Coast Guard aircraft ordered to hold short of runway
Coast Guard aircraft ordered to hold short of runway
NHK has learned that an air traffic controller at Tokyo's Haneda Airport had given permission for a Japan Airlines passenger jet to land on a runway before it collided with a Japan Coast Guard plane on Tuesday evening.
Knew it pretty much had to be this or the controller forgetting they had cleared a jet onto the runway (Los Angeles runway disaster). Less likely the incoming jet landing on the wrong one.
Controller error would maybe be easier to determine a full root cause, very sad for everyone on the coast guard aircraft though.
The Live ATC archive sounds like the controller said "taxi to holding position Charlie 5". With no explicit "hold short runway 34R" there no transcripts yet, and we don't know what the coast guard confirmation response was to the command, but the tower command seems ambiguous at best. It's pretty hard to pick out but the tower call is at about 15:10 in this archive https://archive.liveatc.net/rjtt/RJTT-Twr-TCA-Jan-02-2024-0830Z.mp3
The official transcript was shared in a press conference:
[ATC] JA722A Tokyo Tower. Good evening. No.1, taxi to holding point C-5.
[JA722A] Taxi to holding point C-5, JA722A No.1. Thank you.
I've put together a detailed write-up here.
I couldn’t make sense of anything in that recording, but if you’re right about the tower call, then that sounds a lot more like “taxi into position and hold” than “taxi and hold short of runway.”
It's actually pretty impressive that there weren't more lives lost. The whole situation sucks and should've been avoided, but once it happened, I'm surprised it was "just" five
It's a testament to safety standards in new planes. The A350 has tons of fire safety implemented and I believe is actually one of the first ones to have this amount of safeguards against fires spreading quickly.
Yeah only the Coasties lost anyone, surprised all passengers made it off of the air bus with the way that fireball went up.