 3rd at the again — as the 5 others have been deemed unsafe.

A survivor’s video displays smoke filling the cabin as other people develop determined. Some shout, “please let us out!” as youngsters get started crying. But many others stay calm and observe directions to go away the burning airplane on emergency chutes.

The captain guarantees no person is left in the back of within the cabin. He is the closing one to go away the plane at 6:05 p.m., 18 mins after landing.

Experts and media describe the 18-minute evacuation as “a miracle,” praising the JAL team for his or her reaction.

AFTERMATH

The Haneda airport, one of the world’s busiest, reopens later Tuesday three other runways. But hundreds of flights have been canceled, including about 200 on Saturday, the last long weekend of Japan’s New Year holiday season.

At around 2:15 a.m. Wednesday, more than eight hours after the collision, the blaze is finally extinguished.

Aviation safety officials say they will inspect the A350 as part of their investigation to find out the cause of the collision, increasingly seen as human error with transcripts showing no clear takeoff approval was given to the coast guard plane.

By Friday, a team of six investigators from the Japan Transport Safety Board recovers flight data and voice recorders from the Bombardier and interviews three JAL pilots and nine cabin attendants.

JAL starts removing A350 debris from the runway to its hanger.

Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito says they plan to reopen the runway by Monday and that the airport’s traffic control operation is creating a new position among its team for monitoring aircraft movement on runways starting Saturday.

On Saturday, the JTSB professionals recuperate voice information from the A350, an important to the probe, and start interviewing site visitors controllers who have been on name all over the collision.