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HOW 379 PEOPLE ESCAPED FIERY JAPAN AIRLINES PLANE CRASH


FOLLOWING FLIGHT ATTENDANTS’ INSTRUCTIONS AND LEAVING BAGS BEHIND WERE CRITICAL,
EXPERTS SAY

By Victoria Bisset
, 
Helier Cheung
and 
Naomi Schanen
January 3, 2024 at 12:26 p.m. EST
Passenger on Japan Airlines flight: 'I was scared to death'
1:29

Passengers on the Japan Airlines plane that went up in flames at Tokyo’s Haneda
Airport on Jan. 2, recalled how they survived the incident. (Video: The
Washington Post)

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A Japan Airlines passenger jet and a coast guard plane collided on an airport
runway in Tokyo on Tuesday, killing five of the six people on board the coast
guard aircraft. The Airbus A350 went up in flames. But all 379 people on board,
including 12 crew members, were able to escape — with one passenger describing
it as a “miracle.”



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Japanese officials are still investigating the cause of the incident, but flight
safety experts say the role of the flight crew, improvements in plane safety
designs and — crucially — the way the passengers reacted would all have been key
to helping them evacuate safely.

“I think the crew did a fabulous job,” Ed Galea, a professor and leader of the
Fire Safety Engineering Group at London’s University of Greenwich, said in an
interview Wednesday. He noted that the crew members were operating under
particularly difficult conditions because the plane was nose-down on the tarmac,
meaning that passengers leaving from the rear probably had to walk up a steep
angle, while those using the front exits were walking down a slope.

Japan Airlines plane crash kills 5 coast guard crew, as 367 passengers escape

Yet the evacuation was completed within 20 minutes of the plane landing and
catching fire, according to Japan Airlines’ managing executive officer.

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A flight attendant for an international airline headquartered in Asia, speaking
on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the
media, described the incident as a “model for a perfect evacuation.”

Having both “well-trained crew and well-behaved passengers” is essential to
successfully evacuating an aircraft in an emergency situation, he said.

Eyewitnesses described experienced flight attendants directing relatively calm
passengers. “When the plane stopped, in less than one minute, the cabin was full
of smoke,” Aruto Iwama told Reuters news agency. “There was screaming, but most
people were calm and stayed in their seats, sitting and waiting. I think that’s
why we were able to escape so smoothly.”

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Another passenger, Satoshi Yamake, told Reuters that “the flight attendants told
us to stay calm and instructed us to get off the plane.” Just 10 to 15 minutes
after the passengers had moved away from the plane, he said, the whole aircraft
was engulfed in flames.

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“I heard an explosion about 10 minutes after we all got off the plane. I don’t
think we would have made it if we evacuated later,” said Tsubasa Sawada, 28,
according to Reuters. “All I can say is that it was a miracle.”

The fact it was a domestic Japanese flight may have made the evacuation process
simpler, the flight attendant told The Washington Post; most of the passengers
would have shared the same language, making it easy to understand and comply
with instructions. Japanese passengers are also likely to be well-trained for
hazard and evacuation because of the preparation for natural disasters common in
the country. An Australian official told Sky News Australia there were about a
dozen of that country’s citizens on the commercial flight as well.

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“It is absolutely not common for passengers to comply with instructions, though
some countries do better than some of the others, mostly based on … their sense
of crisis awareness,” the flight attendant said.

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But flight safety experts say a “really significant” factor that helped the
evacuation is relevant to passengers from all countries — the fact that people
appeared to have left without taking their luggage.

In most accidents, especially those in Europe and the United States, Galea said,
passengers try to take their luggage with them. In footage of this flight, Galea
said, “I didn’t see a single person with their luggage, not a single person.”

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Aviation safety consultant Adrian Young said most passengers reflexively reach
for their bags as soon as they land. But this would delay other passengers’
escape by valuable seconds.

A Japan Airlines jet caught fire Jan. 2 after colliding with a coast guard plane
at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. Eyewitness video shows what happened inside. (Video:
Reuters)

From the available footage, Galea said, it also appears that only some of the
cabin doors were opened, indicating that the flight crew took the key step of
ensuring there was no fire around the exits that passengers were using, as was
the case in a 1985 plane disaster in Britain that claimed the lives of 55
people.

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One clip appeared to show a crew member at the back of the aircraft, which was
dark and full of smoke, using a flashlight to direct passengers to the exit. The
cabin crew members are “highly trained professionals,” Galea said. “The primary
purpose for [their] being on the aircraft is not to serve your drinks. It’s to
help you evacuate. It’s for safety.”

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A major aspect of the evacuation’s success would have been the annual training
on safety measures that airlines around the world give to their crews.

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“It appears to be an absolute textbook evacuation,” Young said.

Another key factor, Galea and Young agreed, is improvements in plane designs,
and particularly the composite materials used in A350 and other modern planes.

Galea said such materials are generally able to “maintain their strength during
a fire.” The Japan Airlines aircraft was created with composite materials, he
said, which “probably gave the passengers a bit of extra time before the fire
burned through the fuselage.”

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Young said that technologies in modern aircrafts are also likely to “produce
smoke later or less smoke” after a fire.

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“That’s really significant when we look at the old accident databases, where we
see that people died inside the cabin of smoke inhalation — or they were
incapacitated by smoke and never got to the door,” he said.

And the location of the crash — on a flat airport runway — meant that the
aircraft was less likely to break up and cause further injuries or deaths.

So what is the lesson for people flying on planes?

Apart from urging passengers to leave bags behind, Galea advises them to pay
attention to the in-flight safety notices — research has shown that even
frequent fliers may not be aware of what to do in an emergency — and to count
the number of seats to the nearest exits, both front and back, in case of
reduced visibility.

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He advises passengers to wear shoes during takeoff and landing in case they have
to evacuate through debris. And budget airlines should ensure that families are
able to sit together so that they can evacuate together and not waste time
looking for their loved ones, he argues.

DOT calls out airlines that don’t guarantee free family seating

Once outside, it’s important to move away from the plane — not just because it
might explode, but also because of the extremely harmful fumes and microscopic
particles that planes may produce.

But, as Galea noted, crashes are “very, very rare events” — and, in most cases,
people on board will survive. A National Transportation Safety Board
investigation of records for accidents on U.S. flights from 1983 through 2000
found that 95.7 percent of occupants survived.

correction

A previous version of this article incorrectly attributed to Ed Galea an
assertion that composite materials produce less smoke. That assertion was made
by Adrian Young. The article has been corrected.


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