An AS350B3 made an emergency landing and caught fire Thursday in Higashikagawa, Kagawa Prefecture, but the three men onboard escaped without injury, police said.
After departing Takamatsu airport around 9:25 a.m., the pilot noticed smoke coming from the aft end of the aircraft, which was chartered by Shikoku Electric Power Co. to check for typhoon damage to power cables, according to local police.
The pilot made the emergency landing on a baseball field around 10:20 a.m. The aircraft went up in flames after the pilot and two power company employees escaped.
The Eurocopter-made aircraft operated by Shikoku Air Service Co. based in Takamatsu, the capital of the southwestern Japanese prefecture of Kagawa, was scheduled to return to the airport around 11:25 a.m.
The government's Japan Transport Safety Board will dispatch two investigators to the accident site.
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