Images inside the Japanese plane carrying nearly 400 passengers on fire

Images show a Japan Airlines (JAL) passenger plane engulfed in flames on the runway at Haneda Airport in Ota City, Tokyo. The fire "licked" close to the main cabin of the plane while debris fell on the runway and passengers were escaping.

According to information from the airline and Japanese media, the plane was carrying 367 passengers and 12 crew members (initial information was 379 passengers and 21 crew members), all of whom were evacuated. Meanwhile, 5 out of 6 crew members on the MA-722 of the coast guard force died.

Images inside the Japanese plane carrying nearly 400 passengers on fire - 1

Images from inside the passenger plane when the incident occurred.

The successful evacuation of all passengers and crew members on the passenger plane was considered a miracle as the fire almost completely destroyed the plane and melted the huge fuselage.

Images from the scene showed the emergency slide protruding from one of the plane's doors on fire, the fuselage then split in two, with extensive damage.

The fire was fierce but the passengers on the plane evacuated in time. (Photo: Getty)

A Japan Airlines flight encountered an accident while traveling from Shin Chitose Airport in Hokkaido to Haneda Airport in Tokyo. A Coast Guard plane was preparing to take off to assist in earthquake relief efforts in central Japan.

Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism is investigating the incident, Kyodo added. More than 70 fire engines were deployed to the scene to extinguish the blaze.

Swedish passenger Anton Deibe, 17, who was on the flight, told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet : "The whole cabin was filled with smoke within minutes. We immediately collapsed on the floor. Then the emergency exit opened and we rushed out."

"The smoke in the cabin was like hell. It was absolute hell. We didn't know where we were going so we just tried to run out of the airport. It was chaos," Deibe recalled.

Images from other angles show the devastating power of the fire.

Haneda is one of Japan's busiest airports and was packed with people traveling during the New Year holiday. All runways at the airport were closed after the crash, with dozens of planes diverted.

Japan has not had a major commercial airline accident in decades. The worst was in 1985, when a JAL jumbo jet flying from Tokyo to Osaka crashed in the central Gunma region, killing 520 passengers and crew.

The horrific incident at Haneda airport came just a day after a 7.6-magnitude earthquake devastated large swaths of Japan's west coast, killing dozens of people and flattening tens of thousands of homes.