First came the crash: the Airbus A350 carrying 379 people collided with another aircraft while landing in Tokyo.
Then came the heat and smoke as the plane taxied down the runway in flames.
Survival instinct kicked in and people rushed to flee the smoke-filled cabin, knowing that their lives depended on the next few seconds.
That all the passengers on Japan Airlines Flight 516 escaped is remarkable, which experts attribute to a flawless evacuation and new technology.
Those aboard the second plane, a smaller Coast Guard aircraft that was to bring aid to victims of the New Year’s Day earthquake, were not so lucky: 5 people died and the pilot was seriously injured.
“It was hell.”
Investigators are reconstructing what happened at 17:47 local time (8:47 GMT) on Tuesday at Haneda airport and why two planes coincided on the runway.
For now, the videos and statements of the passengers speak of a few minutes of terror and then disbelief at what they experienced.
One of them, 17-year-old Swede Anton Deibe, described the chaos after the impact.
“The whole cabin was filled with smoke within minutes,” he told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
“The smoke in the cabin affected us tremendously. It was hell,” he added. “We dropped to the ground. Then the emergency doors opened and we threw ourselves on them.”
“We had no idea where we were going, so we just ran out onto the runway. It was chaos,” he explained.
He, his parents and sister managed to escape unharmed from the debris.
Satoshi Yamake, a 59-year-old passenger, claimed to have felt the plane had “tilted to one side” and noticed “a big bump” in the initial collision.
Another anonymous passenger described a “thump, as if the plane hit something on landing. I saw a spark outside the window and the cabin filled with smoke.”
A third reported to the Kyodo news agency that he felt “a bang, as if we hit something and got up sharply the moment we landed.”
“I thought I wouldn’t survive.”
Some captured snippets of those moments on their phones.
Several passengers filmed the red glow of a still-burning engine as the plane came to a stop.
Another took images of the interior, where a cloud of smoke quickly obscured the camera lens as passengers screamed and cabin crew tried to direct their next moves.
One passenger stated that it was dark on board as the fire intensified after landing.
“It was hot inside the plane and, to be honest, I thought I wouldn’t survive,” she told Japanese broadcaster NHK.
According to another passenger, the escape plan was complicated because only one door was used.
“It was announced that the back and middle doors could not be opened, so everyone disembarked from the front,” he explained.
Images and videos show the moment people began jumping down the plane’s inflatable slides, some scrambling in their effort to escape from an already burning cabin to greater safety.
No one appears to be carrying their carry-on luggage, an important factor in how quickly a cabin can be emptied.
Alex Macheras, an aviation analyst, told Globe Live Media that the crew was able to organize “a textbook evacuation” in the crucial first minutes after impact.
Saved by minutes
The fire remained “isolated in one area” of the Airbus A350 for the first 90 seconds, leaving a brief interval to get everyone out.
He explained that the crew clearly understood which doors were away from the flames and that is why not all exits were opened so that people could escape.
He added that sometimes passengers can slow down the operation when they panic, for example by trying to grab their luggage from the compartments.
The Airbus A350 is one of the first commercial aircraft made of carbon fiber composite materials, which apparently withstood the initial collision and resulting fire well.
All this was accomplished as the fire quickly spread to engulf the aircraft.
Video footage showed firefighters struggling to contain the fire as the fuselage began to split in two.
Passenger Yamake claimed that despite all the chaos, it took passengers and crew members about five minutes to get out. “I saw the fire spread in about 10 to 15 minutes,” he noted.
Tsubasa Sawada, 28, noted; “I can only say it was a miracle, we could have died.”