It has been called the “18-minute miracle.”

That was the period from 5:47 p.m. on Jan. 2 that changed the lives of 379 passengers and crew on JAL Flight 516 from New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido to Haneda Airport in Tokyo.

Many of the 367 passengers were families, skiers or overseas travelers.

They had no way of knowing that their flight was about to hit a Japan Coast Guard plane on a runway at Haneda Airport.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Hiroshi Kaneko, 67, a resident of Kawasaki, was sitting in an aisle seat on the front right side. He had just spent the year-end holidays at his parents’ home in Sapporo.

“When I get home, I’ll finish cleaning up,” he said he thought while watching the landing on the monitor’s live video feed.

Immediately after the plane touched down with a slamming sound, he heard a series of “bangs” like something was hitting the fuselage.

The plane tilted, and Kaneko’s body was pulled forward. It felt like the airplane needed tens of seconds to stop, he said.

Kaneko heard a man sitting in the window seat mutter: “It’s on fire. This isn’t good.”

Kaneko looked outside and saw that metal had peeled off near the engine on the main wing. A red flame was rising.

An unfamiliar chemical smell hit his nose, and he felt the temperature in the cabin rising.

‘CAPTAIN! CAPTAIN!’

Naoki Nakanishi, 44, was sitting in a seat on the left side of the center row. Nakanishi is one of the heads of the photography department at the Nikkan Gendai newspaper.

He heard a flight attendant in front of him yell into a microphone, “Captain! Captain!”

Another flight attendant also shouted after checking an emergency door. “This door over here is no good because the fire is too close.”

Some passengers in the front began to scream: “Open the door!” and “Get us out of here!”

However, most of the passengers obeyed the crew’s orders to stay in their own seats and not to move around, Nakanishi said.

Nakanishi had spent the year-end holidays at his parents’ home in Hokkaido.

He held his oldest son, 3, who was sitting in a window seat behind him. They waited for the crew’s order to evacuate from the burning plane.

“I think it was a few minutes before the door opened,” he recalled.

As he stepped out into the aisle, he was pushed from behind by other passengers trying to escape. All he could think about was his child, and he did not have time to pick up his jacket, he said.

‘PLEASE GO AHEAD OF ME’

Taiga Oka, 32, a restaurant manager, was sitting in a seat in the back of the center row.

He saw flames from the window on the left.

There was an emergency door about a meter from his seat, but he heard a flight attendant say, “Not this door either.”

The smoke was getting thicker, and his 2-year-old daughter began to cry. Oka started coughing.

“This could be bad,” he said.

His wife, 29, covered their daughter’s mouth and kept her head low.

Oka could hear another child screaming, “Please get me out of here.”

An emergency door opened, but no passengers rushed out.

Oka said he heard some passengers calling out to each other: “If you are with children, please go ahead of me.”

Oka said he had no idea what was going on.

When he and his family got out of the plane, he looked behind and saw the aircraft engulfed in flames. His hands started shaking.

PILOT, COVERED IN SOOT, APOLOGIZES

Miyuki Kotake, 57, a company employee from Sapporo, was sitting on the right side of the center row.

She became separated from her family when she slid down the escape chute.

But on the ground, she was joined by her husband, her 20-something daughter and her 4-year-old grandson.

After expressing relief at the sight of each other, they sat on the ground at a safe distance and stared at the aircraft.

The flames had destroyed the windows and were devouring the cabin.

“If it had been a little later …,” Kotake thought.

At 6:05 p.m., she saw a man believed to be the captain escape with the flight attendants.

His face was covered in soot. He went around, bowing to passengers on the ground and saying, “I am terribly sorry about this.”

He looked teary-eyed, she said.

Kotake and her family were en route to Hawaii via Haneda Airport.

But their luggage was destroyed in the fire, and they spent five days at a Tokyo hotel before flying back to their home in Sapporo.

Her husband reacts with a jolt whenever he hears a noise resembling the impact sound of the accident.

Her daughter says, “I don’t want to fly because I’m scared.”

And her grandson sometimes murmurs, “It’s on fire,” as if remembering the accident.

“The scenes of that day are etched in our memories,” she said. “I hope to go back to a normal, anxiety-free state, little by little, as we go about our daily lives. That’s all I want for now.”

(This article was written by Keita Yamaguchi, Ryota Goto and Amane Shimazaki.)