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Published January 13, 2024, 8:00 am ET
The charred wreckage of a Japanese Coast Guard plane that collided with JAL Flight 516 in Tokyo, killing five crew members aboard the smaller plane but leaving all JAL passengers alive. AFP via Getty Images
The collision of two planes on a runway at Japan's Haneda International Airport last week was hailed as a true miracle. The crash between Japan Airlines (JAL) Flight 516 and a Japanese Coast Guard plane – and subsequent explosion – attracted global attention as it was shared on social media.
But the real headline was how few deaths there were in a tragedy of spectacular proportions.
Only five crew members of the Coast Guard propeller plane were killed, and another was critically injured. But all 379 passengers and crew aboard the JAL plane managed to survive, stunning both aviation experts and a stunned general public.
While luck – divine or otherwise – was clearly on the planes' side, the fact that so many escaped unscathed can actually be attributed to far more down-to-earth considerations. In fact, the crash of Flight 516 a generation ago would almost certainly have resulted in a mass fatality disaster – like the 1977 runway collision between two jets in the Canary Islands, which killed 583 people.
But as the accident in Japan clearly shows, accidents are not only far rarer today, they are also far more survivable than ever before.
In the immediate aftermath of the JAL disaster, the flight's cabin crew were rightly praised for overseeing a quick and orderly evacuation when the plane burst into flames. And this under the most extreme conditions and despite some setbacks that could easily have led to death.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the plane's exit doors did not open properly, many emergency slides were broken and the intercom system did not work properly. Flight attendants rolled with the punches and shouted instructions to passengers with old-fashioned megaphones. Barely 18 minutes after the chaos began, all passengers had been evacuated from the JAL plane, shaken but alive.
The JAL A350 burst into flames after colliding with a smaller aircraft. Thanks to Airbus' next-generation composite construction, no one was killed on the larger A350 aircraft. JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images
Aside from the crew's commendable promptness, the disaster also validated the aviation industry's decades-long investment in next-generation materials and technologies designed to save both money and lives. According to a 2020 MIT study, commercial air travel is almost 20 times safer today than it was four decades ago. According to MIT, aviation-related deaths fell from one per 350,000 passengers between 1968 and 1977 to just one per 7.9 million between 2008 and 2017.
There hasn't been a major traffic accident in the United States since 2009, when a Colgan Air plane crashed into a home near Buffalo, killing 50 people. And aside from the 2018 and 2019 Boeing 737 Max tragedies in Indonesia and Ethiopia (which claimed a total of 346 lives), fatal accidents are equally rare worldwide. The data is even more impressive considering that, according to the International Energy Agency, the total annual number of global passengers rose from just under 2 billion in 2000 to nearly 5 billion just before the pandemic.
The JAL aircraft was an Airbus 350, built largely from composite materials instead of old-fashioned steel, aluminum and other metal alloys. Portal
The most important factor in making air travel so safe – and accidents so survivable – is advances in the construction of new aircraft. Airlines are retiring aging aircraft like the Airbus A380 and Boeing 777, which have been used for decades for profitable long-haul flights. In their place are newer, more efficient jets such as Boeing's 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A350-900, the plane involved in the Tokyo collision.
These are known as carbon composite jets, named after their main construction material. Unlike older aircraft that are made of aluminum, steel and other alloys, composite aircraft are made of carbon fiber bonded with adhesives such as epoxy. Composites weigh less than traditional aircraft metals but are just as strong and durable.
“Carbon composites in aircraft are significantly stronger [than aluminum] from a technical perspective,” says Professor Shawn Pruchnicki. Ohio State University
The use of composite materials has been hailed as a “game changer” by aviation industry website Simple Flying, and it’s easy to see why when it comes to safety. Conventional metal materials can begin to decompose at as little as 600 degrees Celsius. However, composite materials are far more heat-resistant and can often withstand temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees Celsius.
“Carbon composites in aircraft are significantly stronger [than aluminum] from a technical perspective,” explains Professor Shawn Pruchnicki, an aviation safety expert at the Center for Aviation Studies at Ohio State University. “At the conventional burning temperatures of kerosene, aluminum melts. This way the hull is breached sooner.”
Along with fewer flames, slower burn times in accidents also mean far less toxic cabin smoke, says Henry Harteveldt, an aviation analyst at Atmosphere Research Group. And that also helps keep passengers alive.
The flight crew undergoes extensive training – like this one in Indonesia in 2023 – in order to safely rescue passengers from burning aircraft within just a few minutes. AFP via Getty Images
On the A350, more than 50% of the entire aircraft is made of composite materials – from the fuselage to the wings and tail. This makes the aircraft about 20% lighter than if it were made from conventional metals, meaning it uses less fuel. The question is how well these composite aircraft would hold up in a fire.
The Japan Airlines collision provides some much-needed answers. In fact, the Tokyo tragedy is the first time one of these modern carbon composite aircraft has burst into flames. Aviation experts say the fuselage withstood the inferno well and gave passengers valuable escape time.
“The aircraft seemed to have really maintained its integrity after the collision and helped prevent the fire from breaking out as quickly,” says Pruchnicki. Exactly how well the plane performed during the crash is still being determined as investigators search the wreckage in Japan.
“We didn’t see a single picture [from the Japan crash] This showed a passenger with his carry-on luggage after getting off the plane,” said Anthony Brickhouse, a professor of aerospace safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
In addition to these slower-burning (and smoke-producing) composites, Harteveldt says safety improvements have also been implemented from nose to tail. Passenger seats can now withstand much greater impacts – up to 16 g, according to Boeing, compared to the previously legally required 9 g. Newer aircraft like the A350, Harteveldt continued, have clearer exit signage and improved ground path lighting – all designed to make emergency evacuations smoother.
Beyond aircraft construction, key safety improvements focused on crew preparation and training. In the early days of commercial aviation, trained nurses were hired as flight attendants. But as air travel became more ubiquitous, the profession shifted from issues of care and comfort to passenger safety. Most major airlines require a two-month training period to qualify as a flight attendant, with an emphasis on handling accident simulations.
The door that fell off an Alaska Airlines flight this month was later found in Portland, Oregon. via Portal
“Cabin crew [also] Attend safety training twice a year [and]…their ability to safely evacuate aircraft under various conditions,” says Harteveldt. These additional efforts are supported by additional training procedures known as CRM – or Cockpit Resource Management/Crew Resource Management – that emerged after the devastating collision in the Canary Islands.
CRM is designed to formalize and streamline communication between all crew members to reduce the possibility of human error, which accounts for more than 20% of all accidents. Most importantly, adds Harteveldt, CRM flattens onboard hierarchies so that every crew member – regardless of rank – is equally empowered to “make unilateral decisions based on the best available knowledge they are processing.” (Decisions like using a megaphone to evacuate passengers, as a flight attendant on Flight 516 did when the plane's PA system failed.)
Newer aircraft like the A350 have clearer exit signage and improved ground path lighting, according to aviation analyst Harteveldt – all designed to make emergency evacuations smoother.
What also helped keep casualties to a minimum in Tokyo last week, along with the crew – and those composites – is that the passengers did what they were told. Unlike previous runway disasters, for example, “we didn’t see a single image [from the Japan crash] This showed a passenger with his carry-on luggage after getting off the plane,” said Anthony Brickhouse, a professor of aerospace safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
This was not always the case. In 2013, passengers on an Asiana Airlines flight that crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport exited the plane with their carry-on luggage. Others who had already fled actually tried to return to retrieve their belongings.
During an Emirates Airlines crash landing at Dubai Airport in 2016, passengers wasted time retrieving luggage from overhead bins, blocking aisles and disrupting evacuation procedures. And many of the 41 deaths in a 2019 Aeroflot crash in Moscow were later attributed to passengers searching for personal belongings. “God is their judge,” declared a Moscow survivor after reports of luggage thefts.
A composite element of an A350 fuselage under construction in France. AFP via Getty Images
Aviation analysts say the rise in checked baggage fees has led to more carry-on luggage and more passengers reaching for their luggage rather than heading for an escape route. A massive increase in “air rage” incidents since the start of the pandemic — including a 50% increase last year — has also made it harder for flight attendants to fully focus on passenger safety.
For example, Harteveldt says airlines should continue to invest in their flight crews to protect them as the first line of defense in the event of accidents or mishaps. Meanwhile, starting in late 2022, new FAA regulations will increase mandatory flight attendant rest time to at least 10 hours between shifts.
A look inside the Alaska Airlines plane, whose door panel flew off mid-flight in early January. NTSB/AFP via Getty Images
While new aircraft designs and improved crew training continue to make air travel safer, the industry still must address factors such as the assembly error or design flaw that likely caused a door to crash on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-Max 9 on Jan. 5 jumped away. The airline has temporarily canceled all flights using the jet model while the FAA launched an investigation into quality control measures at Boeing's factory on Thursday.
The FAA investigation could take months, and the entire debacle has already caused Boeing's stock price to fall 10%. Still, every airline — not just Alaska — knows that the only way to further improve safety procedures is to examine exactly when and how they failed before.
A scene from the Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco in 2013. Although almost all passengers survived, a few unwise souls decided to return to the burning plane to retrieve their carry-on luggage. Portal
“It may seem fatalistic, but airlines examine everything from an aircraft's structure to cabin materials to crew training with the question, 'What could go wrong?'” mindset,” Hartevedt says. “But they actually want to know what can go wrong so they can do their best to prevent it from happening again.”
Journalist Mike Avila focuses on travel and aviation and has written for CBS, NBC, ABC and The Points Guy.
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