Inside a burning plane, 367 passengers had a few minutes to escape: here’s how they did it

It was 18 minutes of terror, confusion and determination to make it out alive.

The fire spread to the rear of the plane and smoke filled the cabin. The 367 passengers begin to realize: they only have a few minutes to save themselves from a fiery death. A child shouted, “Please open the door!” »

Joseph Hayashi, 28, occupied seat 27B and was returning from a ski vacation in northern Japan.

“People were trying to get away from airplane engines because they were afraid they would explode,” said Hayashi, who is originally from Dallas and works in finance in Tokyo. “I’m not a scientist, but I know that fire and jet fuel are not a good recipe. “Everyone was trying to move forward.”

During tests, aircraft manufacturers must demonstrate that they can evacuate a plane in 90 seconds. Real life is generally more difficult.

During those 18 minutes between 5:47 p.m. and 6:05 p.m. Tuesday at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, several things went wrong. It took several minutes to open the doors of the Japan Airlines plane. The sound system was not working. Most of the exhaust pipes were not available.

But a lot of things also went well. Once the doors opened, the passengers calmed down and followed instructions. The airline said it was prepared to stop people from trying to carry bulky carry-on bags – an irritating human instinct that has plagued previous evacuations – and was not aware of anyone who would do so . Although the rear of the Airbus A350 was on fire, the fire did not spread to the interior of the plane until a few minutes later.

These minutes were a salvation. The 367 passengers, as well as the 12 crew members, managed to get to safety, without serious injuries, apart from a few sprains and bruises.

Japan Airlines spokesperson Yasuo Numahata said of the successful evacuation: “We believe this is the result of training and retraining of knowledge every year. »

Flight JL516 was uneventful until landing. The nearly full plane was flying one of the world’s busiest air routes, from Sapporo, in northern Japan, to Tokyo. Most of the passengers were Japanese returning to the capital after visiting relatives over the New Year holiday. Some were tourists like Hayashi and a group of travelers from Hong Kong.

The airline said the pilot received clearance to land from air traffic control and repeated the clearance to the controller. Hayashi felt a tire hit the ground.

“I was like, ‘Okay, soft landing, great.’ And then literally the next moment there was a big collision and you heard a big bang,” he said.

The Japan Airlines plane is operated by a Japanese Coast Guard plane that is on the runway, loaded with food, water and other supplies for the Japan Coast region that is safe for a motorcycle. the day before.

A Department of Transportation official said in a briefing Wednesday that there was no record of the Coast Guard plane having been cleared to enter the runway, although the control tower had cleared it to wait at a holding point near the runway approximately two minutes before landing. collision.

After the collision, the Coast Guard plane exploded in a fireball, killing five of the six personnel on board. The plane’s captain was hospitalized after being injured and told hospital investigators that he entered the runway after receiving permission to do so, according to a guard official. -ribs. However, the Coast Guard also cannot find any record of such a permit, the Coast Guard official said.

JL516 was burning on the outside, but not yet on the inside. It was 5:47 p.m., according to the airline. The race for survival was on.

To operate worldwide, aircraft manufacturers must prove to regulators that passengers can evacuate a plane in 90 seconds. They perform tests under conditions intended to simulate real life. A typical demonstration is done with people of different ages and sizes who act as passengers, as well as life-size dolls that simulate babies. Half of the exits are blocked and blankets, pillows and bags are strewn across the hallways to create obstructions.

Tests often fail to replicate real-world accident conditions, said Ed Galea, a professor at the University of Greenwich in the United Kingdom who specializes in fire safety and evacuation analysis. As an example, he noted that the planes tested were at ground level, while the nose of the Japan Airlines plane was tilted downward, making it difficult for passengers to reach exits and exits. ‘use the slides.

Very few evacuations meet test conditions and can be completed in 90 seconds, Galea said. “It shows that it’s just absurd.”

Still, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said overall evacuation safety was high, crediting advances such as better emergency lighting and less flammable materials used inside planes.

Airlines and safety specialists have studied past evacuations to improve chances of survival. Bottom line: People’s instinct to retrieve their suitcases from the overhead compartment can be deadly.

The Japan Airlines plane taxied on the runway for some distance before coming to a stop. The main lights went out.

“Everyone was screaming from the first impact, and then everything got eerily quiet because everyone was confused,” Hayashi said. The passenger next to him seemed to know the emergency procedures. “She started yelling, ‘Put your head down, keep your seat belts on, stay in your seat,'” he said.

Hayashi estimated that it took between three and five minutes for the doors to open.

Japan Airlines said it took some time to open the doors because flight attendants first needed confirmation from the pilot that the plane had come to a complete stop and had to check whether it was possible to evacuate safely.

Ultimately, the airline said, only three of the eight slides were used because there was a fire outside the other doors and it would not have been safe to open them. The flight attendants opened both front doors – one on the right side and one on the left side of the plane – after communicating with the pilot.

A flight attendant opened an additional left-rear door without the pilot’s permission because a communications system failure made checking impossible, the airline said.

“The passengers shouted at the flight attendants to open the doors. It was chaotic,” Hayashi said. “It wasn’t like we were pushing each other hard, but it was the first time I saw Japanese people pushing each other.”

The public address system was not working, so some flight attendants used emergency megaphones or simply had to shout, Japan Airlines said.

“Some people were trying to get their stuff back, but obviously if you do that, you’re holding everyone back,” Hayashi said. “People were like, ‘What are you doing?’ These things don’t matter.

The doors finally opened. Japan Airlines reported that its flight attendants asked people to leave their belongings behind and remove sharp heels that could break the evacuation slides.

Hayashi said he initially stayed in his seat, following the instructions of his apparently well-trained seatmate. “But then the fire outside starts to intensify and I look at the lady,” he recalled, suggesting that perhaps it was time to disembark. She has accepted.

“I got up, put on my coat and everyone started running forward,” Hayashi said. He made his way to safety and escaped the plane, then watched for the next 10 minutes as those behind him followed him toward the main exits.

Hiroshi Kaneko, a 67-year-old philosophy professor returning from visiting his mother, said he heard flight attendants warning people not to bring luggage. Kaneko, in the tenth row, picked up a small backpack containing his valuables from under the seat in front of him, but left a large bag and slid down the right front slide.

As Hayashi and others ran down the runway toward the terminal, they noticed another plane burning on the tarmac. Not realizing they had collided with a Coast Guard plane, they wondered what the other fire was, but had no time to investigate, he said.

By 6:05 p.m., the evacuation was complete and everyone was safe, Japan Airlines said.

A few minutes later, the plane was ravaged by flames which left it charred the next morning. It was the first Airbus A350 completely destroyed since it entered service ten years ago.

Kaneko, the teacher, said the passengers around him did not panic and that he became even more frightened when he got home and saw the images on television. In retrospect, he said, the delay at the gate made sense. “It takes time to make sure doors are secure and it’s dangerous to open a door with a flame,” he said.

As the evacuation took place, Hayashi said, “There’s only smoke and you don’t know what’s happening.” Back at the terminal, “we learned that five people had died on the other plane. When we were in the airport waiting room, we started to feel uncomfortable.

There, Hayashi took stock by eating a salmon-stuffed rice ball known as onigiri that was handed to him by the staff. He was without keys and should be staying with a friend. He lost a suitcase full of clothes, including two favorite pairs of sweatpants, as well as his laptop and GoPro. They were all replaceable. At that point, none of them meant anything.

“It was the best onigiri I have ever eaten in my life,” Hayashi said.