STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images
- A passenger plane and a Japanese Coast Guard aircraft collided at Tokyo's Haneda Airport.
- An expert explained how all 379 people on board escaped, despite the plane bursting into flames.
- Plane safety features and Japan's stringent training rules were key to averting disaster.
The terrifying footage of a Japan Airlines flight catching fire before landing at Tokyo's Haneda Airport has left the world aghast.
Remarkably, all 379 people on board survived after the Airbus A350 collided with a Japanese Coast Guard aircraft while trying to land.
Graham Braithwaite, an expert on flight safety at Cranfield University in the UK, told Business Insider that the design of the plane and high levels of staff training at the airline were likely key to averting disaster.
90 seconds to escape
Japan Airlines Flight 516 caught fire when landing in Tokyo's Haneda airport on Tuesday night after colliding with a coast guard plane that was on its way to provide earthquake disaster relief.
Dramatic footage from inside the plane showed it filling with smoke as passengers evacuated, and news network video showed passengers going down an inflatable slide and running from the plane as flames engulfed the engine.
Shortly after, the plane was consumed by fire despite the efforts of firefighters to battle the blaze.
Braithwaite said that under safety rules aircraft designers have to show that a plane can be evacuated in only 90 seconds with only 50% of exits available if there's an accident.
But, he said, this doesn't account for the panic that sweeps a plane after an incident such as Tuesday's, and the extra time vulnerable passengers, such as children and older people, need getting to safety.
"Bear in mind that such tests do not take place in a high-stress environment (like today's accident)," he remarked of the 90-second rule.
Under the circumstances, he said, the performance of the plane's crew in evacuating passengers was impressive, with no fatalities recorded and only 17 passengers suffering minor injuries.
Five of those on board the Coast Guard plane were killed, and one person was seriously injured.
Aviation-security expert Jeffrey Price called it a "miracle" that everyone on the Japan Airlines flight was safely evacuated.
"It speaks not only to the extraordinary actions of the crew, but also of the passengers themselves to be able to get that many people off a plane that quickly before it was completely engulfed in flames," Price, an aviation professor at Colorado's Metropolitan State University of Denver, told Business Insider.
"What's more of a miracle is the passengers keeping their wits about them and not panicking, which only leads to more chaos and loss of life," he said.
Price said that although there are aircraft rescue and firefighting units at airports, it could take up to three minutes or more before emergency responders make it on the scene.
"It takes about 90 seconds for a fire to burn through the fuselage of an aircraft," he said. "Based on those numbers, passengers and flight crew are pretty much on their own for the first one to two-plus minutes of an emergency before help could possibly arrive."
"This is an example of a plane evacuation gone well," Price added.
He said the successful evacuation "also speaks to the durability of modern aircraft, and how well designed they are."
How the aircraft's design helped
Jeff Greenberg
A fire on board a plane has long been considered among the biggest threats to a plane's safety, with aircraft powered by highly combustible fuel and a range of highly flammable materials on board.
Braithwaite explained that plane cabins, such as that of the Airbus A350 involved in Tuesday's accident, were designed with special materials to stop fire spreading rapidly and poisonous fumes being generated.
The 1985 Manchester Airport disaster, in which 55 people were killed when a British Airtours flight caught fire when taking off, had prompted a rethink of aircraft safety, he said.
Planes now are designed so that emergency exits are easily accessible wherever you're seated, and lights indicate their location in poor visibility conditions, such as when smoke spreads.
But luck also plays a part.
Factors such as whether the aircraft fuselage was damaged in the accident, or the role played by firefighters in battling the flames likely bought passengers precious minutes as they made their escape, said Braithwaite.
A 2002 study found that pilots have around 17 minutes to land a plane safely if a fire is detected on board, so the fact that the passenger plane was already landing when Tuesday's accident happened was an important factor in enabling people time to get out.
Japan Airlines' rethink on safety
Braithwaite said that Japan Airlines has long had an "excellent" approach to passenger safety.
"Their dedication to improving safety is deep rooted in the organization and they have a very strong culture of following standard operation procedures," he explained.
STR
The worst single aircraft disaster in aviation history, when a Japan Airlines flight crashed into a mountain near Tokyo in 1985 killing 520 people, had prompted an intense focus on passenger safety at the company, he said.
He said that all staff at the company had to visit a special air safety center at the airline's HQ, where they're taught the potential consequences of things going wrong, and how much work needs to go into getting passenger safety right.
"I think that the culture within JAL will have made a tremendous difference to the outcome of this tragic event," he explained.