A Japan Airlines Airbus A350 (JAL Flight 516) plane with 379 passengers and crew was engulfed in flames at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on January 2, Tuesday.
The smaller plane collided with the passenger jet shortly after it landed at Tokyo’s Haneda airport.
The coast guard plane collided shortly after landing.
A JAL spokesperson said its aircraft had departed from Shin-Chitose airport on the northern island of Hokkaido.
Japan’s Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito informed that all the passengers and crew of the Airbus escaped the blaze, however, five out of the six crew of the coast guard aircraft died, while the captain escaped.
According to the sources, the smaller coast guard plane was headed to Niigata airport on Japan’s west coast to deliver aid to those caught up in a powerful earthquake that struck on New Year’s Day.
Haneda, one of Tokyo’s two main airports, has closed all runways following the incident, a spokesperson for the airport said.
Meanwhile, a series of powerful earthquakes that hit western Japan prefecture Ishikawa claimed at least 48 lives on New Year’s Day.
Over dozens of people injured and damaged of physical properties including roads could not immediately be assessed, said Government spokesperson Yoshimasa Hayashi.
Rescue teams are struggling to reach isolated areas where buildings had been toppled, roads wrecked and power cut to tens of thousands of homes.
Aftershocks continued to shake Ishikawa prefecture and nearby areas a day after a magnitude 7.6 temblor slammed the area on Monday afternoon.
Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said 1,000 Japanese military personnel were dispatched to the disaster zones to join rescue efforts.
Japan is frequently hit by earthquakes.
Japanese media reports said tens of thousands of homes were destroyed.
Although casualty numbers continued to climb gradually, the immediate rescue efforts quickly followed from firefighters, police and the military.
Japanese media aerial footage showed widespread damage in the hardest-hit spots, with landslides burying roads, boats tossed in the waters and a major fire that had turned an entire section of Wajima city to ashes.
The 2011 quake and tsunami caused three reactors to melt and release large amounts of radiation at a nuclear plant in northeastern Japan.
On Monday, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a major tsunami warning for Ishikawa and lower-level tsunami warnings or advisories for the rest of the western coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu, as well as for the northern island of Hokkaido.
Bullet trains in the region were halted. Sections of highways were closed.
