JAL A350 burns at Haneda Airport after collision on runway 15

[Sym P. le]

The shimmering at the nose wheel light of the Q300 is likely because of the extreme range of the video. The camera is approx 1.4 km from the incident. I've done a very tight crop of a 2560x1440 video. The flash on the last frame is the very first frame of the explosion. It gets much more intense by the next frame already. I cut it off there to avoid causing epileptic fits.

At that point, the A350 has completely overtaken the Q300.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

I suspect its also a frequency thing as well with the lighting V the video camera.

 

[Debirlfan]

I've been following this on pprune.org (airline pilots forum, you can read without being a member). A couple things I haven't seen mentioned here....

Theory is the jet wasn't completely on the ground when it hit the Dash, that rear landing gear had touched down, but nose was still high. Otherwise the Dash's tail would have wiped out the cockpit.

The JAL plane may have had a 'heads-up' display, which would make it even harder to spot the other plane on the runway.

Some airport equipment including the 'stop-bars' was out of service.

One thing I haven't heard discussed - apparently the Dash crew was assisting with the quake. I wonder how long they'd been on duty and if fatigue might have been a factor?

 

[LittleInch]

Sym p le, is that 17.46.41 part of the transcript?

And it went unanswered?

So the dash 8 sat there for 30 seconds before being demolished?

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[Sym P. le]

40 seconds.

It's not part of the transcript, I was just showing where the video detail slots into the data set.

I wanted to show more of the video however that short animation hits the 20MB limit. I came across the video by accident while trying to download a youtube video using an online service. They offered a higher resolution so I went for it. The video was different than the one I was trying to download.

As you can see from the clip, it is very clear. One only needs to establish which shimmering lights are relevant, and that took time. I'll try to do a GIF of the Q300 lining up on the runway. Stay tuned.

This is a screen grab from early in the video where you can see three large jets parading down the ramp to the C1 entrance. There are also three or four other jets moving about the apron and yet it is nearly impossible to find the Q300 even when I know where to look for it. The "Live Cam" suggests to me this is a public video and there may be more. The incident will be easy to study.

 

[Sym P. le]

The video is longer than I thought, which is good. Here is a 1:07 clip of the Q300 taxing to position on 34R, sped up 3.3X. It sits there for a full 40 seconds before the collision.

 

[EdStainless]

Sym, the overlay you provided shows the Dash-8 wings lining up nearly exactly with the notches in the A350 engine nacelles.

Many widebody planes have a flight attendant seated next to each emergency exit.
I am not sure about the seating layout JAL uses.
Investigating what to do about loss of cockpit communications will be a big issue out of this.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[Sym P. le]

I'm not sure how the A350 plowed through the Q300 but the marks on the nacelle are unmistakable.

The light posts and known end point suggest the following path of the Q300 taxing if I have the camera location correct. (I have the benefit of a crop that's not as tight)

Also, landing aircraft are aiming for the solid bars on the runway for main gear touch down. The A350 would practically put its nose down on the back of the Q300.

 

[LittleInch]

Pprune adds some interesting info, if rather long by now.

1) seems 34R was not used for landing as much as the other runway and hadn't been used as such for up to 30 minutes before the coastguard plane arrived.
2) The stop lights were U/S on that runway apparently (there was a NOTAM)
3) The coastguard bases is on the far side of the airport so thee was a lot of taxing to get there
4) As this was a rescue/emergency assistance flight there is a thought that being number 1 might have clouded the pilots judgement and he parked himself on the runway having misinterpreted the command.

It does seem rather bad that the plane could be sitting there for ~40 seconds without the tower or anyone else noticing.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[Sym P. le]

A link to the video I'm using - Youtube

 

[Sym P. le]

From PPRuNe

Impact area of horizontal stab marked:

By my estimation, the nose wheel of the A350 was in the order of seven feet from touch down upon impact with the Q300.

 

[Sym P. le]

It's nice to see the news paying attention - NHK World. They picked up on the "40 seconds" thing. They're a few hours late.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

The utterly amazing thing though is that the Captain of the Q300 walked away from it....

 

[dik]

Ya... he'll likely die from the horseshoes up his a**.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[MintJulep]

In these videos we can see that during the evacuation the fire was relatively minor.

https://youtu.be/x78i_TpTq0E?t=87

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYxDz5BVHz4

The "Captain" of the Coast Guard plane is reported as stating that he thought he had clearance to enter the runway. Typically, the other pilot would be working the radio. I wonder if there was miscommunication inside the cockpit.

 

[Sparweb]

MJ:
In your video at 2:18 there is a top-down view of the DHC-8 wreckage.

https://youtu.be/x78i_TpTq0E?t=138

It's amazing that anyone could have survived. The pilot must have been removed or thrown clear somehow before the flames consumed the hull. There are fewer details and no eyewitness video about the DHC-8.

 

[Murph 9000]

Juan Browne's update video, for perspective from a 777 pilot:

blancolirio - Haneda Collision UPDATE 4 Jan 2024

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

that isn't a minor fire which is why the hull keeping its integrity to allow the pax to get off I see as a resounding engineering success. And we are told that minor fires eg toilet bin or oven fire or phone/ipad in the cabin have a 7 min window to be dealt with. After that the stats show your life expectancy reduces to minutes.

You can see the engines still running. Which I am sure will be addressed by you engineers.

The dealing with clearances is a whole topic in TEM (threat error management) and CRM (crew resource management)

There is a philosophy and process. There is also a method of asking questions.

Basically it doesn't matter what you think you heard, unless both confirm that was the information received to be acted on then you didn't receive it. To clarify you don't ask using what you expect the answer to be. I just use "confirm clearance" the bad way is, "confirm, cleared to line up" because you have provided the answer which can be answered with just "affirm". You could also use "say again the clearance" but us brits get short and sweet hammered into us and busy radio two words are better than 4. And none native English speakers seem to have zero issues with confirm clearance in my experience. Other open question styles they do.

You can also use it when you suspect the controller has messed up.

 

[3DDave]

The primary fire during the evacuation was at the starboard/#1 engine and not at the fuselage. It took a while to get to the fuselage. I see this as an engineering failure in that the engines should have automatically operated the fire suppression bottles and shut down. I wonder if the a source of flammable material was putting the hydraulic pumps on the bottoms of the engines, like did all the damage to PIA 8303.

 

[Murph 9000]

I'd guess (without knowing the A350 in detail) the engines still running was probably a result of the avionics bay being obliterated, so no ability to control the engine FADEC modules. At least the failure mode is improved over the Tornado F3 FADECs, which would go to full engine power on loss of control power/signal.