As flight attendants yelled, urging passengers to evacuate, an eerie orange glow burned outside the windows of Japan Airlines Flight 516. The harrowing scene was caught on video from inside the plane, which collided with a Japanese Coast Guard aircraft as it was landing on Tuesday in Tokyo. Through skill and luck — one aviation expert called it “a miraculous job” — the flight crew of the Japan Airlines plane evacuated all 367 passengers and 12 crew members safely at Haneda Airport near Tokyo Bay, according to Japan’s transport minister, Tetsuo Saito. But five Coast Guard members, who had been headed to help with the earthquake relief in Western Japan, were killed, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said during a news conference. NHK, the public broadcaster later said 14 people had been injured on the passenger plane. “The root cause of this accident is not known yet,” Saito said at a news briefing, adding that the country’s transport safety board and other agencies would work to determine what had happened. Video aired by NHK shows a fireball streaking across the tarmac as the plane touched down. As frightening as that looked from outside the plane, it was even scarier inside, said Anton Deibe, a 17-year-old Swede who was on the plane with his family, as quoted in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. He told the newspaper that his family did not understand exactly what was happening or the announcements, which he said were in Japanese. His father, Jonas, told the newspaper, “The entire cabin was filled with smoke within a few minutes,” adding: “We threw ourselves down on the floor. Then the emergency doors were opened, and we threw ourselves at them.” “The smoke in the cabin stung like hell,” Anton told Aftonbladet. He said that once they got out of the plane, he and his family had run out “onto the field.” Japan Airlines said that the plane had left New Chitose Airport in the northern prefecture of Hokkaido at 4.15 p.m., and was scheduled to land at Haneda at 5:35 p.m. but landed at 5:47. A Coast Guard official said the Coast Guard aircraft had started taxiing to the runway around 4:45 p.m., about an hour before the collision. The airline said that according to interviews with the operating crew, the pilots “acknowledged and repeated the landing permission from air traffic control,” and then proceeded with the approach. In its statement, Japan Airlines said that the cause of the accident was still under investigation and that it was cooperating with officials. According to Japan Airlines, the aircraft’s announcement system malfunctioned during the evacuation, so the crew used a megaphone and their voices.<br/>
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Japan's transport authorities on Wednesday began investigating the cause of a collision that occurred at Tokyo's Haneda airport between a Japan Airlines Co. plane and a Japan Coast Guard aircraft the previous day. The Japan Transport Safety Board, the government affiliated agency in charge of probing serious accidents involving airplanes, trains and ships, is examining the aircraft wreckage. The accident forced the closure of all four runways at Japan's busiest airport, but all except the one on which the collision occurred were reopened later Tuesday after the cancellation of many flights. JAL canceled more than 40 domestic flights to and from Haneda airport on Wednesday. All Nippon Airways Co. also canceled over domestic 50 flights, with some international flights affected. All 379 passengers and crew aboard the JAL Airbus A350 escaped without life-threatening injuries after it caught fire following the collision with the coast guard aircraft based at Haneda airport, the company said. Five of the six coast guard members aboard were confirmed dead, but the aircraft's captain managed to escape, police said. The fire on the JAL plane was brought under control more than eight hours after the collision around 5:49 p.m. Airbus SAS said in a statement Tuesday that it will dispatch a team of specialists "to provide technical assistance" to Japan's safety board, expressing sadness over the deaths of the five crew members. The severely damaged JAL plane, equipped with engines produced by Britain's Rolls-Royce plc, was received in November 2021, Airbus said. Japan's coast guard said its aircraft was heading to Niigata Prefecture to deliver relief supplies for people hit by the magnitude-7.6 earthquake that struck the Noto Peninsula and surrounding areas on the Sea of Japan coast on Monday.<br/>
Passengers on the Japan Airlines flight that collided with a Japan Coast Guard aircraft at Tokyo's Haneda Airport on Tuesday recounted their harrowing escape from the burning jetliner. All 367 passengers and all 12 crew members escaped alive from the JAL plane, which had left New Chitose Airport on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido earlier that day. Five of the six crew members on the coast guard plane were killed, while its captain remains in serious condition. "I bounced off my seat from the impact when we landed," a 28-year-old man returning from a trip to Hokkaido said. "We made it just in the nick of time. It's a miracle we survived." Soon after landing, the passenger saw from the window that the plane was on fire. Smoke filled the cabin, making it hard to see. "It became hot, like we were inside a sauna, and my throat burned whenever I breathed in," the man said. Passengers said cabin crew members repeatedly urged them over the intercom to stay calm, stay put, and cover their noses and mouths. Oxygen masks above some seats were released. Before the emergency exit was opened, passengers could be heard panicking, with shouts of "Get us out of here!" and "We should listen to the crew!" filling the cabin. Some passengers were seen relaying instructions from the crew to those around them. Once on the ground via evacuation slide, the crew members instructed passengers to get away from the aircraft, and a loud explosion was heard soon after. The fire spread quickly, and within half an hour the entire aircraft was ablaze, with flames shooting from windows and doors. A 59-year-old man who had been visiting his family home in Sapporo said calmly: "I think everyone was able to escape in about five minutes." A man in his 30s from Saitama prefecture said: "I just couldn't understand what was happening."<br/>
A team of forensic experts from planemaker Airbus (AIR.PA) and French state agency BAE will arrive in Japan on Wednesday to help authorities investigate the deadly accident involving a A350 plane at Tokyo's Haneda airport, they said on Tuesday. "4 @BEA_Aero investigators will be on site tomorrow joined by 5 @Airbus technical advisors," the BEA agency said in a post on social media platform X. The aircraft involved was MSN 538, delivered to Japan Airlines after production in November 2021 and was powered by Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines, Airbus said in a separate statement.<br/>
American Airlines has stopped accepting the Argentine peso, with the carrier now listing all prices on its website for tickets from Argentina in US Dollars. The move comes following increasing instability in Argentina's economy and the recent devaluation of the peso. In December, Argentina's new president, Javier Milei, cut the value of the peso by 50% in a bid to tackle the rampant inflation that has been at the heart of the country's economic crisis. Inflation recently reached as high as 160%, and as a result, it now takes around 810 Argentine pesos to buy one US Dollar. Throughout his election campaign, President Milei made no secret of his desire to shut down the Central Bank of Argentina and move towards USD. This is not the first time that the airline has stopped accepting the Argentine peso. According to The Messenger, the carrier temporarily suspended payments in pesos in 2015, citing exchange problems with the USD.<br/>