Japan Airlines announces free ticket refunds as experts praise ‘textbook evacuation’

Japan Airlines announced on Wednesday that they are now offering changes and refunds for JAL Group flight tickets for free for customers with reservations until March 31, after their JL516 passenger plane collided with a Coast Guard aircraft the day before. 

Five of the six crew members on the smaller Coast Guard quake aid aircraft died. The captain escaped and survived but was injured. 

All 367 passengers and 12 crew members onboard the airbus were safely evacuated. 

On a radio program on Wednesday, Warren Chim Wing-nin, deputy chairman of the Aircraft Division of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers, said all passengers were safely evacuated because the plane design, the execution of evacuation procedures, and the cabin crew training all functioned perfectly. 

He continued that aviation passenger flights are required to pass the 90-second test in case of an accident during touch down, that is evacuating a fully-loaded aircraft without any lights using only half of all emergency exits. 

He noted that the plane’s design can allow the aircraft to withstand the fire for at least two minutes, and added that the test has been in place for at least 50 years. 

Chim referred to television footage that the plane only caught ablaze more than two minutes after the explosion. He also said reality requires passengers to “not panic, not to take their luggage, follow flight attendants’ instructions and use the most appropriate and the nearest emergency exit.” 

Chim pointed out that there were eight emergency slides on the plane at the time but all passengers and crew used only three slides to evacuate in an orderly manner, indicating the quality of passengers and the training of cabin crew. 

Alex Macheras, an aviation analyst, said the crew “were able to initiate a textbook evacuation” in the crucial first few minutes after impact when speaking to the BBC. 

Macheras said the crew were clearly able to understand which doors were away from the flames, which is why pictures show not all the exits were opened for people to escape through.

He added that passengers can slow things down in panic – for example by trying to grab their bags from lockers. 

Paul Hayes, director of air safety at UK-based aviation consultancy Ascend by Cirium, also noted that no one leaving the plane appeared to be carrying hand luggage, as safety agencies have warned for years that pausing to collect carry-on bags during an evacuation risks lives. 

“The cabin crew must have done an excellent job. There don’t seem to be any carry-ons. It was a miracle that all the passengers got off,” Hayes said. 

(with inputs from Reuters and the BBC)