A JAL JL516 Airbus A350 aircraft at Tokyo's Haneda Airport collided with a Japan Coast Guard plane transporting earthquake materials as it landed on January 2. Nearly 400 passengers and crew members on a JAL passenger plane were lucky to escape, while five people on another plane were killed and one seriously injured.
According to the latest call records released by Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, the Coast Guard plane entered the runway without permission, causing a collision with a JL516 passenger plane that had just landed, which can basically confirm that this was an accident caused by a runway intrusion.
A runway invasion is an aviation incident caused by the improper positioning of a vehicle, person or aircraft on an airport runway or its protected area, where there is a risk of collision or the possibility of interference with the instrument landing system when it involves an active runway being used by an aircraft taking off or landing.
Runway incursions are a very important matter in the aviation field, and the various runway safety technologies and processes commonly adopted by aviation-related units are all aimed at reducing the risk and potential consequences of such incidents.
Generally speaking, there are three reasons for runway intrusion, one is the operation error of the air traffic controller, the second is the pilot deviates and pilots the aircraft across the runway without permission, and the third is the vehicle/pedestrian entering the airport activity area without air traffic authorization. The Haneda Airport accident was one of the most dangerous runway incursions, and the consequences were very serious, but it was not the worst runway incursion in history.
The most famous runway incursion, and deadliest in history, was the Tenerife air crash on March 27, 1977, when two Boeing 747 airliners collided at Rosrodeo Airport (Tenerife Northern Airport) in the Canary Islands, an autonomous territory off the coast of North Africa, killing a total of 583 people on both planes.
At that time, there was a bomb terrorist attack on Gran Canaria, and all international flights were diverted to Rosrodeo Airport, but it was only a small airport with only one runway and very limited apron capacity. The influx of diverted flights instantly threw the airport into chaos.
The collision was between KLM flight KL4805 and Pan Am PA1736, both large Boeing 747 airliners. Due to improper control of the tower, the failure of the central light of the airport runway, the sudden dense fog, and the captain's hurry, the KLM KL4805 was still taxiing on the runway when it received the take-off order.
The picture is from National Geographic Channel's "Air Crash Investigation"
It wasn't until 4 seconds before the collision that the crew of KLM flight KL4805 finally spotted the Pan Am passenger plane in front of the runway desperately turning to dodge, and KLM also wanted to avoid danger by urgently raising its head to climb, although the tail of the passenger plane scraped a 20-meter-long deep trench in the runway ground, it still failed to climb to a sufficient height and crashed into the Pan Am airliner. The KLM airliner stalled and rolled violently and caused an explosion, tearing the fuselage of the Pan Am airliner.
Of the 234 passengers and 14 crew members on board the KLM plane, only 56 passengers and five crew members survived, while only 56 passengers and five crew members survived on the Pan Am plane, which had 382 passengers and 14 crew members. The death toll reached a staggering 583, which to date remains the first in the history of world civil aviation.
The crash, combined with the 1972 runway crash in Chicago (which killed 10 people), made the runway invasion a formal research project in the 80s of the 20th century. In 1986, the National Transportation Safety Board NTSB published a report entitled "Runway Intrusion at Controlled Airports in the United States", and it has been 38 years now. Although there have been no more serious accidents such as the Tenerife air crash, the number of runway incursions is still endless.
Between 2011 and 2017, there were 12,857 runway incursions in the United States. From January to October 2023, there were 19 serious runway incursions in the United States. U.S. officials have pointed to the high number of runway incursions as a possible reason for the lack of air traffic controllers, inexperienced airline pilots and outdated technology systems. It is also believed that the significant year-on-year increase in air traffic in 2023 has put the entire system under pressure.
Runway incursions are not uncommon in China's civil aviation industry. On October 11, 2016, an A320 passenger plane took off from Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, and when the plane reached a speed of about 110 knots (200 kilometers per hour), the captain suddenly noticed that an A330 passenger plane was about to cross the runway. Although the co-pilot flicked the brakes, the aircraft was reaching a speed of 130 knots (240 kilometers per hour), which was close to the speed of the wheels, and the captain finally decided to take off with the lever at maximum thrust.
The A330 had just landed and was instructed by the tower air traffic control to cross the runway to the terminal to dock. Just as they were crossing the runway, the crew also spotted that an aircraft was taxiing for takeoff, and immediately accelerated to taxi to get out of the runway as soon as possible. In the end, the A320 aircraft flew over the A330, and 413 passengers and 26 crew members on both flights successfully escaped.
Looking back at the runway intrusion at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, what could have been the cause?
Many domestic flight enthusiasts are also discussing the Haneda Airport crash on the Internet. Some netizens believe that judging from the communication records of the post-investigation, the communication error is likely to be the cause of the runway intrusion accident. The Dutch accent of the KLM captain in the Tenerife air crash caused a misunderstanding between the crew and air traffic control personnel, which was one of the important reasons for the air crash.
Many Japanese people speak English with a strong accent. Communications records show that at that time, air traffic control informed JL516 Airbus A350 that "34R JAL516 runway safety" and then immediately instructed the Coast Guard Dash-8 aircraft to "taxi to C5 waiting point." Records show that the Dash-8 crew confirmed the wait command 8 seconds after receiving the command from the air traffic control, and the crew replied: "Taxi to Waiting Point 1 C5 JA722A, thank you." ”
So why the plane continued to taxi onto the runway remains to be determined by the final results of the official investigation.
In addition, the JAL passenger aircraft is the Airbus A350, which is Airbus' latest twin-aisle large passenger aircraft after the A380, carrying nearly 400 passengers and crew on board.
A 28-year-old passenger on the plane told the media that he and the rest of the passengers fled the plane about 10 minutes after they heard an explosion, "and if it's a little later, we're afraid we'll be dead."
In such a sudden accident, the crew and passengers were able to evacuate safely and no one was killed, and the performance of the crew and passengers in the face of danger is quite admirable.
An expert who has been involved in passenger safety education in the aviation industry for 28 years believes that the ability to disembark all passengers safely in a potentially fatal accident is a testament to the close cooperation between passengers and crew.
"The fact that passengers were able to evacuate before the aircraft was engulfed in flames is a testament to the excellent design of the aircraft and the airline's ability to deal with it in a timely manner," said Guzzetti, a former senior federal flight safety accident investigator. ”
A JAL spokesman said that only three escape doors could be used on board due to the fire, and JAL personnel were trained to evacuate all passengers within 90 seconds.