KUALA LUMPUR – All AirAsia X flights bound for Haneda Airport are operating as scheduled.
“All of AirAsia X’s flights to and from Japan are operating as scheduled,” an AirAsia spokesman said briefly.
Checks on the AirAsia website also confirmed that there were at least four AirAsia X flights scheduled to depart for Haneda Airport today.
It was reported earlier that airlines were forced to cancel over 300 flights following the collision between a Japan Coast Guard aircraft and a Japan Airlines passenger plane at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport yesterday evening.
The crash forced the airport to shut down all runways for several hours yesterday, leading to the cancellation of 226 flights to and from Haneda, affecting over 40,000 passengers, Xinhua reported.
Despite the reopening of three runways today, about 100 flights are still expected to be scrubbed during the day, disrupting the travel plans of 19,000 passengers.
Japan Airlines (JAL) flight 516, an Airbus A350 that had flown from New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido Prefecture at around 6pm local time (5pm in Malaysia) yesterday, was landing on Haneda’s C-runway when the coastguard flight MA-722, a Bombardier Dash-8, collided with it, with both aircraft catching fire.
Television footage yesterday showed a large burst of fire erupting from the side of the JAL plane as it taxied on a runway.
The area around the wing then caught fire. The footage seen an hour later showed the blaze engulfing the aircraft.
Five of the six crew members aboard the coastguard plane were confirmed dead, while the captain, who managed to escape earlier, was severely injured.
The coastguard plane, which belongs to the Haneda Airport base, was taxiing on the runway to transport relief goods for quake-hit areas in Niigata Prefecture after a series of temblors of up to 7.6 in magnitude struck central Japan on Monday afternoon, according to coastguard spokesman Yoshinori Yanagishima.
Meanwhile, all 367 passengers and 12 crew members on board the JAL flight escaped from the plane while it was on fire without life-threatening injuries after the collision.
Meanwhile, Malaysia Airlines has confirmed that it does not operate flights to Haneda Airport.
“All MAS flights visible on the website are codeshare flights and are not operated by MAS,” a spokesperson said. – January 3, 2024