The two men believed to have been on the plane were confirmed dead at the Japanese Red Cross Narita Hospital, according to hospital officials.
The MD-11 aircraft, Flight 80 from Guangzhou, China, was apparently whipped back up by strong winds while attempting to land at around 6:50 a.m., according to the Chiba prefectural police.Video footage aired by NHK showed the plane touching down on its rear wheels and its nose hitting as if slammed onto the runway.The plane bounced and its left wing hit the ground, bursting into flames.
The plane then flopped over and veered off the runway with flames exploding from the center of the fuselage.The two crew members were rescued from the plane at around 8 a.m. and taken to the Japanese Red Cross hospital, according to the police. Both were U.S. citizens, one in his 50s and the other in his 40s, local fire department officials said.Firefighters said they extinguished the fire shortly after 9 a.m.A local observatory said winds of up to about 72 kilometers per hour were blowing near the airport at the time of the accident.The observatory said it had notified airline companies and related entities of the possibility of the occurrence of wind shear—a condition in which wind speed and direction suddenly change—after the weather became rough on Sunday evening.The cargo plane touched down on Runway A, the longer of the airport’s two runways.
The airport’s main runway is currently closed, according to the airport office.
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