Safety Board Conducts Simulation Experiment of Haneda Collision
Tokyo, Dec. 25 (Jiji Press)--The Japan Transport Safety Board has conducted a simulation experiment as part of its investigation into a fatal aircraft collision accident that occurred on a runway at Tokyo's Haneda Airport last year, according to an interim investigation report released by the board on Thursday.
The experiment was conducted in March this year to verify the view from an aircraft attempting to land.
In the accident, which occurred at 5:47 p.m. on Jan. 2, 2024, a Japan Airlines passenger jet collided with a Japan Coast Guard aircraft when landing.
The interim report, the second of its kind, said that the board conducted the experiment at night without moonlight, as on the day of the accident, at Chubu Centrair International Airport in Aichi Prefecture, central Japan, which has a similar structure to Haneda Airport but sees less nighttime use, by placing a JCG aircraft identical to the one involved in the accident on the runway.
A flight inspection plane of the transport ministry and an experimental helicopter of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency photographed the JCG aircraft while performing multiple go-arounds, or aborted landings.
The JAL aircraft involved in the collision was a large Airbus A350 jet, but the experiment was conducted using the smaller aircraft that could get closer to the JCG aircraft.
In its first interim report released in December last year, the board said that the JAL plane could not recognize the JCG aircraft that had been stopped on the runway until just before the collision possibly because the lights of the JCG aircraft were white, the same color as those embedded in the runway.
The board said it conducted the large-scale simulation experiment to analyze the perceptions of the captain and other crew members of the JAL plane.
The board will undertake detailed analyses of exchanges among the crew members of the JCG aircraft before the accident and the operational structure at Haneda Airport's air traffic control tower. The final report is to be released after the board holds a hearing session to solicit opinions from academic experts, but the timing of the release remains undetermined.
In the accident, five of the JCG aircraft's six crew members died, with the captain being the only survivor. All 379 passengers and crew members of the JAL plane, which was engulfed in flames after the collision, evacuated, although 17 of them were injured.
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