A FedEx cargo plane en route from China crashed in high winds and exploded in a ball of flames yesterday at Tokyo's Narita airport, killing both pilots, officials said.
The pair, both US citizens, were the only two people aboard the American parcel delivery company's wide-body McDonnell Douglas MD-11, which was flying in from Guangzhou in southern China.
It was the first-ever fatal accident at Japan's biggest international airport and the country's first since 1996, when three people died in a Garuda Indonesia accident at Fukuoka airport.
It was not immediately known what caused the crash, but the meteorological agency said strong gusts were blowing and that it had warned airlines of wind shear - a dangerous condition for planes coming in to land.
The cargo aircraft was carrying some flammable liquid, said the transport ministry. It took firefighters using foam about two hours to extinguish the blaze, which completely destroyed the aircraft.
Television footage showed FedEx Flight 80 touching down about 6:50 a.m. and the aircraft's nose slamming into the runway before the plane sharply bounced onto its left wing.
The jet exploded into a ball of flames and skidded at high speed while spewing a large plume of black smoke before flipping onto its left side and coming to a halt off the side of the runway.
Fire engines and scores of emergency personnel in silver suits rushed to the gutted aircraft, which came to rest upside down with flames still shooting out of its fuselage, to douse the fire with foam.
An unidentified man at the airport told TV Asahi that he saw that the aircraft "bounced twice and fell onto its left side. Immediately after that, a fire broke out."
The transport ministry identified the pilot as Kevin Kyle Mosley, 54, and the co-pilot as Anthony Stephen Pino, 49.
The Transport Safety Board dispatched six accident investigators to the site.
Winds as strong as 72 kilometres per hour were registered around the airport at the time of the crash, the meteorological agency said.
Another male witness told TV Asahi that "the wind was quite strong, stronger than ordinary typhoons" at the time of the crash.
FedEx spokeswoman Emiko Ogami told AFP: "The cause of the accident is still unknown. We are cooperating with Japanese aviation authorities to investigate the accident."
The crash forced the closure of Runway A, the longer of Narita's two main runways.
Airport officials said the accident would cause flight cancellations and delays, and that scores of flights had been diverted elsewhere, including Haneda airport closer to Tokyo.
Japan Airlines cancelled 35 flights and diverted 11, including cargo aircraft. The accident affected 8,210 passengers. ANA scrapped 13 flights and diverted eight, affecting at least 1,810 passengers.
Late last month, 47 passengers and crew were injured when a Northwest Airlines Boeing 747 hit turbulence near Narita. Another air pocket hurt two crew over Japan in earlier this month aboard an Air France Boeing 777.