Japan announces progress of investigation into cause of plane crash earlier this year

According to a VNA reporter in Tokyo, the initial report on the investigation progress of the Japan Transportation Safety Board includes the content of the interrogation of the JCG pilot, the only survivor among the 6 crew members.

In which, the captain said, when receiving the command “No 1” (number 1) from the air traffic controller, this person understood it as “Enter the runway and wait. Take-off order is number 1”. However, the nature of the air traffic controller’s message from this command was “Stop the plane in front of the runway and wait”. This was the main cause of the serious accident.

Another reason is that when the JCG aircraft captain ordered a pre-takeoff safety check, which was carried out after permission to enter the runway, the first officer confirmed that “there was no problem”. The audio recording of the cockpit sounds at that time recorded that the captain and first officer had repeatedly discussed and confirmed this.

In addition, neither Japan Airlines nor the air traffic controllers received any information about the JCG aircraft's movements before the passenger plane landed. On the air traffic controllers' side, although one person saw the image of the JCG aircraft entering the runway on the screen before the accident and discussed it with the colleague in charge.

However, the content of the exchange between the two was unclear, leading to neither of them taking further warning actions. As for the Japan Airlines plane, because the anti-collision lights on the JCG plane were white, similar to other lights on the runway, both the captain and co-pilot had difficulty detecting the abnormal image before landing.

The collision between a Japan Airlines Airbus A350 and a JCG De Havilland Dash-8 occurred on the evening of January 2. All 379 passengers on the Japan Airlines plane were safely evacuated within 18 minutes of the plane landing and bursting into flames. However, five of the six crew members on the JCG plane were killed. The captain escaped the plane and was seriously injured.

Speaking at a press conference on January 25, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hayashi Yoshimasa said that this was only the preliminary investigation result and that the JTSB would continue to conduct further analysis on the cause of the accident to develop effective preventive measures. He also added that in the near future, the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism will develop a warning system for wrong runway movements at Japanese airports to ensure that similar incidents do not occur.