A miracle': 379 passengers and crew escape jet inferno after collision on Tokyo runway leaves five dead

All crew and passengers onboard a Japan Airlines jet managed to make what has been described as a "miracle" escape after a horrific collision on a runway at Haneda airport in Tokyo that killed five crew members of a coastguard plane.

- Daniel Boffey

JAL flight 516, an Airbus A350-900, was engulfed in flames soon after landing as it struck the smaller coastguard aircraft, which was waiting to deliver aid to the earthquake-hit Noto peninsula.

Once the captain of the commercialjet managed to bring the burning aircraft to a stop, its 367 passengers, including eight children, plus 12 crew fled the plane's smoke-filled cabin by sliding down inflatable slides at its front.

The jet was soon entirely engulfed by fire, with flames seen licking out of the cabin's windows. The Tokyo fire department said 14 of those evacuated from the passenger plane suffered minor injuries including burns to the throat. Four were taken to hospital.

Five of the six people onboard the coastguard plane, a De Havilland Canada DHC-8, commonly known as the Dash 8, were killed in the collision but its captain managed to escape the inferno with injuries.

Shigenori Hiraoka, the head of the transport ministry's civil aviation bureau, said the collision had occurred when the passenger plane landed on runway C - one of the airport's four runways - from where the coastguard aircraft had also been preparing to take off.

Rodger Whitfield, a former commercial pilot, said: "I think first of all, you've got to say that we just witnessed a miracle. The way they got all those passengers off that aeroplane is almost beyond belief."

Passengers on the Japan Airlines jet, which had arrived at about 5.47pm local time from New Chitose airport on the northern island of Hokkaido, spoke of their terror after hearing the thud of the initial impact.