How hundreds of passengers escaped a burning Japan Airlines plane: "I can only say it was a miracle"

All 367 passengers and 12 crew members on Japan Airlines flight JAL-516 managed to escape the plane before it was fully engulfed in flames after a collision on the runway at Toyko's Haneda Airport on Tuesday, according to Japanese Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito.

Television footage showed an orange fireball erupting as the Japan Airlines plane collided with a smaller coast guard plane while landing, and the airliner spewed smoke from its side as it continued down the runway. The pilot of the coast guard's Bombardier Dash-8 plane escaped, but five crew members died, Saito said. 

Within minutes, all passengers and crew members on the passenger jet had slid down emergency chutes to get away from the plane.

How were hundreds of passengers able to disembark the Airbus A350 without any deaths or serious injuries?

Aircraft safety features and crew training

"I think there are a lot of things that come together to allow people to get off an airplane like this without dying," Robert Sumwalt, CBS News transportation safety analyst and former chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told CBS News' Errol Barnett.

One factor at play in Tuesday's large-scale evacuation was "the crash-worthiness of modern jetliners today," Sumwalt said.

The interiors of newer airplane models are built to withstand fire, Sumwalt said. "The side walls don't burn as quickly as they would in previous airplanes."

The fire is likely to be seen as a key test case for airplane fuselages made from carbon-composite fibers instead of conventional aluminum skins. 

The fuselage likely protected the passengers from the fire by not burning through for a period of time, safety consultant John Cox told AP. 

Japan prides itself on aviation safety, CBS News correspondent Lucy Craft reported from Tokyo. A Japanese transport ministry official told reporters that the airline's evacuation procedures were "conducted appropriately."

Sumwalt agreed, attributing the successful evacuation in no small part to "the professionalism of the cabin crew."

"The flight attendants told us to stay calm and instructed us to get off the plane," one passenger, Satoshi Yamake, 59, said to Reuters. 

Video showed passengers proceeding quickly but calmly down the inflatable evacuation slides and then jogging away from the plane.

"It shows good training," Cox, the safety consultant, told AP. "And if you look at the video, people are not trying to get stuff out of the overheads. They are concentrating on getting out of the airplane."

Passengers recount terrifying moments: "I can only say it was a miracle"

Anton Deibe, 17, a passenger on the Japan Airlines plane, told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that "the entire cabin was filled with smoke within a few minutes. We threw ourselves down on the floor. Then the emergency doors were opened and we threw ourselves at them." 

Another passenger told Japan's NHK television that cabin attendants were calm and told everyone to leave their baggage behind, then all lights went off and the temperature inside the cabin started rising. 

Tokyo resident Tsubasa Sawada, 28, told Reuters that there was an explosion on the plane about 10 minutes after the passengers disembarked.

"I can only say it was a miracle, we could have died if we were late," Sawada said to Reuters.

JAL said four passengers were taken to a medical facility, while Japan's NHK said 14 were injured.

In:
• Plane Crash
• Tokyo
• Japan

S. Dev

S. Dev is a news editor for CBSNews.com.