- Passengers aboard the Japan Airlines flight that collided with another aircraft described the terrifying ordeal.
- One passenger said she thought was going to die.
- Every person on board the commercial flight made it out alive, authorities say.
Chaos, hell, and billowing smoke.
That's how travelers aboard the Japan Airlines flight that collided with a Japanese Coast Guard aircraft on the runway at a Tokyo airport Tuesday described the terrifying ordeal that left the passenger plane engulfed in flames and five dead on the smaller one.
"I thought I was about to die," a passenger from the Chiba Japanese prefecture, only identified as Uchida, her surname, told The Japan Times, explaining that she "thought it was over."
Uchida told the news outlet that when the plane, an Airbus A350-900, landed at Tokyo's bustling Haneda Airport, she heard a loud noise. At first, she didn't realize there had been a collision, but then she said she saw flames at the wing of the plane when she looked out the window.
Anton Deibe, a 17-year-old Swede who was aboard the Japan Airlines flight, told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that "the entire cabin was filled with smoke within a few minutes" after the collision, according to the Associated Press.
"We threw ourselves down on the floor. Then the emergency doors were opened and we threw ourselves at them," Deibe said, the AP reported.
He added, "The smoke in the cabin stung like hell. It was a hell. We have no idea where we are going so we just run out into the field. It was chaos."
Another passenger told Kyodo news agency, "I felt a boom like we had hit something and jerked upward the moment we landed."
"I saw sparks outside the window and the cabin filled with gas and smoke," the traveler said.
Miraculously, all 367 passengers and 12 crew members on board Japan Airlines Flight 516 that departed from New Chitose airport on the Japanese island of Hokkaido were safely evacuated from the burning plane via emergency slides.
Dramatic footage from Japanese news networks showed flames rising from the aircraft as it landed at the airport. Passengers could be seen frantically escaping down the inflatable slides and running away as the fire grew larger.
"I feel bad for saying this, but it felt like [I was in] a TV show" amid the chaos, 55-year-old passenger Ryosuke Sakamoto told The Japan Times.
"But I think it's because I managed to get out safely," Sakamoto, a Tokyo resident, said.
Sakamoto told the news outlet that as passengers escaped the aircraft he saw one of the engines radiate an orange hue and smelled something burning.
The Japan Airlines flight collided on the runway with a Coast Guard plane that was headed to Japan's west coast to aid earthquake relief efforts there after a deadly 7.6 magnitude quake hit on Monday.
Five of the six people on the Coast Guard plane were killed, according to officials.
The captain of the Guard plane, identified as 39-year-old Genki Miyamoto, managed to survive, according to The Japan Times. The Times reported that Miyamoto said the plane seemed like it "exploded" on the runway.
It's not clear yet what caused the collision.
An expert told Business Insider that modern safety features and pitch-perfect safety procedures from the flight crew likely saved the passengers' lives.