A possible reason why a Coast Guard relief aircraft collided with a passenger plane at Tokyo's Haneda Airport has been revealed.
Japanese authorities released the transcript of the horrific accident on Wednesday. It is said that the Haneda airport authorities allowed the Japan Airlines passenger plane to land. But even then the small Coast Guard plane was not allowed to fly. Instead it was told to move to a holding point next to the runway.
After the collision, both aircraft caught fire, but all 379 passengers of the Japan Airlines Airbus A350 miraculously survived. A few were injured but none of them are life threatening. Aviation experts believe that due to the luck of the passengers and the skill of the cabin crew, a major loss of life was avoided that day.
But the occupants of the Coast Guard's tiny turboprop de Havilland Dash-8 were not so lucky. Five of the six passengers were killed on the spot. Its captain somehow managed to get out alive, but was seriously injured. The Coast Guard aircraft was carrying relief to victims of the powerful earthquake that struck central Japan a day earlier.