Witnessing the Wreckage at NaritaMarch 24th, 2009 by Curzon |
 |
Yesterday morning, a Fedex plane crashed and burned in Narita airport in the airport’s first fatal accident since opening in 1978. You can see commentary-less footage from the BBC (which cannot be embedded) at this link.
I flew into Narita yesterday early afternoon just hours after the crash, and noted a bumpy landing—the plane shifted left and right after touching down—and the pilot then told us the news. We were lucky that we were in a Boeing 777, as larger planes had been unable to land because the runway was out of service. We saw the morbid wreckage as we moved towards the arrival gate, and I took a picture of the plane from the terminal.
March 24th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Heard some people were redirected to Hokkaido. Man that is a sad tragedy… the news said it was the first ever fatal accident of its kind at Narita.
March 24th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
The news said it, and so did my post!
March 25th, 2009 at 12:22 am
You put that in the first sentence of your post to trick me
March 26th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
It was particularly bad that the FedEx plane had to disable Narita’s long runway. The shorter runway is only shorter because some random dickwad commie farmer refused to give up his chicken coops in the middle of the runway’s path. You just have to look at a satellite image to see how ridiculously this came out.
View Larger Map
From what I understand, 747s were the main aircraft type affected, so the biggest losers (besides FedEx) were JAL, which rely on 747s more than most other carriers at NRT (I believe they have the largest 747 fleet in the world). Singapore Airlines also had to divert its shiny new A380s.
An awful occurrence, though. Just look at that wreckage. The crew had no way to get out of that alive.
March 26th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
In the name of quality international airports, I think you need to go and sabotage that guy’s chicken coops.