Japan probes plane inferno after ‘miracle’ escape

An official looks at the wreckage of a Japan coast guard plane on the tarmac at Tokyo International Airport at Haneda in Tokyo on January 3.//AFP

Japanese investigators on Wednesday probed a near-catastrophic collision at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport of a coast guard plane and a passenger jet that killed five people, with almost 400 others narrowly escaping a raging inferno.

All but one of the six people on the smaller aircraft were killed, but all 379 Japan Airlines passengers and crew escaped down emergency slides minutes before the Airbus was engulfed in flames late Tuesday.

The blackened husk of the airliner, still sitting on the tarmac Wednesday, bore witness to just how dangerous their escape had been. Several hundred metres (yards) away lay the remains of the coast guard’s DHC-8 aircraft.

The captain of the coast guard plane — which had been bound for the New Year’s Day…