One Of Aviation’s Biggest Challenges Played Out On A Tokyo Runway

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- This week’s dramatic plane accident in Tokyo, which claimed five lives, encapsulates decades of progress in air safety. It also highlights one of the biggest outstanding risks in aviation. Authorities across the globe are aware of the need to prevent runway incursions — lessons from this crash may bring us a step closer to eliminating them.

Early on Tuesday evening, a Japan Airlines Co. Airbus SE A350-900 landing at Haneda Airport’s runway 34R struck a much smaller De Havilland Canada Dash 8 turboprop on the ground, killing five Japanese Coast Guard crew. As soon as the two aircraft touched, flight and cabin crews were racing against the clock. The jet was already in flames before the pilots could bring flight FL516 to a halt. Broken landing gear and damaged engines made stopping the 200-tonne aircraft even harder — both are used to slow down once a plane hits the tarmac.

Such an accident should never have happened. Preliminary information indicates the Dash 8 may have also been on the runway, likely in preparation for takeoff en route to provide supplies to northwest Japan, struck by an earthquake on Monday.

Japanese officials said Tuesday evening they were investigating the cause of the incident and how it could have been prevented. The transport ministry’s safety board will seek to determine whether any miscommunication occurred in the air-traffic control operation, with NHK reporting that the smaller plane was ordered to hold short of the runway while the larger aircraft was given permission to land.

If the Coast Guard plane went onto the tarmac, it would be an example of a dangerous, albeit common occurrence, called a runway incursion. On most occasions it passes without a problem and is labeled an aviation  an event that happened with no impact. Sometimes, though, they result in , with a collision or damage. Accidents get reported to authorities while incidents may not — so it’s hard to track the scale of the problem globally. 

Data from the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization indicates that almost 60% of all accidents are related to runway safety, well ahead of loss of control in flight, which was present in around 30% (an event can have more than one cause).

Of greatest concern is that the level of runway incursions has remained stable over the past decade, at a rate of just under five per day in the US, instead of dropping in line with improved broader aviation safety. Among the nearly 16,000 runway incursions recorded by the Federal Aviation Administration over the past decade, 63% occurred due to pilot deviation — meaning the pilot broke federal aviation rules, such as crossing a runway without clearance. Actions by air-traffic control were the second-biggest cause, accounting for 18%. 

“The most dangerous incursions, the closest calls, appear to be on the rise,” Jennifer Homendy, Chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told a conference on runway safety in May. Among recent incidents she recalled was one in February last year. A cargo plane aborted a landing in Austin, Texas, when the pilot saw a passenger jet with 131 people on board in its path on the ground ahead. The two aircraft got within 115 feet of each other.

That near miss is eerily similar to what happened in Tokyo.

Every air crash is the result of human error — whether it be by a pilot operating the plane, ground staff performing maintenance, air-traffic control mistakes, or bad design. Rather than assign blame, investigators seek to find causes in order to provide recommendations that improve operations. A key tenet of aviation safety holds that those who make mistakes rarely face criminal charges, a tactic aimed at ensuring all personnel cooperate honestly. 

This principle almost certainly saved the lives of JL516's 379 passengers and crew. The need to quickly evacuate an aircraft has been known for six decades. In the 1960s, the FAA recognized that fire can quickly reach a flashover point — where the temperature inside the cabin gets so hot as to instantly ignite — and cut the time required to evacuate a plane from two minutes to 90 seconds.  

Lessons from a British Airtours flight in 1985, in which 55 people died because passengers didn’t exit in time, included numerous recommendations. Among them: better crew training, cabin design to ensure improved visibility, fire-hardening of a plane’s hull, and the ability to evacuate in the required time even when only half the exits are available. This last factor was on display in the darkness of a Tokyo winter when passengers could be seen sliding out of the Airbus even as the right engine continued to emit sparks, making an exit over the wing and rear of the aircraft unsafe.

While airlines need to be able to evacuate within 90 seconds, safety regulations require that an aircraft can burn for five minutes before the structure breaks down. This week’s crash is the first hull loss for an A350, which eschews a traditional aluminum body for carbon-fiber composites. Investigators will examine data from the fire to see whether this requirement was met, and update recommendations accordingly.

As authorities piece together why two aircraft were put on a collision course, they’ll provide the global aviation community with more data upon which to build better safety standards, including preventing runway incursions, one of the biggest challenges. Initiatives already underway include introduction of technologies such as a better ground monitoring radar, new and clearer signs and lighting on taxiways, and alert systems similar to those currently used to prevent mid-air collisions.

Aviation accidents rarely occur because of just one error. Lessons learned from JL516 will help us whittle away the mistakes on the path to safer flying.

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Tim Culpan is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology in Asia. Previously, he was a technology reporter for Bloomberg News.

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