This is CNN breaking news.
And we are following more breaking news
out of Tokyo this morning.
And Japan Airlines
passenger jet
with nearly 400 people on board.
See it landing there
with a fireball on its wing
collided with the Japan Coast Guard
aircraft on its way
to help with earthquake relief efforts.
Japan's public broadcaster
now reporting
five crew members on that Coast
Guard plane had been killed.
The captain is in critical condition now.
Video shows the commercial plane
igniting into a fireball
barreling down the runway this morning.
The airline says nearly everyone from
that flight was safely evacuated.
Japan's public broadcaster
says 17 passengers were injured
and this was the panicked scene
inside the plane
as smoke filled
the cabin and passengers
scrambled to find a way out.
CNN's Will Ripley joins us
live from Tokyo.
And Will,
I just want to talk about the crew.
Actually,
we'll get to the evacuation efforts,
but the crew who died
they were on their way to help.
Correct. Can you give us more
Yes.
This side,
Haneda Airport is right
in the heart of Tokyo, about 20 minutes
from where I'm standing right now.
And there's also a Coast
Guard base nearby.
The whole airport actually sits
right on the bay.
It's a beautiful approach
when you fly in there.
It's probably my favorite airport
when I fly in to Tokyo.
My cameraman, John,
flew in there
just a few hours before this happened.
But in this case, this
this Coast Guard aircraft
somehow ended up on the same runway
as this.
Japan Airlines
jet was flying in a packed plane
coming from the tourist
hotspot of Sapporo in northern Japan.
And these two planes
had an incredibly fiery collision.
We know that according to NHK, Japan's
national broadcaster,
five crew members were killed.
The captain was able to escape,
but he is currently being held,
are currently on life support.
I've also lost
my IFB signal,
so let's not ask a follow up question
until I get reconnected.
But but what we know is that this
this Coast Guard plane
was headed to assist
with the earthquake relief
efforts, that
within hours of the new year,
there was a 7.5 magnitude quake
that rocked to the central western
coast of Japan.
I know we're going to talk more
about that in a moment.
There's the number of dead
in the dozens right now.
But what is truly extraordinary
is that what could have been
a horrific mass
casualty situation was was averted
because in a matter of seconds,
despite the fact that passengers
say the rear and middle exits of this
aircraft were damaged in this collision,
there was a fire rapidly
engulfing the plane.
And yet everybody 367 passengers, eight
children under the age of two, included
on the passenger list.
So a lot of parents there,
you know,
clutching onto their young babies.
And these 12 crew members,
they all were able to make it off
of that aircraft safely.
All right.
Will Ripley, we do have follow up
questions we're going to ask you
when you're plugged
back in over the course
the next hour
as we keep an eye on the breaking news
from on the ground.
In the meantime,
former FAA
safety inspector and CNN Safety analyst
David Soucie is here.
So first,
walk us through
what happens in an emergency situation
like this on the runway,
because there was not a mass
casualty event, event right.
Essentially, this is when things go well.
It's truly miraculous in the fact
that there were two exits
actually blocked and not able to be used.
Really, really made this miraculous event
to be able to get everybody off of there.
So what happens at this point
is everybody
they deployed the slides
so that everybody could get out quickly
and it really is amazing that
that many people got out of there
so quickly.
They they
you channel out,
you go to your nearest exit,
as they always tell you
when you get on the airplane,
look for your nearest exit.
It may be behind you.
This is what they did.
They were aware.
They were they were conscious.
They were ready for any kind of accident.
And this crew is amazing
that they got everybody out of there.
So quickly
by just channeling them through the
through through the aisles.
There's already smoke.
If you can visualize this, there's
smoke in the cabin at the time.
There may be fire going on at the time.
People are
getting out these exits
and jumping onto the slides
and coming out to the out to the ramp.
And then once they clear that,
they have to get away.
So this is all an incredibly
urgent situation.
And to have someone be it
to be
able to manage it, a crew
to be able to manage it
and get them all out of there safely
is really testament to the work
that they did
to prepare for this type of tragedy.
David, to that point,
there is preparation,
then there's action
and the former you can do
whatever you want in the lead
up to the ladder is what really matters.
And when you look at the pictures
from the landing
where the wing was clearly on fire
to just how quickly the entire flame
or the entire plane was engulfed
you see it there.
It's was cracked and half the flames
crawling up the windows.
How much of a time when
did they have here
It's it's seconds.
I mean,
it just within about 2 minutes,
everybody was up and out of their seats
and starting to exit.
Here's the issue with this.
And the reason that it came
so quickly
is the fact that it was
a solid enough hit,
a collision
that not only the tip of the wing head,
but the structure of the spa.
The main wing spa is correct.
You can tell that that happened
because the fuel cells go through there
and the connections to the fuel cells
are in the fuselage
of the aircraft underneath
where people are setting.
So when that hit
and it pulled that wing back,
it obviously ruptured some fuel cells
or at least some fuel attachments,
and that started pouring
fuel into the area.
Combine that with some winds
that were going on at the time, too.
And that can spread the fire
much more rapidly.
So we are talking about
just seconds to be able
to react, to be able to get out of there.
Leave your personal belongings
behind
and get out of that airplane
as quickly as possible.
David, as a safety inspector,
former safety inspector,
can you talk about
what are the next steps
in terms of an investigation?
What are the things that people will
start to look at?
Well, there's
some things that you can jump
to conclusions about.
And we want to make sure
as an investigator, you don't do that.
We need to look first at what happened.
And it's too early to assign
blame to anybody or anything like that.
But what we can conclude
is that we know that the Coast Guard was
was heading out to
to provide relief
to the earthquake victims.
We know that they were in a hurry
to get out and do that.
They were moving.
The if you look at how busy
that airport is,
that's a very, very active airport.
There's a lot of moving pieces
and we talk about this a lot.
In the United States,
we've had a really large increase
in the number of near-misses
and runway incursions such as this one.
What we haven't had a fatality.
We haven't had anything like this one
so far in the United States.
But the FAA has started a panel
to investigate
these types of incidents
where I would start
with this investigation first
is the communications,
the communications between
who said what to whom.
And as you know,
there's been a lot in the United States.
One of them
most recently
was where the
air traffic controller had said,
go ahead and go on to runway 17 left
or I don't know exactly which one it was.
And when the pilot
repeated that back to confirm,
he said something different, like 17.
Right.
And the air
traffic controller was busy,
fatigued, had worked several shifts
and then
said that
it didn't recognize the fact
that he didn't get the message properly.
And then that airplane taxied
on to an active live runway
where there was an airplane landing.
So these types of communications
are something
that's under close scrutiny right now
with the FAA in the United States
and also in Europe.
And Japan.
We have to really
look at how this is happening
as these airports get busier
and busier and busier.
You still have a human being
trying to figure out
what I call the fourth dimension.
It's not only where the airplanes are,
but where will they be
if they make a mistake
or if they even if they do
what they're supposed to do,
where will they be in the future?
And do those times
intersect with each other?
And so it's an
extremely difficult job, and
I would hope that it improves.
We really have a lot of efforts
going forward to improve that
over the next year or two
with the FAA at least,
and in the international community.
David, thanks for this insight.