The rescue of all 379 passengers of Japan Airlines in just one and a half minutes without serious injury seems like a “miracle”.

The same is certainly not true for the five of the total six passengers of the Japanese Coast Guard Dash 8 aircraft who did not manage to save themselves. And while the authorities have already started an investigation into the causes of the collision between the two planes, everyone wants to know how all the passengers managed to evacuate the burning Japan Airlines plane immediately and so calmly.

The crash that marked Japan Airlines

Experts say the successful evacuation is due to a combination of modern safety standards and Japan Airlines’ strict safety culture.

“From what I saw on the video, I was surprised and relieved that everyone got out,” says Graham Braithwaite, professor of safety and accident investigation at UK’s Cranfield University.

“It’s that serious for any aircraft to endure. But knowing a few things about this airline and how much effort they put into crew safety and training, the fact that they did such a good job shouldn’t be surprising,” added the professor.

Japan Airlines crew is considered one of the best trained crew in the world. This is due, according to the professor, to a catastrophic accident nearly 40 years ago that helped make Japan Airlines such a safe airline. The accident occurred on August 12, 1985, when JAL Flight 123 from Tokyo to Osaka crashed, killing 520 of the 524 passengers, after a faulty tail repair by Boeing technicians – not the airline – after a previous incident.

To date, it is the deadliest single-aircraft accident in aviation history.

In 2005, realizing that many employees were coming to the company with no memory of that accident 20 years earlier, JAL opened a space at its corporate headquarters displaying parts of the wreckage as well as stories of the crew and passengers.

Nearly four decades later, that tragic accident still has a profound effect on the company’s mindset, Professor Braithwaite tells CNN.

JAL is regularly ranked among the world’s safest airlines in an annual list by Airlineratings.com.

JAL officials are well aware that modern aviation safety records are “written by the blood of others who were not so fortunate,” a pilot for another European company told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Accidents become lessons, which are “shared throughout the industry so the crew can be better at their jobs.”

Alex Macheras, an air force analyst, told the BBC that the crew “managed to start the evacuation exactly as they have been trained” from the critical first minutes after the impact. The fire was “isolated to one area” of the Airbus A350 for the first 90 seconds, allowing them through a window to get everyone out.

The crew was clearly able to tell which doors were away from the flames, which is why the photos show that not all exits were opened for people to escape, but only the front door.

He added that passengers evacuated the aircraft without taking their belongings with them, a process that greatly slows down the evacuation of aircraft.

The testimonies of passengers are shocking

Anton Deibe, a 17-year-old Swede, described the chaos after the impact as the Airbus A350 came to rest on the runway.

“The whole cabin was filled with smoke within minutes,” he told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. “The smoke in the cabin looked like hell. It was hell. We crouched down on the floor. Then the emergency doors opened and we ran out. We had no idea where we were going so we just walked out onto the field. It was chaos.”

Satoshi Yamake, 59, said he felt the plane had “tilted to the side and felt a big bump” during the initial impact.

Another passenger, who was not named, described a “thump”, as if the aircraft collided with something on landing. “I saw a spark outside the window and the cabin filled with smoke.”

A third reported to Kyodo News that he felt “a boom as if we had hit something and it jerked upwards the moment we landed.”

A female passenger said it was dark in the cabin as the fire intensified after landing.

“It was hot inside the plane and I thought, to be honest, I wasn’t going to survive,” he told Japanese broadcaster NHK.

According to another passenger, the escape plan was made more difficult as only one set of doors was used. “An announcement said the rear and middle doors could not be opened. So everyone disembarked from the front,” he said.