On Oct. 20, an Air Canada passenger plane, bound for Vancouver, entered a runway at Kansai International Airport without traffic control permission just before a Japan Airlines plane was about to land on the runway, but an accident was averted after the JAL plane aborted its landing, the transport ministry said on Oct. 21.

According to Japan's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry, Air Canada flight 36, a Boeing 767 service with 216 passengers and crew members, was instructed by an air traffic controller to hold its position just before the runway to accommodate the arriving JAL flight 2576, a Boeing 767 with 243 passengers and crew members, from Naha, Okinawa Prefecture. The pilot on the Air Canada plane, however, did not repeat the air traffic controller's instruction to wait - as normally done - but instead said "Position 24L," the code for the runway, and then entered the runway, the ministry said. The incident took place at around 6:10 p.m.

The air traffic controller thus ordered the JAL plane to undertake its landing again, the ministry said.

The Canadian plane, at the instruction of the controller, moved to a taxiway and took off about 10 minutes later, according to the ministry.

The controller asked the pilot just before the takeoff whether the pilot had obtained permission to enter the runway, and the pilot replied he thought it had been granted and repeated the instruction to that effect, the ministry said.

The JAL plane was about 2.7 kilometers from the border of the runway at an altitude of about 130 meters when the instruction was issued, the ministry said. It landed 15 minutes later.