17-year-old Anton Deibe and his family were flying to Tokyo when their plane collided with a coast guard plane. He tells his story. ‘Everyone started shouting in Japanese. I didn’t understand it at all.’
Christina AndersonJanuary 4, 2024, 7:23 p.m
Anton Deibe, a high school student from Stockholm, was traveling with his family in Japan to celebrate his father’s 50th birthday. They were among the passengers of Japan Airlines Flight 516 when it collided with a Coast Guard plane on Tuesday. All passengers and crew members of Anton’s plane escaped alive.
Because the plane’s seating chart was in Japanese, Anton and his family, who do not understand the language, could not book seats together. Anton sat with his 15-year-old sister Ella a few rows from the back of the plane. Ella had a window seat. Their father, Jonas Deibe, sat about seven rows in front of them and their mother, Kristin Deibe, sat two rows in front of them.
After a week of skiing in Niseko, Japan, they wanted to visit Tokyo for a week, where they were going on Tuesday evening when their plane caught fire. “The flight was pleasant until we were almost there,” Anton recalled on Wednesday from a hotel in Tokyo. “We were sitting in the back left. Ella looked out the window. I looked at the entertainment screen and saw that there were three minutes until arrival. Then I leaned over to put my jacket in my backpack.”
“When I bent down, I felt it become extremely hot on the left side of my face. I looked to my left and saw fire and smoke outside all the windows on the left.”
Pitch dark
“Then the plane started shaking, as if there was strong turbulence. At the same time it became very hot inside and all the lights went out. It was pitch dark. Even the emergency lights weren’t shining. I only saw the light of the fire.”
He says he thought a bird might have hit the plane, but he didn’t know what happened. He felt the wheels bounce on the runway. The plane stopped quickly, he says. “Everyone started shouting in Japanese. I didn’t understand it,” he says. Still, “there was a lot less commotion than I thought. The passengers were calm. Of course everyone was worried and scared.”
An aerial image shows the burned-out Airbus A350 of Japan Airlines. Image via REUTERS
Anton says he later heard that the collision with the other plane took place right where he was sitting, near the engine behind the wing.
“I had no idea that we had collided with another plane,” says Anton. He says the passengers could see smoke outside, “but then the smoke started to enter the cabin. It smelled burnt and like chemicals.” He says he used his hoodie to protect his nose and mouth. “It felt like needles in your throat,” he remembers.
Emergency exit
At that moment, father Jonas had returned to an empty chair with his children. The flight attendants walked through the cabin with flashlights, Anton says. “It became increasingly difficult to breathe,” says Anton. “It was horrible. We didn’t know what was going to happen. We just hoped that someone would open the emergency doors so we could jump out.”
Minutes later, the emergency exit doors were opened, Anton says.
Image ANP / EPA
“They were shouting in Japanese. We were all bent over. I think people were groveling. I thought that was the intention. People crept behind me. I couldn’t see anything in front of me. Everything happened so damn fast. Dad crawled in front of me. I did the same. My sister was right behind me.” Their mother followed.
Exiting the plane via the emergency slide was a challenge in itself. “It was a long fall,” Anton describes. He had undergone hand surgery before the trip and is wearing a plaster cast on his right hand. Once on the ground, the family ran as fast as they could from the plane to a field of tall grass. “We just kept running. We heard the engine still running and spitting fire, with large flames surrounding the plane. We just wanted to get as far away as possible.”
Anton escaped with only the clothes he was wearing. But the family is safe and continues their journey through Japan. “It was a terrible experience,” Anton concludes. “It felt unrealistic, like you were in a movie.”
© The New York Times
Also read
2024-01-04 18:23:23
#Japan #Airlines #Flight #started #shouting #Japanese #didnt #understand
