777 Airliner Crash at SFO

[Joe Guy]

Plane crash at San Francisco airport

As Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 from Seoul crashed on the runway upon landing at San Francisco International Airport Saturday, July 6, 2013.

Last Updated 3:32 p.m. ET

SAN FRANCISCO A federal aviation official says an Asiana Airlines flight has crashed while landing at San Francisco airport. It was not immediately known whether there were any injuries.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Lynn Lunsford says the Boeing 777 crashed at San Francisco Airport while landing on Saturday.

Asiana Flight 214 was arriving from Seoul.

Photos and video of the aircraft show fire and smoke from the aircraft.

Early reports indicate the tail came apart from the plane and the resulting fire sent black smoke billowing into the air, visible for miles.

CBS Station KPIX reports witnesses heard a loud bang, and saw a huge cloud of smoke.

Rescue vehicles were on the scene immediately afterwards.

The airport has been closed -- no flights were being allowed in or out of SFO at this time.



source

[dales]

I heard that there were 2 deaths and 61 injured.

[Gob]

Not nice, not good.

Passenger David Eun tweeted a picture of people jumping out of the plane's emergency inflatable slides and wrote: "I just crash landed at SFO. Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine. I'm ok. Surreal..."

Mr Eun, who describes himself as a "digital media guy" and "frequent flier", added: "Fire and rescue people all over the place. They're evacuating the injured. Haven't felt this way since 9/11."

A witness to the crash, Ki Siadatan, said the plane "looked out of control" as it descended over San Francisco Bay to land just before 11:30 (18:30 GMT).

"We heard a 'boom' and saw the plane disappear into a cloud of dust and smoke," he told the BBC. "There was then a second explosion."

He saw events unfold from the balcony of his home in the Millbrae area of San Francisco, which overlooks the airport.

Weather conditions were fine and there was little wind, he added.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23214513

[Joe Guy]

I heard that there were 2 deaths and 61 injured.

That's relatively good news. There was also a report of one lady walking off the plane carrying her suitcase.

I know it's still early and not a lot can be confirmed, but it has been reported there were just over 300 passengers on the plane and the majority of them escaped unharmed.

[Lord Jim]

It's being described now as a "hard landing".....(this wasn't a case of a plane falling from the sky; had that been what happened, there probably would have been no survivors...this was a landing that went bad)

Of the injured, 10 are being described as critical...

Joe is right, this could have been much worse; some of the damage to the top of the plane seen in the photos was caused by the rescue teams.

[Lord Jim]

Five of the 10 ten who were listed as critical have been upgraded to serious...

The Boeing 777 has a superb safety record, (there has only been one other crash landing involving the plane 16 years ago; this is the first time there have ever been fatalities) as does Asiana Airlines. ( a five star safety rating for the past six years) SFO also has an excellent record, (there hasn't been a serious incident there since 1987, when 11 died in a crash landing.)

It's early obviously, and there will be a thorough investigation, but initially at least it looks like pilot error. The plane came in at too low an approach, the pilot realized it too late and tried to pull up, but the tail still struck the sea wall (that separates the Bay from the runways.)

[dales]

There's talk that the airplane was going too slow for an approach. The crew realized this too late, tried to bring the nose up which resulted in the tail hitting the seawall causing the crash.

Looks to me like human error.

To add insult to injury, one of the two deaths might have been caused by being run over by an emergency vehicle.

[Joe Guy]

I keep hearing that they will know so much more when they can open up the black box and hear what the pilots were doing and saying.

I wonder why they can't just ask the pilots what they were doing and saying? And if they knew that they were too low?

[dales]

Good point, Joe.

The other "black" box will actually reveal telemetry info (flaps, leading edge, speed, etc.) I can't figure out for the life of me how they screwed up so royally on their final approach.

[Joe Guy]

Maybe the pilots were involved in a very serious game of Chinese Checkers....

[dales]

Hanky-panky with the flight attendants?

Yannow, I was thinking about that smoking wreckage burning there on the tarmac as other planes were taxing to take off. Not exactly a confidence builder...........

[Gob]

One of the Chinese teenagers who was found dead in the Asiana Airlines wreckage may have actually survived the crash - only to be struck and killed by emergency responders scrambling to the crash site, it was revealed on Sunday.

Authorities say one of the two dead victims from the crash was found outside the plane and had apparently be hit by a fire truck or an ambulance. San Francisco's medical examiner is now conducting an autopsy to determine the cause of the girl's death, fire department spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge said. 'One of the deceased did have injuries consistent with those of having been run over by a vehicle,' Talmadge said. 'Many agencies were on the field yesterday.'

[MajGenl.Meade]

I'm sure they listen to the cockpit voice recorders and examine the data from the black box as a necessary corrective and/or verification, whatever the pilots might say or recall.

(Reuters) - The pilot of the crashed Asiana plane at San Francisco airport was still "in training" for the Boeing 777 when he attempted to land the aircraft under supervision on Saturday, the South Korean airline said. Lee Kang-kook, the second most junior pilot of four on board the Asiana Airlines aircraft, had 43 hours' experience flying the long-range jet, it said on Monday. The plane's crew tried to abort the descent less than two seconds before it hit a seawall, bounced along the tarmac and burst into flames.

It was his first attempt to land a 777 at San Francisco (and last?), though he had flown there 29 times previously on different types of aircraft, said South Korean transport ministry official Choi Seung-youn. Earlier, the ministry said Lee Kang-kook had accumulated a total of 9,793 flying hours, including his 43 at the controls of the 777...... The plane crashed after the crew tried to abort the landing with less than two seconds to go, according to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said on Sunday. Asiana said Lee Kang-kook was in the pilot seat during the landing, although it was not clear whether the senior pilot, Lee Jeong-min, who had clocked up 3,220 hours on a Boeing 777, had tried to take over to abort the landing.

Information collected from the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder indicated that there were no signs of trouble until seven seconds before impact, when the crew tried to accelerate, NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said at a news conference at the airport. A stall warning in which the cockpit controls begin to shake activated four seconds before impact, and the crew tried to abort the landing and initiate what is known as a "go around" maneuver 1.5 seconds before crashing, Hersman said.

"Air speed was significantly below the target air speed" of 137 knots, she said. The throttle was set at idle as the plane approached the airport and the engines appeared to respond normally when the crew tried to gain speed in the seconds before the crash, Hersman added.

"What I will tell you is that the NTSB conducts very thorough investigations. We will not reach a determination of probable cause in the first few days that we're on an accident scene," she told reporters.

"What I will tell you...." seems a little redundant after tell all that!

[dales]

A Hero's Tale........

(07-08) 11:59 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco firefighters responding to the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 scrambled up the jetliner's inflatable chutes even as black smoke billowed out and some of the last passengers slid down.

In the back of the plane - which had lost its tail after clipping a rocky seawall short of the runway - they joined a city police officer wearing no protective gear and rescued four injured victims, including one who was trapped.

The account of the first responders emerged Monday at a news conference in which firefighters described a chaotic, rapidly changing scene after Saturday's accident at San Francisco International Airport, which killed two 16-year-old girls and injured dozens of other people.

"It seemed to be surreal, like it wasn't happening," said San Francisco fire Lt. Dave Monteverdi.

Fire Lt. Christine Emmons said that as she drove toward the crash just before noon Saturday, she saw a huge column of smoke. "Adrenaline was flowing," she said, "and I had to keep reminding my driver, if we don't get there we won't be able to help anybody."

The firefighters found the Boeing 777 on its belly, with jet fuel leaking from the left wing and passengers streaming down the chutes. One flight attendant, carrying a flight manifest, told firefighters that four of her colleagues were missing.

As firefighters began applying foam to the blaze, Monteverdi climbed a chute from a left-side door, along with Emmons and firefighter/paramedic Mike Kirk. A hose line was fed to them, they said, and they knocked down flames in the fuselage.

The cockpit was clear, they said, but Kirk soon radioed that he had found one flight attendant and four passengers still in the back of the plane, including an elderly man and a person that was trapped. There was less smoke in the back but more damage from the landing.

"It was hectic," Emmons said. "The back of the plane did not hold up as well as the front of the plane. ... I feel very lucky and blessed we were able to get those people out at that time."

One of two people put on backboards, Monteverdi said, was a woman who appeared to have fractured legs. One man was groaning and the crew had little time to assess his injuries.

"We were running out of time," Monteverdi said. "The smoke was getting thicker and thicker. We had no choice. We stood him up. Amazingly, he began shuffling his feet."

The firefighters said they were amazed to see San Francisco police Officer Jim Cunningham inside the plane helping out, wearing only his uniform.

Cunningham said he had stopped an ambulance after hearing of the plane crash, telling the driver to follow him. Outside the plane, he said, he and another officer threw knives to members of the flight crew who needed to cut people out of seats, as jet fuel gushed out near him.

As he looked up into the plane from the back, he said, "it didn't look like they had enough people." So he went in.

"I was just running back and forth trying to help people," he said. "I didn't think about it. I just knew people were trapped in there. I just thought, 'I'm kind of a tough guy, I can hold my breath if there's a lot of smoke.' "

At one point, he said, he picked up an iPhone, flicked it on, saw a picture of a mother and daughter and thought, "Someone's going to want this." He found another that appeared to belong to a flight attendant and figured it might contain someone's final memories.
So he put both phones in his back pocket.

Police Lt. Gaertano Caltagirone, who commands the police airport division, followed Cunningham into the plane. He said that after the passengers were rescued, he asked Cunningham if he thought anyone might still be inside.

Cunningham said, "Hold on," and went running back in, Caltagirone said. When he emerged, he said, "They're all out, they're all out."

Cunningham said that even after that, he was worried there had been a miscommunication.

"I wanted to go back in and look through the rubble," he said. "I started crying because I was thinking I screwed up and somebody got killed."

Surrounded by firefighters and police officers who responded to the crash, Police Chief Greg Suhr said at the news conference, "It could have been so much worse if not for the actions of the men and women behind me."

Crash victims went to nine hospitals - San Francisco General Hospital received the greatest number, 62. Of those, 27 were children, hospital spokeswoman Rachael Kagan said Monday.

Seventeen people were still hospitalized there Monday, six of them in critical condition, she said.

[dales]

More Heroics...........

Herhold: What made an Asiana flight attendant a hero in SFO crash?

By Scott Herhold


In almost every big story, there's an episode that distills the drama, a moment that reveals the choices faced by ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

In the Asiana air crash at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, it came in the few minutes that the passengers had to evacuate the plane before flames engulfed it.

No one showed more presence of mind than a flight attendant identified as Jiyeon Kim, a slight woman who carried people as much as twice her size from the plane.

"She was a hero,'' said one passenger, Eugene Anthony Rah. "This tiny little girl was carrying people piggyback, running everywhere with tears running down her face. She was crying, but she was still so calm and helping people.''

The Asiana crash already has bequeathed a legacy of questions and doubt. We ponder whether it was pilot error (Indication: yes). We ask whether an emergency vehicle ran over a victim who died.

We wonder whether the airline gave adequate training to the pilot at the controls of the 777. We marvel that so few people died in what was such a likely catastrophe.

Me? I'm most fascinated by the story of a hero -- a young woman whose Facebook page lists "Titanic'' and "The Devil Wears Prada'' as among her favorite movies.

Our reactions

It's hard to read about the crash without thinking what we'd do if we were in the plight of the Asiana passengers.

Would we grab our carry-on luggage? Would we try to save injured passengers? Would we use elbows to get to the exit?

Jiyeon Kim -- some stories spell her name as Ji-yeon Kim -- entertained no such existential problems. She just had to do her duty.

Certainly she had received thorough training as a flight attendant. And certainly she kept herself fit. A photo of her after the crash shows a thin, young woman with long arms, staring at the camera with a mix of befuddlement and
exhaustion.

Just what was the extraordinary quality that made her a hero? What set her apart?

We're used to thinking of heroism in terms of action figures like Steven Seagal, men who employ martial-arts moves to combat bad guys taking over a Navy ship.

A quieter quality

Real heroism might reflect something less noisy, less boastful. It might be the willingness to lift someone on your back and carry them when they're twice your size.

It might be the willingness to let tears run down your cheeks while you direct passengers to the exit. In other words, it's not a denial of danger or pain. It's composure under pressure.

Suddenly, from the huddle, Montana told his colleagues: "Check it out: Isn't that John Candy?'' The quarterback had such good eyesight that he was able to pick out the comedian. Montana's goofy coolness relaxed the team.

The parallels with the Asiana crash are imperfect. The 49ers were not in a life and death situation.

Yet there was a clarity, a steadiness of purpose to both Joe Montana and Jiyeon Kim. In the tightest circumstances, they focused on others, not themselves. Somehow that produced quiet miracles.

[Guinevere]

One of the Chinese teenagers who was found dead in the Asiana Airlines wreckage may have actually survived the crash - only to be struck and killed by emergency responders scrambling to the crash site, it was revealed on Sunday.

Authorities say one of the two dead victims from the crash was found outside the plane and had apparently be hit by a fire truck or an ambulance. San Francisco's medical examiner is now conducting an autopsy to determine the cause of the girl's death, fire department spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge said. 'One of the deceased did have injuries consistent with those of having been run over by a vehicle,' Talmadge said. 'Many agencies were on the field yesterday.'

This one really disturbs me -- it was one of the young girls who fell out of the plane when the tail disintegrated. Shouldn't the emergency crews have been more careful moving through the debris field?

[MajGenl.Meade]

At least she didn't trip on a kerb

[Sue U]

At least she didn't trip on a kerb

Not. Funny.