4 air disasters (and one near-disaster) that happened on the ground

Two planes at Tokyo's Haneda airport collided on the ground Tuesday, killing five people on a Japan coast guardplane and engulfing a packed passenger plane in flames. Everyone on the passenger plane survived.

"A ground collision like this is an incredibly unusual eventbut, sadly, when they happenthey tend to have very tragic consequences," saidGraham Braithwaite, a professor of safety and accident investigation at Cranfield University in England.

He said the industry aims to have everybody off a plane in 90 seconds and airport firefighters battlingblazes within three minutes.

Both Brathwaite andPaul Hayes, director of air safety at U.K.-based aviation consultancy Ascend by Cirium, said it was "a miracle" all 379 people on the Japan Airlines passenger plane survived.

"The cabin crew must have done an excellent job," Hayessaid.

It wasn't immediately clear what caused the crash.

Here's a look at some notable airline disasters that took place entirely or mostly on the ground plus one barely-avoided disaster involving Air Canada.

1930s collisionkills tango star

Two Ford Trimotorscollided on the runway in Medelln, Colombia on June 24, 1935, killing seven people on one plane and 10 on the other.

A Colombian Air Service plane was taking off when it swerved and hit a plane operated by Scadta, the world's second-ever airline.

Both aircraft caught fire and were destroyed.

Among those killed wasCarlos Gardel, an Argentine movie star and tango singer. The New York Times reported that admirers had thronged the airport to bid him goodbye as he departed for a tour.

Three people survived.

An investigation blamed winds and irregularities on the runway.

Tenerife disaster still the world's deadliest

The deadliest aviation accident occurred in 1977, when two Boeing 747 jets collided on a runway in Tenerife on the Canary Islands, leaving 583 people dead.

On March 27 of that year,a KLM Boeing 747attempting to take off in heavy fogcrashed into a Pan Am 747. Only 61 people survived.

The main cause of the crash was a miscommunication between the tower and the captain of the KLM flight, who tried to take off without clearance.

Canadian folk hero Stan Rogers dies in airplane fire

On June 2, 1983, an Air Canada DC-9 carrying 41 passengers and five crew had to make an emergency landing in Cincinnati after a fire broke out in one of the bathrooms.

Twenty-three passengers died including Canadian singer Stan Rogers because they couldn't get off the plane fast enough to escape the flames and smoke. Eighteen people survived.

The U.S. report into the incident said it was due, in part, to an "underestimate of fire severity" and "the time taken to evaluate the nature of the fire and to decide to initiate an emergency descent."

Ground controller falls asleep

The worst air disaster in what is now Russiawas caused partly because the groundcontroller on duty fell asleep.

Aeroflot Flight 3352 hit maintenance vehicles on therunway in Omsk, killing 174 people on Oct. 11, 1984. The flight crew and one passenger survived.

The story wasn't widely reported, even in Russia,until 2004.

Air Canada misses infamyby18 metres

A near-collision of airliners in San Francisco in 2017was a mere 18.2 metresfrom becoming the worst crash in aviation history.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board's reportsaid anAir Canada plane nearly crashed into four other planes lined up on the ground and packed with passengers awaiting takeoff at San Francisco International Airport.

The pilots were slow to report the incident to superiors. By the time they did, the plane had made another flight and the cockpit voice recording of the close call had been recorded over.

"Only a few feet of separation prevented this from possibly becoming the worst aviation accident in history," U.S. National Transportation Safety Boardvice-chairBruce Landsberg said in a statement accompanying the report.

The collision could have killed around 1,000 people, the report said.

WATCH| Video of the close call released by the NTSB:

NTSB releases dramatic video of Air Canada near-disaster

6 years ago

Duration 1:16

Video shows Air Canada plane narrowly missing several planes as it attempts to land on taxiway instead of runway