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A coastguard aircraft that collided with a passenger plane at Tokyo’s Haneda airport had not been cleared for take-off when the crash took place, authorities have said.

The small jet, with a pilot and five passengers on board, was preparing to fly to the city of Niigata to deliver aid to those affected by a recent earthquake when it collided with a landing Japan Airlines (JAL) Airbus A350.

Tower transcripts suggest the JAL passenger flight had been given permission to land.

All 379 people on JAL Flight 516, arriving from the northern island of Hokkaido, managed to evacuate the aircraft after it burst into flames on Tuesday.

Five people aboard the Bombardier Dash-8 Turboprop coastguard plane died, while the pilot who escaped the wreckage is badly injured.

Authorities are now investigating exactly what happened, including how the two planes ended up on the same runway.

Transcripts of traffic control instructions appear to show the JAL flight had been given permission to land, while the coastguard aircraft had been told to taxi to a holding point near the runway.

The transcripts do not indicate that the coastguard pilot had been given permission to take off, an official from Japan’s civil aviation bureau told reporters.

However, the captain of the small aircraft said he entered the runway after receiving permission, a coastguard official said.

In a statement on Wednesday, JAL said its aircraft recognised and repeated air traffic control’s landing permission before touching down.

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Agencies in France, where the Airbus was built, and in the UK, where its two Rolls-Royce engines were manufactured, are assisting the Japan Safety Transport Board with its investigation.

The board has been given the voice recorder from the coastguard aircraft, authorities said.

Meanwhile, Tokyo police are investigating whether professional negligence could have contributed to the crash, according to local media.

“There’s a strong possibility there was a human error,” said aviation analyst Hiroyuki Kobayashi, a former JAL pilot.

“Aircraft accidents very rarely occur due to a single problem, so I think that this time too there were two or three issues that led to the accident.”

The world’s forests – the lungs of the planet – are being put under “enormous pressure” by the UK’s appetite for commodities like soy, cocoa, palm oil, beef and leather, MPs have warned.

The intensity of the country’s consumption, when measured by its footprint per tonne of product consumed, is higher than that of China, according to the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) report.

This should “serve as a wake-up call to the government”, said EAC chair Philip Dunne, who added that the UK’s use is having an “unsustainable impact on the planet”.

The committee has now released a 66-page report on Britain’s contribution to tackling global deforestation, which is the clearing or cutting down of forests, as it made a series of recommendations.

It comes after ministers announced that four commodities – cattle products (excluding dairy), cocoa, palm oil and soy – will have to be certified as “sustainable” if they are to be sold into UK markets.

The government, which plans to gradually include more products over time, has not yet said when the legislation will be introduced.

And the committee said it is concerned that the phased approach and lack of a timeline does not reflect the necessity of tackling deforestation urgently.

The report said: “The failure to include commodities such as maize, rubber and coffee within this scope does not demonstrate the level of urgency required to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.”

The EAC called on the government to address these gaps and strengthen the existing legislative framework so businesses are banned from trading or using commodities linked to deforestation.

The committee also said: “Forests host 80% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity, support the livelihoods of 1.6 billion people and provide vital ecosystem services to support local and global economies.

“Deforestation threatens irreplaceable biodiverse habitats and contributes 11% of global carbon emissions.”

It urged ministers to create a global footprint indicator so the public can see the UK’s deforestation impact and a target can be set to cut it.

The committee said there are concerns over how planned investments in nature and climate programmes – including £1.5bn earmarked for deforestation – will be spent and called for more clarity from ministers.

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‘Government needs to act now’

Alexandria Reid, from the non-governmental organisation Global Witness, said: “The findings are clear, the UK will not reach net zero while British banks continue to fuel, and profit from, rampant deforestation of our climate-critical forests overseas.

“The government will miss the global deadline to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 unless it acts now.”

Clare Oxborrow, from Friends of the Earth, said: “The committee is right to highlight the many flaws in the government’s plans to curb deforestation.

“Not least, the failure to include all high-risk commodities as part of its proposed new deforestation law, as well as the fact that it will only apply to illegal logging, which is notoriously difficult to determine.”

The government’s response

A government spokesperson said: “The UK is leading the way globally with new legislation to tackle illegal deforestation to make sure we rid UK supply chains of products contributing to the destruction of these vital habitats.

“This legislation has already been introduced through the Environment Act and is just one of many measures to halt and reverse global forest loss.

“We are also investing in significant international programmes to restore forests, which have avoided over 410,000 hectares of deforestation to date alongside supporting new green finance streams.”