JAL flight 516 (registration JA13XJ) Airbus A350-941 from Sapporo to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport collided while landing with a coast guard aircraft JA722A Bombardier DHC-8-315Q MPA “Dash-8” that belonged to Haneda Air Base, which was awaiting departure to Niigata with aid following the New Year’s Day Earthquake.
All 367 passengers and 12 crew members escaped the passenger plane, while five people on the coast guard plane were still unaccounted for, NHK reported.
The pilot of the coast guard aircraft had evacuated and contacted officials, but the other five crew members were unaccounted for and the condition of the aircraft was unknown.
CNN reports that 17 passengers were injured and that the coast guard pilot remains in critical condition.
Further insights
This marks the first hull loss of an A350. The Dash-8 involved, JA722A, also called under its alternative registration, MA722 “Mizunagi.”
In the collision, the nose gear of the Airbus A350 collapsed and the engines caught fire whilst the aircraft came to a stop. The right hand engine was unable to be shut down and continued to run during the evacuation of the passengers. The aircraft has been fully engulfed in fire and has been completely destroyed.
I’ve been listening to the air traffic control [~15:00] immediately before the accident between JAL Flight 516 and JA722A (Japan Coast Guard aircraft) at Haneda, and at least as far as I can hear, two minutes before the accident, the Japan Coast Guard aircraft was told, “JA722A No.1 Taxi to Holding Point -1” was issued from tower control, but it appears that permission to enter the runway was not issued until the accident.
In the video from the original post it’s noteworthy that the queued up aircraft DAL276 and JAL545 are not visible, which suggests the collision happened further down the runway from C-1, likely closer to holding point C-5. A user on Twitter remarks that “the air traffic control instructions were C-1 [and] because [JA722A] misheard it, it was holding short at C-5.”
From here, there are two possibilities:
JA722A entered onto the runway from C-5 without ATC clearance.
ATC, unaware that JA722A was positioned at C-5 and assuming them to be holding at C-1, may have cleared them to enter the runway as JAL516 had passed C-1 at this point. This might not be on ATC recordings due to overlapping transmissions.