A Japan Airlines plane carrying hundreds of passengers burst into flames on landing at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on Tuesday after it was in collision with another aircraft involved in earthquake relief efforts.
JAL flight 516 ignited after flying into Haneda from the northern Japanese city of Sapporo at 5:47 p.m. local time (3:47 a.m. ET)
All crew members and passengers, including eight children under the age of two, were safely evacuated from the passenger plane, according to the airline. One person on the Coast Guard plane escaped, but five are unaccounted for.
JAL is investigating the details and cause of the plane fire, a representative for the airline told CNN.
Footage showed the passenger jet moving and then igniting with a large fireball. The plane was then seen at a standstill with people using emergency slides to flee the inferno as firefighters tried to battle the growing flames.
The Japan Coast Guard (JCG) confirms to CNN that one of its aircraft, likely a fixed-wing MA722, collided with commercial flight 516 on the runway.
A JCG spokesman told CNN that the JCG aircraft was headed from Haneda airport to a JCG airbase in Niigata prefecture to help with relief efforts following a 7.5-magnitude earthquake on Monday.
Japan Airlines flight 516 took off from Sapporo’s New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido prefecture to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, according to NHK.
According to NHK, there were approximately 400 passengers and crew on board the plane.
CNN is reaching out to officials to confirm more details.
According to the flight tracking site, FlightAware, the flight was an Airbus A350-900.
— CutC by cnn.com
