A Japan transportation safety official said "miscommunication" may have led to an incident at Kansai International Airport involving a Hawaiian Airlines jet with 208 passengers and crew that entered a runway just minutes before a cargo jet was about to land.

Hawaiian Airlines says it is cooperating with the Japanese investigation after an All Nippon Airways cargo plane with a pilot and co-pilot aboard pulled out of its landing approach to avoid a collision Wednesday night. No one was injured.

Keoni Wagner, a spokesman for Hawaiian Airlines, said the airline is "working closely with aviation authorities to find out what happened."

Norio Takakuwa of the Japan Transport Safety Board said the board will collect transmission data and conduct hearings with the airport controller and the pilot.

"The aircraft was completely on the runway," Takakuwa said in a Kyodo News report. "There may have been a misunderstanding, or a miscommunication between the controller and the captain."

Hawaiian began daily flights to Kansai Airport, near Osaka, in July.

Wagner said the Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767-300 was headed to Honolulu from Osaka at about 9:35 p.m. Wednesday Japan time.

News reports from Japan said the Hawaiian Airlines captain acknowledged a controller instruction to "stand by" but proceeded to enter the runway as an ANA cargo plane was landing.

The ANA Boeing 737 was about four miles from the airport when it had to abort its landing, Kyodo reported. The flight was estimated to be about two minutes from landing, according to a report in the Mainichi Daily News.

The controller told the Hawaiian plane to return to the taxiway before allowing the ANA cargo plane to land at around 9:45 p.m., news reports said, adding that the Hawaiian flight took off about five minutes later. Wagner says the airline hasn’t been able to listen to the recordings yet and that it’s premature to draw conclusions.

The Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism reported the incident Thursday and said three investigators were sent to Kansai to investigate.

Hawaiian Airlines Flight 450 arrived in Honolulu without further incident Wednesday morning.

The head of Hawaiian Airlines’ local Air Line Pilots Association union said the parties involved are still trying to sort through the incident.

"ALPA and the pilots involved are cooperating with the company and the Japanese transportation authority in this investigation," said Chris Elley, master executive council chairman of Hawaiian’s ALPA unit. "Details are still emerging at this time. Since this is an ongoing investigation, we aren’t at liberty to comment further."

A senior international captain with Hawaiian Airlines, who wasn’t at the controls for that flight and didn’t want to be identified, said that at four miles out on a stabilized approach, a go-around is "an easily executed maneuver."

"On every approach, a pilot is ready to initiate a go-around; we’re trained that way," he said. "Until you touch down, you can be given go-around instruction whatever the reason. So it only comes as a surprise if something out of the ordinary happens, which in this case something did — the runway was cluttered.

"These things don’t happen frequently, but every now and then there is an incident like that’s when it’s fully investigated to find out where the breakdown was to rectify this situation so that it doesn’t happen again."

The senior pilot said he wouldn’t classify the incident as a big issue, but said the main issue is why the airplane taxied onto the runway.

Wagner said he didn’t know how long the investigation would take.

"We are working very closely with the authorities in Japan to determine exactly what happened and whether any steps are necessary to prevent another occurrence," he said. "It’s standard operating procedure in aviation to share that information so if any procedural adjustments are in order that everyone can make those adjustments."

This was the first safety incident involving a Hawaiian Airlines aircraft since Aug. 11, 2008, when a co-pilot lost consciousness on an interisland flight from Lihue to Honolulu and the aircraft landed without incident, according to the Federal Aviation Administration website. Before that a Hawaiian Airlines flight on Dec. 1, 2006, exited onto a closed taxiway after landing at San Jose International Airport and went through seven barricades; and on Nov. 23, 2004, three employees were injured when a Hawaiian Airlines baggage tug with loaded cargo containers maneuvered around a parked Aloha Airlines aircraft and collided with an inbound Hawaiian jet on the taxiway.