Japan on Thursday marked one year since a fatal collision at Tokyo's Haneda airport between a Japan Airlines jetliner landing on a runway and a coast guard plane that erroneously entered the runway.
The collision on the evening of Jan. 2 killed five of the six people aboard the Japan Coast Guard's Bombardier DHC-8-300, while all 379 people aboard the JAL Airbus A350 escaped despite flames engulfing the plane.
The coast guard aircraft was heading to Niigata Prefecture to deliver relief supplies for people hit by the magnitude-7.6 earthquake that struck the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture and surrounding areas on the Sea of Japan coast the previous day.
Flight voice recordings from the coast guard plane released last month showed that its crew likely erroneously believed their aircraft was allowed to enter the runway when it was hit by the jetliner.
The Japan Transport Safety Board said in its report that the airport traffic controller was focused on monitoring the JAL plane that was set to land on the runway and was unaware of the erroneous entry into the runway by the coast guard plane.
The crew of the JAL jetliner could not visually confirm the presence of the coast guard plane on the runway before touchdown. Not only were the lights of the plane and the runway both white, but the accident occurred after sunset with little to no moonlight, according to the report.
