The head of China Airlines on Tuesday handed out apologies and cash to passengers who barely escaped a blaze that destroyed one of the Taiwanese carrier's planes on a runway in Japan.

Chief Executive Officer Chao Kuo-shuai shook hands with each of the Taiwanese tourists who fled the Boeing 737-800 just moments before it exploded in a raging fireball at Okinawa's main airport on Monday.

"I apologise from the bottom of my heart," Chao told the Taiwanese in the southern Japanese city, giving each one a red envelope containing 100 dollars.
"I feel ashamed for causing so much trouble."

All 165 passengers and crew, most of them from Taiwan, survived the blaze, which erupted just moments after the Boeing 737-800 landed. Panicked travellers slid down emergency chutes and raced to safety before flames engulfed the jet.

It was the latest setback for China Airlines, which has suffered a series of fatal accidents, most recently in 2002.

"I feel for their efforts, but I can't be satisfied," one of the Taiwanese tourists said. "My luggage and all my other things were burnt up."

A company spokeswoman in Tokyo said the firm was separately considering compensation to the tourists for damage to luggage and other belongings on the aircraft.

In Taiwan, one woman who survived the inferno said after returning home: "I dare not fly China Airlines any more."

Another China Airlines arrived Tuesday in Naha, Okinawa's main city, where the airport was operating as normal as investigators sifted through the charred wreckage of the plane.

They were taking pictures of the engines, where the flames were believed to have broken out, television footage showed.

The probe involved some 40 investigators from Japan's transport ministry and Okinawa police. Investigators from Taiwan and the United States, where Boeing Co. is based, were also due to join the probe, officials said.

"Our team in Okinawa will collect necessary evidence including the voice recorder for analysis," Hiromi Tsurumi, an official of the transport ministry's Aircraft and Railway Accidents Investigation Commission, said in Tokyo.

"It's not easy to single out the causes of an airplane accident because several elements usually go together," Tsurumi said. "It may take time ... like at least half a year to announce the causes of the accident."

According to Japanese media, a ground engineer at the airport told investigators that he saw a massive amount of fuel leaking from one of the engines before the explosions took place.

The incident has rekindled memories in Japan of a major crash by a China Airlines plane here in 1994 which killed 264 people when the Airbus A300 nosedived on landing in the city of Nagoya.

The airline's last deadly incident came in May 2002, when a Boeing 747-200 with 225 people on board disintegrated in mid-flight and plunged into the Taiwan Straits about 20 minutes after taking off. There were no survivors.

Japan meanwhile ordered three of its airlines to check a total of 23 Boeing jets with the same type of engine as the destroyed Taiwanese plane.

The carriers -- Japan Airlines, All Nippon Airways and Skymark Airlines -- said they had finished checks and confirmed the safety of their planes, which went into service Tuesday as scheduled.