Kickstart: Composites under scrutiny following a plane crash in Tokyo

Calm and clear instructions — along with cooperative passengers — have been credited for saving the lives of more than 360 passengers and crew on board a Japan Airlines flight that burst into flames after colliding with a smaller Japan Coast Guard plane on a runway at a Tokyo airport.

Within 18 minutes of landing, while the plane was engulfed in flames, the crew was able to identify which exits were safest and get passengers out and onto the ground. There were only a few minor injuries. Five of the six people on the smaller Coast Guard plane were killed.

While celebrating their work, industry watchers are now turning part of their post-crash study to what role the Airbus composite body may have played in protecting the people inside until they could safely exit or contributing to the fire's spread.

"It's hard to overstate how important of a moment this is in modern aircraft design," Jon Ostrower, editor of The Air Current, a website covering the airline industry, said on social media after the crash. "Almost 400 people aboard that A350 and all got out safely after sustaining heavy damage. A lot of analyses and small-scale tests on carbon fiber just got a massive trove of new data."

Airbus, based in Toulouse, France, has already dispatched a team to work with investigators in Japan.

One of the most iconic jazz recordings in history has been reissued, marking another chance to hear what a plastic saxophone could produce in the hands of a master.

Hot House: the Complete Jazz at Massey Hall Recordings was released as a 19-track record to mark the 70th anniversary of the live recording in Toronto in 1953. The concert was performed by what was referred to as "the quintet": Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Bud Powell. It is the only known recording of all five leaders of the bebop branch of jazz.

It was also noted for Parker's instrument: an injection molded acrylic saxophone made by Grafton Co., a United Kingdom-based instrument maker. Parker had pawned his brass saxophone about a week before the concert. Grafton only made the plastic sax for about 10 years. All of its molds and parts were destroyed in the late 1960s.

Parker's plastic sax is now owned by the American Jazz Museum.

You can hear more about the instrument and the recording from National Public Radio here.

You may look at a Toyota Corolla and see a sedan. Akio Toyoda, the third-generation chairman of Toyota Motor Corp., sees an opportunity to embrace a future similar to that seen in Star Trek.

In his Jan. 3 address to Toyota employees, Toyoda referred to a recent dream he'd had in which his grandfather saw the company's products of 2024 but was not impressed, Hans Griemel, from our sister paper Automotive News, writes. Instead, Toyoda said his grandfather saw the need to move further from the company he'd founded in the 1930s.

"So this year, in the words of the immortal Captain Kirk, let's boldly go where no one has gone before!" Toyoda said. "Let's challenge ourselves to expand our capabilities and widen our horizons in every region and every country."