Officials have confirmed that 12 Australians were aboard the JAL plane that crashed into a Japanese coast guard plane at Tokyo’s airport. All of the 379 people on board the aircraft got out safely.
Saito said that the coast guard’s pilot was able to escape the crash. However, the five crew members of the plane died.
Penny Wong, the Foreign Minister of Australia, confirmed that there were 12 passengers and five crew members aboard the plane. Her office has dispatched officials to check on them.
According to Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister of Australia, the 12 passengers and five crew members of the plane were safe and accounted for.
The incident was the first time that an Airbus A350, which is one of the newest and most modern large passenger aircraft in the industry, has been severely damaged.
According to the transport minister, JAL’s A350 had taken off from the Shin Chitose airport in Sapporo.
The coast guard’s Dash-8 aircraft, which is based in Haneda, was on its way to deliver emergency supplies to the residents of Niigata Prefecture following an earthquake that killed many people.
The Dash-8 is commonly used for short-haul flights and commuter flights. According to a coast guard official, the plane’s pilot reported that the collision caused the aircraft to explode.
Five people on board the plane were reportedly killed. The incident occurred shortly after JAL’s plane had landed on one of the airport’s runways.
Investigators from the transport safety agency were examining the communication between the control tower and the two aircraft to determine what caused the collision.
Michelle Robson, an Australian former air traffic controller, said that the coast guard plane was not allowed to enter the runway prior to the collision.
According to her, the traffic control tower instructed the coast guard plane to hold back from the runway as it entered the runway.
Usually, air traffic controllers can see the two airplanes out of the tower using binoculars. However, during the time of the incident, they were only able to see the two planes at night.
Additional safety features were added to the coast guard’s aircraft, such as a surface movement radar.
However, it’s not clear if the radar was activated when the plane collided with the passenger plane. Some aviation experts also believe that the plane was not equipped with the necessary technology.
According to Robson, without a radar, an air traffic controller would have a hard time seeing the planes on their radar.
However, she noted that additional measures should be taken to prevent such accidents from happening in the future.
These include the use of runway incursion tools and surface movement radars.