Aviation Circle News At around 2:30 p.m. on May 31, 2024, a small Japanese plane landed on the fuselage of Kobe Airport, and the runway was closed for about 5 hours, affecting 34 flights.
According to Japan's Kansai TV report, the plane involved was a training plane, belonging to the aviation training school "Hirata Gakuen", there were three people on board, and no one was injured.
According to Kansai Airport, at around 2:30 p.m. on May 31, the fuselage of the aircraft of "Hirata Gakuen", which was conducting pilot training at Kobe Airport, landed on the runway. The aircraft was a small aircraft that could carry 6 people, and at that time, there were 3 people in total, including 1 captain instructor (in his 60s) and 2 trainees in their 20s.
According to Hirata Gakuen, the cause of the accident was forgetting to lower the landing gear during take-off and landing training called "touch and go" (continuous takeoff).
After the incident, Kobe Airport closed the runway, which did not resume operations until 7:25 p.m.
Due to the closure of the runway, 34 flights at Kobe Airport were grounded, and many passengers queued up in front of the ticket counter to request refunds.
Regarding the accident, Japan's National Transportation Safety Board issued a statement saying that it was "a major accident". On this basis, three aviation accident investigators were appointed to Kobe Airport on June 1 to investigate the cause of the accident.
In addition, the aircraft training school "Hirata Gakuen" involved in the incident had just been ordered to improve its operations by the competent authority just three days before the incident. On May 28, the Osaka Aviation Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism of Japan issued a business improvement order to the training school for "discovering organized and malignant behavior" for taking 30 inappropriate measures in the maintenance of medical helicopters, and to rebuild the safety management system and implement compliance education.