Japan Airlines gets first woman president following a fatal plane collision during the holidays

TOKYO (AP) — Japan Airlines has named Mitsuko Tottori as its first woman president following a collision between one of its planes and a coast guard aircraft during Japanese New Year holidays that left five dead.

Tottori — currently senior managing executive officer of JAL and the first woman to climb the ranks from cabin attendant to the company’s new head — vowed Wednesday in a press conference to stick to her commitment to aviation safety and making it a priority.

She will take office in April and replace JAL president and CEO Yuji Akasaka, who will take over from Yoshiharu Ueki as chairman of the airline.

Tottori’s appointment came two weeks after the fatal collision at Tokyo’s busy Haneda airport that was mostly seen as a result of human error.

On Jan.2, JAL’s Airbus A350-900 carrying 379 passengers and crew landed right behind the coast guard’s much smaller Bombardier Dash-8 preparing to take off on the same seaside runway. The crash engulfed both aircraft in flames.

All passengers of the JAL airliner were safely evacuated in 18 minutes, but five of six coast guard flight crew died.

Tottori also praised the JAL Flight 516 cabin attendants’ commitment to safety, evacuating everyone on board, and thanked the passengers for their cooperation. “But there was an accident and that means there are things we still need to improve.”

An ongoing probe into the collision has focused on whether the coast guard aircraft was given the green light for takeoff. A partial release of the air traffic control transcript showed no clear takeoff approval was given to the Bombardier, which was on a mission to deliver relief supplies to the residents in Japan’s north-central region hit by a magnitude 7.6 quake on New Year’s Day and hundreds