Transportation officials, police launch investigations into aircraft collision in Japan

Transportation officials and police have launched investigations into the communication between air traffic control and two aircraft after a fiery collision left five people dead Tuesday in Japan.

A passenger plane collided with a Japan Coast Guard aircraft on the tarmac of Tokyo’s busy Haneda Airport.

All of the 379 passengers and crew on Japan Airlines’s (JAL) Airbus A350 aircraft escaped before the plane was engulfed in a large fire. Five of the six members on the coast guard’s MA-722 aircraft died.

JAL officials say the passenger aircraft had permission to land. At the same time, a coast guard official said they too had permission to take off, The Associated Press reported.

The Transport Ministry released a transcript of air traffic control communication just before the crash. It showed no clear approval for the coast guard plane to take off. The Tokyo air control gave the JAL plane permission to land on Runway C, per the AP.

The coast guard was taxiing to the same runway, but the traffic control instructed the plane to stop at a line ahead of the runway. A controller noted that the coast guard gets departure priority and the pilot said he was moving to the stop line, the AP reported.

Police began a separate investigation into potential professional negligence. Investigators examined the debris on the runway and were conducting interviews.

The Japan Transport Safety Board said it had examined the aircraft and plans to interview the pilots and air traffic control officials to find out how the planes ended up on the runway at the same time, the AP reported.

The coast guard said its plane was headed to Niigata on Japan’s west coast to deliver aid to those caught in a powerful earthquake that killed at least 55 people, Reuters reported.

The crash occurred at Haneda airport, the busier of the two major airports that serve Tokyo. It was the first severe damage to an Airbus A350 since it entered commercial service in 2015.

The AP also noted the coast guard plane resembled a mound of rubble after the fire was extinguished.