Japan plane collision: What we know

TOKYO, Japan — Five people on a coast guard plane died after it was hit by a Japan Airlines Airbus A350 coming in to land, but all 379 people on the airliner were evacuated.

Here follows a rundown of what is known after the collision on January 2 at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, which ended with both planes engulfed in flames.

According to a communications transcript released by the Japanese government, Japan Airlines flight JAL-516 arriving from Hokkaido was cleared at 5:44:56 pm by air traffic control to land on runway 34R.

On the tarmac, coast guard flight JA722A was instructed 15 seconds later to "taxi to holding point C5", located at least 50 metres (164 feet) from the edge of the runway.

The pilot of JA722A acknowledged the order immediately afterwards.

Roughly two minutes later, the Japan Airlines flight landed and hit the coast guard's DHC-8 aircraft, suggesting that the latter had proceeded onto the actual runway.

JA722A captain Genki Miyamoto, its only survivor, said immediately after the accident that he had permission to take off, broadcaster NHK reported.

The JAL flight crew had no "visual contact" of the other plane, although one of them spotted "an object" just before impact, an airline spokesman told AFP on Thursday.

Investigators were yet to draw conclusions publicly.

The flight recorder and voice recorder from the coast guard plane have been found, as has the flight recorder from the passenger jet -- but not its voice recorder.

"(We) must wait for the thorough accident investigation to be concluded in order to know exactly what happened," aviation expert Guido Carim Junior from Griffith University told AFP.

"In general, accidents like this one are always the result of multiple factors that influence each other and cannot be reduced to either human error or technology malfunction," he said.

An orange ball of fire and black smoke erupted underneath the JAL airliner as it sped down the runway. The coast guard plane is difficult to make out in video footage of the incident.

Footage shot by passengers showed flames underneath the plane and smoke filling the cabin as babies cried and people shouted for the doors to be opened.

The nine flight attendants on