Five people aboard a Japanese coast guard plane were killed Tuesday after colliding with an airliner at Tokyo's Haneda Airport.
All 379 people on the Japan Airlines plane escaped, and the pilot of the smaller coast guard plane also survived.
NBC Bay Area aviation expert Mike McCarron said it was likely human error, not a technical glitch, that caused the collision.
"The problem here is someone was not where they were supposed to be, clearly," he said. "The [Japan Airlines] flight was coming in. It was apparently cleared for landing. What the coast guard plane was doing and why it was on the runway, that’s the big question right now. Did the controller make a mistake? Did the pilot of the aircraft make a mistake? Somewhere that has to be found, and they’ll take steps back to make sure that what happened doesn’t happen again."
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McCarron said some passengers may report new injuries in the coming days from breathing the burning rubber, plastic and other toxins as they escaped the wreckage. He said it can sometimes take three or four days before people show symptoms.
He also said emergency responders in the Bay Area and at other airports internationally would likely use lessons learned from the Tokyo investigation as they plan and train for potential events in the future.
