Major earthquake in Japan & plane collision

Accorging the news the earthquakes have been hitting almost every 5-15 minutes in Ishikawa, the area close to epicenter.

What is sad is back in 2011 when we had the huge earthquake in Tohoku, Twitter was so useful to communicate about where to find foods/shelters, what you can donate and where. Now X has the restrictions about how many posts you can do and your post asking help gets lots of useless replies by those who just want to earn "clicks."
 
New years is when most of us Japanese head back home to spend time with family and friends. Kanazawa is also a huge tourist attraction. Earthquake alerts are ringing continuously. I'm on the other side of Japan, but still felt the first big quake (Jan.1 16:00)
Thank god it was not snowing, though it's freezing there.
As of now (9:04), another big quake. Praying it stops as soon as possible.
 
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30 people confirmed dead although that toll is likely to rise.

www3.nhk.or.jp

Casualties rising after massive quake on Sea of Japan coast | NHK WORLD-JAPAN News

Rescue operations are still underway after a deadly earthquake struck Ishikawa Prefecture, in central Japan, on New Year's Day. At least 30 people are confirmed dead in Ishikawa Prefecture, but that number could still rise further as many more are still trapped under collapsed buildings. Japan's...
www3.nhk.or.jp www3.nhk.or.jp

I lived in Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture on my year abroad. Was just talking about going back for a visit and hope to do so once the recovery is done. :)
 
And now there has been a collision between a coast guard plane and a JAL flight at Haneda airport. The JAL plane caught fire but apparently all the passengers and crew got off. The crew of the coast guard plane may not have been so lucky. The coast guard plane was apparently heading to deliver supplies to earthquake-hit regions. :(

EDIT: Some reporting on Twitter that while all 379 passengers and crew got off the JAL plane, 5 of the 6 coast guard crew have died :(
 
MINAM said:
New years is when most of us Japanese head back home to spend time with family and friends. Kanazawa is also a huge tourist attraction. Earthquake alerts are ringing continuously. I'm in the other east side, but the felt the first big quake (Jan.1 16:00)
Thank god it was not snowing, though it's freezing there.
As of now (9:04), another big quake. Praying it stops as soon as possible.
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Stay safe. You are in our thoughts
 
What a terrible start to the year in Japan. A miracle that all the passengers and crew on the JAL plane escaped alive. Just goes to show how important emergency training is in situations like this. The plane was evacuated in 90 seconds.
 
For those who follow Jackie Wong (rockerskating) - he has been in Japan for a few days and was on a plane at the Haneda Airport that was supposed to take off about 30 minutes after the collision happened. He was returning to the US. He reports on X (formerly Twitter) that the deplaning of all the planes waiting to take off was handled very efficiently, even if it took some time. Once inside the airport everyone had to go through immigration and retrieve luggage - that part only took him 15 minutes. He is now re-booked on a flight tomorrow. They are apparently giving re-booking priority to international flights.
 
allezfred said:
What a terrible start to the year in Japan. A miracle that all the passengers and crew on the JAL plane escaped alive. Just goes to show how important emergency training is in situations like this. The plane was evacuated in 90 seconds.
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Yes. I was watching the news with my mouth open. The live broadcast showed the plane crashing and catching fire. Within a few minutes, the whole plane was in flames.

Sadly, the aircraft that the plane crashed into, only had one survivor. He's in critical condition. The other five couldn't make it. It was an earthquake relief aircraft for Niigata!

Although all the passengers escaped the plane, around 17 are injured. :(
 
allezfred said:
What a terrible start to the year in Japan. A miracle that all the passengers and crew on the JAL plane escaped alive. Just goes to show how important emergency training is in situations like this. The plane was evacuated in 90 seconds.
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The fact that they got everyone off, with that amount of fire - and I saw some of the pictures of the plane, it wasn't exactly in one piece either - is absolutely remarkable, and if nothing else, a testament to the high standard of crew training for JAL.
 
misskarne said:
The fact that they got everyone off, with that amount of fire - and I saw some of the pictures of the plane, it wasn't exactly in one piece either - is absolutely remarkable, and if nothing else, a testament to the high standard of crew training for JAL.
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I just saw a news article talking about how a lot of it was due to all passengers following instructions - leaving all bags behind. Apparently all planes should be able to completely disembark in 90 seconds with only 50% of exits in use in an emergency.
 
leilaofpaper said:
I just saw a news article talking about how a lot of it was due to all passengers following instructions - leaving all bags behind. Apparently all planes should be able to completely disembark in 90 seconds with only 50% of exits in use in an emergency.
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Yes, I've just seen that, too. There are a lot of comments on social media remarking that this must be cultural, because in recent years there have been several runway evacuations delayed and poorly executed because of people insisting they take their carry-on bags with them off the plane. That British Airways one in Vegas is a prime example - some people were getting off that plane with two or three bags even as it burned!
 
I remember my sister-in-law’s brother being in Japan during an earthquake. I can’t remember what year it was but thankfully he was in his hotel room and we found out very fast. I don’t think it was awful though. He’s a photographer so took a lot of pics but not just of the earthquake.
 
Judy said:
I remember my sister-in-law’s brother being in Japan during an earthquake. I can’t remember what year it was but thankfully he was in his hotel room and we found out very fast. I don’t think it was awful though. He’s a photographer so took a lot of pics but not just of the earthquake.
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Not to downplay your sister-in-law's brother's experience, but earthquakes are really frequent in Japan. Thankfully most of them are small enough. I lost count of the number of times I experienced them when I lived there. When the big ones hit though, no matter how prepared you are they are really terrifying.
 
allezfred said:
Not to downplay your sister-in-law's brother's experience, but earthquakes are really frequent in Japan. Thankfully most of them are small enough. I lost count of the number of times I experienced them when I lived there. When the big ones hit though, no matter how prepared you are they are really terrifying.
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Yes Japan has frequent earthquakes. This one wasn’t small as it did some sufficient damage. Big earthquakes are definitely ?.
 
Early transcripts from ATC are not looking good for the Coast Guard pilot: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01...ion-to-land-coast-guard-not-cleared/103283704

If the pilot is really insisting he had takeoff clearance, and these transcripts are accurate, I'm not sure how he can insist that. There is simply no world in which "hold at C1" is "cleared for takeoff" or could be confused as such.

An interesting point too about the possibility of conflict where there is both a JTSB investigation and a police investigation. Hopefully the two agencies can do this without conflict.
 
misskarne said:
Early transcripts from ATC are not looking good for the Coast Guard pilot: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01...ion-to-land-coast-guard-not-cleared/103283704

If the pilot is really insisting he had takeoff clearance, and these transcripts are accurate, I'm not sure how he can insist that. There is simply no world in which "hold at C1" is "cleared for takeoff" or could be confused as such.

An interesting point too about the possibility of conflict where there is both a JTSB investigation and a police investigation. Hopefully the two agencies can do this without conflict.
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Unless the JTSB works much differently than similar organizations elsewhere, their deeper focus will be figuring out what led up to this accident, what worked/didn't work from a survivability standpoint, and, most importantly, what steps manufacturers, airlines, ATC, airport management, and emergency response should take to make these kinds of accidents less frequent and more survivable. Telling pilots to listen to tower instructions is unlikely to do much to prevent future runway incursions. This is a very busy airport. There are likely different radio frequencies and people providing directions for ramp, ground, departure, and arrivals. It was night. Was the hold line well-marked? Should red lights at the hold line provide a visual signal that it is unsafe to proceed? Did the Coast Guard flight believe/assume that they had priority since they were an emergency responder rushing to a disaster? Were they rushed on preparation for departure and let the task work overload them? On the JAL plane, there was apparently some difficulty in getting doors open. Why? The comm system didn't work in the passenger cabin. Why? Should there have been an alert in the JAL cockpit to advise the pilots that the runway was not clear?

It was a tragedy. It will be more of a tragedy if we don't learn from this accident in ways that help prevent future accidents.
 
Excellent synopsis @barbk I’ll throw in that there are known blind spots in the Dash 8 and it’s extraordinarily difficult to see where pavement marking are. My pilot friend says that they typically have to guesstimate the stop line by rolling up to it, just as we drivers guesstimate the stop line at an intersection.
 
I saw a report that said the lights where the coast guard pilot were instructed to stop at had stopped working on the 27th December.
 
barbk said:
There are likely different radio frequencies and people providing directions for ramp, ground, departure, and arrivals.

...

Did the Coast Guard flight believe/assume that they had priority since they were an emergency responder rushing to a disaster?
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As far as I know, there is no overlapping communication when it comes to communication with air traffic control. Each plane has their call sign by which it is addressed, in Frankfurt/Main there are different frequencies for the north and south runway and I believe, planes are told the frequency on which to communicate. If there is a lot of traffic, one air traffic controller is responsible for one runway, another for another runway and a third is responsible for air plane ground traffic between terminal and runway. (There is a German TV series about how Frankfurt/Main operates which is incredibly interesting and fascinating (if that kind of thing interests you, of course)).
If there were overlapping communication then it is the pilot's responsibility to double check. A pilot cannot, under any circumstances, do anything because he believes that this was said.

That goes for the second point as well. A pilot can never believe or assume anything that wasn't specifically stated. It's double check and triple check when it comes to flying because when accidents happen, they tend to be catastrophic. So, if the pilot did, indeed do anything based on assumption or believe then it would be on the pilot.
 
ballettmaus said:
As far as I know, there is no overlapping communication when it comes to communication with air traffic control. Each plane has their call sign by which it is addressed, in Frankfurt/Main there are different frequencies for the north and south runway and I believe, planes are told the frequency on which to communicate. If there is a lot of traffic, one air traffic controller is responsible for one runway, another for another runway and a third is responsible for air plane ground traffic between terminal and runway. (There is a German TV series about how Frankfurt/Main operates which is incredibly interesting and fascinating (if that kind of thing interests you, of course)).
If there were overlapping communication then it is the pilot's responsibility to double check. A pilot cannot, under any circumstances, do anything because he believes that this was said.

That goes for the second point as well. A pilot can never believe or assume anything that wasn't specifically stated. It's double check and triple check when it comes to flying because when accidents happen, they tend to be catastrophic. So, if the pilot did, indeed do anything based on assumption or believe then it would be on the pilot.
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Here's the thing: when we declare that an accident is due to pilot error, crew error, or controller error and assume that telling people to be more careful somehow works...we get surprised because it doesn't actually do much, at least in the longer term. Cars didn't have brake lights for quite a while. Lots of rear-end crashes. Brake lights implemented. Fewer crashes. Dole light (the brake light in the back window of cars) added...still fewer crashes. Seat belts required...fewer ejections. Shoulder belts added...fewer injuries. All that had way more effect than simply telling drivers to be more careful and follow the rules of the road.

I see the same issue with software. When lots of people make the same mistake...it is a design flaw, not a stupidity problem. Until this year, there was a freaking large green CONTINUE button below the section where you add an activity to the college Common Application. A much smaller, less prominent button said "Add Another Activity." Over the years, I observed hundreds of kids make the same mistake and hit the Continue button when what they really wanted was to Add Another Activity. After many complaints from counselors, they finally adjusted that this year, and wow - many fewer problems. The wording was not wrong on the original version, but the cueing was quite wrong. You can blame kids for not reading carefully, or you can recognize that the system was not set up in a manner that supported correct usage. I find the latter approach a lot more successful on the problem-solving front.
 
barbk said:
Here's the thing: when we declare that an accident is due to pilot error, crew error, or controller error and assume that telling people to be more careful somehow works...we get surprised because it doesn't actually do much, at least in the longer term.
Click to expand...
Well, we agree on that.

I just think that if it turns out that what we know now is true then there is little that can be done. At the moment, it looks like the cockpit either misunderstood and didn't double check (which they should have been doing) or acted on an assumption which is also something pilots shouldn't do. In other words, it looks like they didn't follow protocol and/or training and given the many safety measures and protocols that are already in place, other than put even more emphasis on what wasn't followed and/or add yet another training session, what can you do about it?

Human error is human error and no machine in the world can do anything about it.

The weird thing is that (in commercial planes (in Germany) at least), both pilots listen to the radio conversation. And again in commercial planes in Germany, it's the pilot who doesn't actively fly the plane who communicates with air traffic control. So, shouldn't one of the pilots have caught the "hold"? And if there was interference, wouldn't one of them have double checked?

I guess, we'll have to wait for the results of the investigation but with what I know about how communication in the cockpit works (in Germany), I wonder if either the transcript is truly correct or if it may have been mechanical failure after all and, for whatever reason, something other than what was said was transmitted to the pilots.
 
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