4 air disasters (and one near-disaster) that happened on the ground
CBC
Two planes at Tokyo's Haneda airport collided on the ground Tuesday, killing five people on a Japan coast guard plane and engulfing a packed passenger plane in flames. Everyone on the passenger plane survived.
"A ground collision like this is an incredibly unusual event but, sadly, when they happen they tend to have very tragic consequences," said Graham Braithwaite, a professor of safety and accident investigation at Cranfield University in England.
He said the industry aims to have everybody off a plane in 90 seconds and airport firefighters battling blazes within three minutes.
Both Brathwaite and Paul Hayes, director of air safety at U.K.-based aviation consultancy Ascend by Cirium, said it was "a miracle" all 379 people on the Japan Airlines passenger plane survived.
"The cabin crew must have done an excellent job," Hayes said.
It wasn't immediately clear what caused the crash.
Here's a look at some notable airline disasters that took place entirely or mostly on the ground — plus one barely-avoided disaster involving Air Canada.
Two Ford Trimotors collided on the runway in Medellín, Colombia on June 24, 1935, killing seven people on one plane and 10 on the other.
A Colombian Air Service plane was taking off when it swerved and hit a plane operated by Scadta, the world's second-ever airline.
Both aircraft caught fire and were destroyed.
Among those killed was Carlos Gardel, an Argentine movie star and tango singer. The New York Times reported that admirers had thronged the airport to bid him goodbye as he departed for a tour.
Three people survived.
An investigation blamed winds and irregularities on the runway.
The deadliest aviation accident occurred in 1977, when two Boeing 747 jets collided on a runway in Tenerife on the Canary Islands, leaving 583 people dead.
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