Five people aboard a coastguard aircraft were killed when their plane collided with a Japan Airlines passenger jet coming in to land at Tokyo's Haneda International Airport.
Only one crewmember managed to escape with severe injuries, citing Japanese police report on the incident.
Coastguard flight MA-722 aircraft, a Bombardier Dash-8, was struck by JAL flight 516 - a much larger Airbus A-350 - on runway C at Haneda, with both planes immediately erupting into flames.
Shocking footage showed the Japan Airlines jet engulfed in a raging inferno as it sat on the runway with gouts of flame seen pouring out of the passenger windows.
One horrific clip showed the flames licking from the airliner's main cabin door as smouldering debris fell from the fuselage onto the tarmac, while another showed passengers sprinting along the runway to escape the blaze, running away from the engines which were spitting out chunks of flaming debris.
Images from the scene showed how the passenger escape slide protruding from one of the airliner's doors was set ablaze as more flames burned within the cabin, and the aircraft's hull later split in two as the fire melted through huge chunks of its bodywork.
Miraculously, all 379 passengers and crew aboard the Japan Airlines flight were successfully evacuated from the stricken plane, a JAL spokesman said, but the crew of the much smaller Bombardier aircraft did not have time to evade the blaze.
The Jiji news agency reported the coastguard plane was set to leave to help with rescue efforts following a massive earthquake in central Japan on New Year's Day, with the five deaths of the crew members further compounding the tragedy.
The Japan Airlines flight had flown out of Shin Chitose airport in Japan and was landing at Haneda airport when the disaster occurred.
Several experts described the evacuation of the passenger plane as 'phenomenal' and 'a miracle'.
Prof Graham Braithwaite, director of transport systems at Cranfield University in the UK, told BBC: 'The evacuation has been successful and it is a reminder how much has gone into training cabin crew.
'Their focus is on safety. They are the last people to evacuate the airplane and on face value, it looks like they have done an incredible job.'
A coast guard official at Haneda Airport, one of the world's busiest, said they were 'checking details' of the reported collision and initially could not confirm what had happened.
'It's not clear if there was a collision. But it is certain that our plane is involved,' he told AFP.
But spokesperson Yoshinori Yanagishima later told Japanese media that their plane did indeed collide with the JAL flight on the runway.