Explosion, burning smell and smoke. The “hell” of survivors of the collision between two planes in Tokyo – Observer

Uchida was sitting in a window seat on the Japan Airlines Airbus A350 that landed at Tokyo International Airport this Tuesday. As soon as the plane landed on the runway, the passenger, aged around 40, from Chiba prefecture, heard what sounded like an explosion, she told the JapanTimes newspaper. But she ignored it, thinking the landing had been successful. However, her mood changed in a fraction of a second. When she looked out the window, she realized that the aircraft was on fire. “I thought it was the end. I thought I was going to die.”

In the same position as Uchida were 366 other passengers, who had left New Chitose Airport, in Hokkaido, heading to the Japanese capital this Tuesday afternoon (dawn in Lisbon). When the Airbus A350 landed at Tokyo’s main airport, it collided with another aircraft, a Bombardier Dash-8 from the Japanese Coast Guard, which was destined for the city of Niigata, to which it was carrying humanitarian aid for the victims of the earthquake, which shook that city. locality on Monday.

Airbus, the aircraft manufacturer, and the Japanese government are investigating what caused this accident. For now, the answers are still few. On Rádio Observador, the former TAP commander, José Correia Guedes, considered this collision “abnormal”, pointing to the hypothesis of “human error”.

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