A runway collision caused a Japan Airlines (JAL) plane to catch fire at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. The reasons still puzzle aviation experts, but rescue and evacuation without failures were directly qualified as ““wonderful”, according to some.

All 379 passengers and crew escaped from the Airbus A350. Flight JAL516 took off from Sapporo after it exploded in a fireball after colliding with a smaller coast guard aircraft shortly after landing. Five of the six crew members on the Coast Guard ship were killed.

Satoshi Yamake, 59, was returning to the capital, where he works in telecommunications, after visiting relatives in his hometown.

As the wheels skidded across the asphalt, his thoughts returned to being reunited with his wife Mika before a crash and crash shocked him and made him turn around to see a burning engine in front of the window.

A collision occurred almost immediately after landing at 17:46 local time (08:46 GMT), the airline said.

The captain received permission to land, but it is likely that he did not see the Dash-8 maritime patrol aircraft Coast Guard, smaller and made by Bombardier, which sat below, airline executives said at an evening news conference.

Authorities are investigating the circumstances of the crash, which aviation experts say are highly unusual.

The aviation sector has been able to dramatically reduce the number of accidents caused by collisions or runway incursions with the advent of better procedures and ground monitoring.

As the passenger plane came to a stop, the captain of the coast guard plane, Genki Miyamoto, 39, emerged from the wreckage and radioed his base.

“The plane exploded on the runway. I’m running away. The condition of the remaining crew members is unknown, he said, according to the Coast Guard. The remaining five crew members, ranging in age from 27 to 56 years old, were killed.

“It was a miracle”

The cabin of the airliner quickly began to fill with smoke, with some anxious passengers running up and down the aisles and others clinging to screaming children.

“Please get me out of here,” the woman screamed from the plane in video provided to Reuters. “Why don’t you open (the doors)?” – the child shouted.

“I really thought I was going to die” said Tsubasa Sawada, 28, who was returning from a vacation to Sapporo with his girlfriend. “After the accident happened, I laughed a little at first when I saw the sparks (from the engine), but when the fire started, I realized there was more to it.”

Flight attendants appeared to urge people to remain calm, saying “please cooperate” According to a video provided by Reuters.

Outside, 115 fire crews were dispatched to the scene to extinguish the fire, which started at the rear of the aircraft and eventually engulfed the entire aircraft in a fireball.

Yamake, who was sitting in front, said that although some passengers were very nervous, the crew quickly deployed evacuation parachutes and people began to disembark in an organized manner.

The airline said the evacuation began almost immediately after the plane grounded and that all passengers were brought to safety in less than 20 minutes.

Video images showed passengers are evacuated calmly, obviously no carry-on luggage. Air safety agencies have warned for years that stops to collect carry-on luggage put lives at risk during evacuations.

“The crew must have done a great job. There seemed to be no carry-on luggage. It was a miracle that all the passengers got out.“Said Paul Hayes, director of aviation safety at UK aviation consultancy Ascend by Cirium.