TOKYO – Five people on a Coast Guard plane died after it was hit by a Japan Airlines Airbus A350 on approach, but all 379 people aboard the airliner were evacuated.

Here’s a look at what’s known after the Jan. 2 collision at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport that left both planes engulfed in flames.

SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

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

On the tarmac, 15 seconds later, Coast Guard Flight JA722A was instructed to “taxi to holding point C5,” which is at least 50 meters (164 feet) from the edge of the runway.

The pilot of the JA722A confirmed the order immediately afterwards.

About two minutes later, the Japan Airlines plane landed and hit the Coast Guard DHC-8 aircraft, indicating that it had flown onto the actual runway.

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

The JAL flight crew did not have “visual contact” with the other plane, although one of them spotted “an object” shortly before impact, an airline spokesman told AFP on Thursday.

PAIR RECORDER

Investigators had yet to publicly draw their conclusions.

The Coast Guard aircraft’s flight recorder and voice recorder were found, as was the airliner’s flight recorder – but not its voice recorder.

“(We) have to wait until the thorough accident investigation is completed to know exactly what happened,” aviation expert Guido Carim Junior from Griffith University told AFP.

“In general, accidents like this are always the result of several factors influencing each other and cannot be attributed to human error or technical malfunction,” he said.

FIREBALL

An orange fireball and black smoke erupted beneath the JAL plane as it raced down the runway. The Coast Guard aircraft is difficult to see in video footage of the incident.

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

The nine flight attendants on board needed permission to open the emergency exits, and their boss notified the cockpit of the fire to obtain that permission, NHK reported.

EXIT

International regulations state that aircraft can be fully evacuated within 90 seconds using half of the emergency exits.

In this case, there were eight emergency exits, but only three – two at the front and one at the rear left – could be used because of the fire.

Because the intercom stopped working, the cockpit could not authorize use of the rear exit, the airline said.

The crew in the rear felt it was urgent for the passengers to exit through the rear door and opened it anyway, as they are trained to do.

LAST MAN OUT

Using megaphones and their own voices, the 12-person crew directed all 367 passengers and got them out of the plane on emergency slides.

The evacuation of the entire aircraft took 18 minutes, with the pilot being the last to leave the runway at 6:05 p.m.

Only two people suffered injuries.

Soon the entire plane was an inferno and dozens of fire engines tried to put out the fire. In the end, this process took eight hours.

LEFT BEHIND

Experts said it was notable that passengers appeared to have left their belongings on the plane, including at least a dog and a cat.

“The passengers appeared to have followed textbook instructions,” Terence Fan, an aviation expert at Singapore Management University, told AFP.

“That’s exactly what evacuation guidelines are designed for – the airframe itself is ultimately not designed to survive the fire.”