Five dead after Japan Airlines, coast guard planes collide at Tokyo airport

All 379 passengers and crew of a Japan Airlines plane miraculously escaped from a fire following a collision with a Coast Guard aircraft at Tokyo's Haneda airport but local media said most of the coast guard plane crew had died.

The coast guard said on Tuesday the collision involved one of its planes that was headed to Niigata airport on Japan's west coast to deliver aid to those caught up in a powerful earthquake that struck on New Year's Day, killing at least 48 people.

Five of the six crew of the Coast Guard aircraft have died, public broadcaster NHK reported. A Coast Guard spokesperson said five of the crew were unaccounted for but that the captain had escaped.

Live footage on public broadcaster NHK showed the Japan Airlines (JAL) Airbus A350 aircraft bursting into flames as it skidded down the tarmac at around 0900 GMT.

It was later overwhelmed by the blaze despite feverish efforts by rescue crews to control the fire.

But not before all 367 passengers and 12 crew were evacuated.

"I felt a boom like we had hit something and jerked upward the moment we landed," a passenger on the JAL flight told Kyodo news agency. "I saw sparks outside the window and the cabin filled with gas and smoke."

The television footage showed flames coming out of windows and the plane's nose on the ground as rescue workers sprayed it.

There was also burning debris on the runway.

More than 70 fire engines were being deployed, NHK reported.

Japan has not suffered a serious commercial aviation accident in decades.

Its worst ever was in 1985, when a JAL jumbo jet flying from Tokyo to Osaka crashed in the central Gunma region, killing 520 passengers and crew.

That disaster was one of the world's deadliest plane crashes involving a single flight.

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Source: TRT