some of you might have read or heard abt the fedex plane crash at narita airport this morning. according to the video i saw online, the flight landed at abt 6:48am. its around the timing that our JL710 and JL724 arrives at narita. msged megan, who was supposed to touch down on 710 this morning. she said that she thinks that the fedex plane came in after her flight, the weather was very bad. but thank goodness she's alright!
sometimes you never know what might happen. when things like these happen, you always think, if i was on that flight, or if we arrived/took off a few minutes later, maybe that change in weather might have affected me, maybe that could have been my plane.
:(
treasure what you have and those around you. i guess.
alot of girls' flights affected. some are stuck in narita. i wonder if my flt on the 27th is affected.
from Japan Today online:
FedEx plane crashes on landing at Narita airport; pilot, co-pilot killed
Monday 23rd March, 02:00 PM JST
NARITA —
A FedEx cargo plane crash-landed and burst into flames early Monday morning at Narita International Airport, east of Tokyo, killing the two U.S. crew members aboard and causing widespread flight disruption at Japan’s largest international gateway.
Transport ministry and other investigators believe the accident was partly caused by strong winds buffeting the MD-11 aircraft as it attempted to land at around 6:50 a.m. Winds of up to 72 kilometers per hour were blowing in the vicinity of the airport at the time.
Before landing, airport traffic controllers warned the plane of the possibility of wind shear—a condition in which wind speed and direction suddenly change—up to at an altitude of 600 meters, according to the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry.
It is the first fatal aircraft accident at Narita airport since it opened in 1978, according to the airport operating company.
The airport’s main A Runway, on which the cargo plane touched down, was closed in the wake of the accident, while the B Runway is operating. A total of 35 flights, mostly international and including those heading to New York, have been canceled and 18 arriving flights have been rerouted to other airports, the transport ministry said.
The aircraft, Flight 80 from Guangzhou, China, had flammable liquid aboard, according to the transport ministry. It took firefighters about two hours to extinguish the blaze, which completely destroyed the aircraft.
Two men were rescued from the cockpit at around 8 a.m. but were confirmed dead at a nearby hospital, the Chiba prefectural police said.
The police said they confirmed with FedEx that the crew members of the flight were Kevin Kyle Mosley, 54, the pilot, and Anthony Stephen Pino, 49, the co-pilot—both U.S. citizens.
Video footage showed the plane touching down on its rear wheels and its nose slamming into the runway.
The plane bounced and its left wing hit the ground, bursting into flames. It then flopped over and veered off the runway with flames coming from the center of the fuselage.
The transport ministry’s Transport Safety Board dispatched six aircraft accident investigators to the site to look into the accident along with the police.
A FedEx employee who arrived at the accident site said the aircraft was blackened by fire on the inside and that the cargo was completely destroyed, adding the two crew members aboard must have had no time to escape.
Meanwhile, passengers at the airport shuddered at the thought of their own plane becoming involved in such an accident.
Yoshiko Oki, a 67-year-old woman planning to travel to Italy, phoned her family to say she was safe, while adding, ‘‘It is so frightening to think if it had happened to my flight.’’
A 20-year-old university student, who arrived at Narita from Australia about two hours after the accident, said he felt the plane he was on was shaking more than usual during landing.
‘‘It was like a roller coaster,’’ he said.