That's why the Airbus passengers were rescued

An Airbus with almost 380 people on board catches fire and everyone can be rescued without life-threatening injuries. Experts worldwide agree that the rescue operation at Tokyo's Haneda Airport was a masterpiece. But how was it possible?

All that remains of the Japan Airlines Airbus A350, which collided with a Coast Guard plane on Tuesday when it landed at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, is a black skeleton with wings and a rear tail unit. This makes it all the more incredible that all 379 people on board were able to leave the plane without life-threatening injuries. Five of the six people in the Coast Guard plane, however, lost their lives.

Even experts are amazed that there were no casualties after such a devastating fire. It was probably a chain of fortunate circumstances that saved the lives of the people on board. In an interview with ntv.de, Benjamin Denes from the podcast Flugforensik attributes this success above all to the flight attendants. "In the case of Japan Airlines, we had an excellently trained crew," says Denes.

Aviation expert Heinrich Großbongardt had previously made similar comments. He said in the ntv interview that the crew deserved great praise. "It shows everyone how important the cabin crew is. They are not just there to serve drinks, they are a very important element in the flight safety chain."

Exemplary error culture

Denes attributes the crew's exceptional performance to the crash of flight Japan Airlines 123 in 1985. The plane crashed on a flight from Tokyo to Osaka, killing 520 of the 524 people on board. Subsequent investigations revealed that a Boeing technician had incorrectly repaired a pressure bulkhead in the tail. The airline then went into "a kind of self-cleaning process and meticulously investigated everything, including what role it had played and whether it was partly to blame".

The result is a "Safety Promotion Center" at the headquarters of Japan Airlines. Parts of the wreck have been on display there since 2005, and the stories of the crew and passengers are also told. All new employees have to go through this Safety Promotion Center. According to Denes, the thorough investigation of the crash and the self-critical attitude have ensured that Japan Airlines has never had another fatal air accident since the 1985 crash, which was the worst in aviation history with only one aircraft involved.

Graham Braithwaite, Professor of Safety and Accident Investigation at Cranfield University in the UK, told US broadcaster CNN that Japan Airlines still has "a very strict culture in terms of standard operating procedures and the proper execution of all work". This is one of the reasons why the crew did such a good job in this case.

Presence of mind and discipline

The best way to gauge how good this work was is to look at the footage from inside the aircraft. Bright firelight can be seen through the cabin windows, while the interior of the cabin is filled with increasingly thick smoke. Although the collision on the runway was completely unexpected, even for the crew, the flight attendants reacted with great presence of mind. This was despite the fact that two additional factors made the evacuation more difficult. According to media reports, the sound system in the aircraft had failed as a result of the collision, and not all emergency exits were available due to the damage to the aircraft.

The crew solved the problem of not being able to make loudspeaker announcements with megaphone announcements. "This is an example of a quick response," says Denes. "The aircraft is equipped accordingly, there are enough megaphones in a wide-body jet for almost 380 passengers." Announcements were made to direct the people on board to the remaining three emergency slides. And according to aviation safety experts worldwide, they also made a decisive contribution to their rescue. Because they followed the instructions and therefore left all their luggage behind.

According to Benjamin Denes, even disregarding these rules can have fatal consequences. For example, going down the emergency slide with cabin luggage slows down the rescue operation. "Secondly, it can simply block the sometimes small emergency exits." An emergency slide is also very steep, often resulting in broken bones and other injuries. If you also have luggage with you, the risk of injury increases significantly. On top of that, the slide could be damaged by the luggage or by the frictional heat generated and, in the worst case, become unusable for the following passengers.

"Follow the safety instructions"

The crew members explain all this at the beginning of every flight during the briefing on the safety systems. Not all passengers pay attention to these explanations. Denes believes this is a mistake. "It's more often a case of passengers being supposedly cool or arrogant and not listening." Perhaps they have already internalized the information on how to undo their seatbelts on previous flights. "But memorizing the position of the emergency exits is particularly important at a time like this. We all know the announcement: remember, the nearest emergency exit could be behind you." The lighting system on the floor, which shows you the way if the cabin lighting fails or in a dark cabin, was also essential for orientation in the smoke-filled cabin and in the survival situation. "That's why it's so important to listen."

Denes also mentions considerate and prudent behavior on the part of everyone involved. "Staying calm in a difficult situation where panic could break out, not shouting, not pushing ahead, trying to help children, older and weaker people in particular with the rescue." On the day of the accident, the predominantly Japanese passengers may have benefited from socialization on other means of transport in the country. Disciplined queues of people regularly form on subway trains and subways, enabling passengers to board and alight effectively. This behavior, "which should be common sense", enabled good interaction between crew and passengers and saved valuable seconds while the fire spread rapidly.

In this context, Denes refers to an incident in May 2019, when an Aeroflot superjet also caught fire on landing at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport. "Back then, 41 people died, partly because the evacuation didn't go so well because people took their luggage with them and blocked the emergency exits. Unfortunately, it doesn't take much for a fire like that to have fatal consequences."

Unanswered questions for the air accident investigation

At Haneda Airport, the aircraft involved in the accident was ablaze but did not explode. Sonya Brown, a lecturer in aerospace design at the University of New South Wales' Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, attributes this in her initial assessment to the high proportion of flame-retardant carbon fiber-reinforced polymers used in the A350. Aviation engineers are using these carbon fiber composites to an ever greater extent in order to reduce weight and increase efficiency, Brown told the British Guardian.

Denes also suspects that the significantly lower proportion of aluminum and other metals could have contributed to the fact that "it took longer for the fuselage to really burn out". However, the air accident investigation would have to be awaited before any reliable conclusions could be drawn. The same also applies to speculations that it could have been luck that the plane reached its destination in Tokyo and thus used up most of the kerosene.

Aviation expert Großbongardt suspects that it will be a few months before it is possible to say exactly what happened and why. All that is certain so far is that January 2, 2024 will go down in Japan Airlines' history as the day when learning from past mistakes proved to be the best training for the next emergency.