The key question about fiery crash at Tokyo airport: Did one or both planes have OK to use runway?

Passengers on Japan Airlines Flight 516 were buckled up and ready to land at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport as their pilot made a final approach. “Cleared to land,” the pilot repeated after receiving an instruction from air traffic control to put the jet down on Runway C.

About two minutes later, the Airbus A350 that had traveled from New Chitose Airport near Sapporo was engulfed in an orange fireball, spewing gray smoke from the side as it continued on the runway.

Manabu Kotake, a Sapporo resident visiting Tokyo, felt a strong bang and initially thought the airliner had made a rough touchdown. He looked out the window and observed flames, then noticed a burning smell. Seated near the engine, Kotake saw it falling apart.

“I panicked and thought I may not be able to survive,” he told Japanese news agency Jiji Press.

The A350 had collided with a much smaller coast guard plane that had received permission to approach the same runway but no takeoff clearance, according to a transcript of traffic control communications from the minutes before Tuesday’s crash. Experts say neither the JAL pilot nor air traffic controllers may have realized the Bombardier Dash-8 already had entered Runway C by the time the airliner came in.

With investigators focused on how traffic control communicated with the two planes during the busy holiday travel period, the big question to have emerged so far is why the coast guard plane was there.

The pilot of the coast guard plane, which was leaving on a mission to deliver relief goods to earthquake survivors in central Japan, evacuated with serious burns, but five crew members were killed. All 379 passengers and crew members of Flight 516 survived after an evacuation that took 18 minutes.

After their safe