Japan's transport ministry on Monday warned Japan Airlines Co. to improve its safety record, saying a spate of recent incidents involving its aircraft could have resulted in serious accidents.
The warning came days after one of the airline's A350 jetliners made contact with the wing of another JAL plane on the apron at Tokyo's Haneda airport. No one among the 328 onboard the Sapporo-bound flight was injured but the flight was eventually canceled.
In an incident earlier this month, another JAL plane waiting to take off at Fukuoka airport in southwestern Japan crossed the stop line without permission, causing a J-Air Corp. plane to abort its take-off.
The warning poses a major challenge for CEO Mitsuko Tottori, who assumed the position in April. The company's first female top executive has vowed to prioritize customer safety on the heels of a collision between a JAL plane and a Japan Coast Guard aircraft at Haneda airport in January.
All 379 people onboard the burning JAL A350 jetliner were safely evacuated on Jan. 2, with the media describing their escape and survival as "a miracle." Five coast guard members on the other plane, however, were killed.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism urged the company to report to the ministry on the measures it was putting in place to prevent similar incidents from happening again by June 11.
Speaking to reporters at the ministry after meeting with an official overseeing the airline industry, Tottori said the company will ramp up efforts to strengthen safety.
"There may be more causes of the accidents than we had identified," Tottori said. "We will do our utmost to investigate the causes and come up with measures to prevent them."
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