SAN FRANCISCO — An Asiana Airlines flight crashed while
landing at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, killing at
least two people, injuring dozens of others and forcing passengers to
jump down the emergency inflatable slides to safety as flames tore
through the plane.
One person was unaccounted for from among the 307 passengers and
crew, said airport spokesman Doug Yakel. He said 181 people were taken
to local hospitals. There were 291 passengers and 16 crew members.
San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said the
investigation has been turned over to the FBI and terrorism has been
ruled out.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Flight 214 from Seoul, South
Korea, crashed while landing before noon PDT. A video clip posted to
YouTube showed smoke coming from a jet on the tarmac. Passengers could
be seen jumping down the emergency slides.
The top of the fuselage was burned away and the entire tail was gone.
One engine appeared to have broken away. Pieces of the tail were strewn
about the runway. Emergency responders could be seen walking inside the
burned-out wreckage.
It wasn't immediately clear what happened to the plane as it was
landing, but some eyewitnesses said the aircraft seemed to lose control
and that the tail may have hit the ground.
Stephanie Turner saw the plane going down and the rescue slides
deploy, but returned to her hotel room before seeing any passengers get
off the jet, she told ABC News. She said when she first saw the flight
she noticed right away that the angle of its approach seemed strange.
"I mean we were sure that we had just seen a lot of people die. It
was awful," she said. "And it looked like the plane had completely
broken apart. There were flames and smoke just billowing."
Kate Belding was out jogging just before 11:30 a.m. on a path across
the water from the airport when she noticed the plane approaching the
runway in a way that "just didn't look like it was coming in quite
right."
"Then all of a sudden I saw what looked like a cloud of dirt puffing
up and then there was a big bang and it kind of looked like the plane
maybe bounced (as it neared the ground)," she said. "I couldn't really
tell what happened, but you saw the wings going up and (in) a weird
angle."
"Not like it was cartwheeling," she said, but rather as though the wings were almost swaying from side to side.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team
of investigators to San Francisco to probe the crash. NTSB spokeswoman
Kelly Nantel said Saturday that NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman would head
the team.
Boeing said it was preparing to provide technical assistance to the
NTSB. The maker of the plane's engines, Pratt & Whitney, said it was
cooperating with authorities investigating the crash.
Asiana is a South Korean airline, second in size to national carrier
Korean Air. It has recently tried to expand its presence in the United
States, and joined the Star Alliance, which is anchored in the U.S. by
United Airlines.
The 777-200 is a long-range plane from Boeing. The twin-engine
aircraft is one of the world's most popular long-distance planes, often
used for flights of 12 hours or more, from one continent to another. The
airline's website says its 777s can carry between 246 to 300
passengers.
The flight was 10 hours and 23 minutes, according to FlightAware, a
flight tracking service. The 777 is a smaller, wide-body jet that can
travel long distances without refueling and is typically used for long
flights over water.
The most notable accident involving a 777 occurred on Jan. 17, 2008
at Heathrow Airport in London. British Airways Flight 28 landed hard
about 1,000 feet short of the runway and slid onto the start of the
runway. The impact broke the 777-200's landing gear. There were 47
injuries, but no fatalities.
An investigation revealed ice pellets that had formed in the fuel
were clogging the fuel-oil heat exchanger, blocking fuel from reaching
the plane's engines. The Rolls-Royce Trent 800 series engines that were
used on the plane were then redesigned.
Bill Waldock, an expert on aviation accident investigation, said he
was reminded of the Heathrow accident as he watched video of Saturday's
crash. "Of course, there is no indication directly that's what happened
here," he said. "That's what the investigation is going to have to find
out."
The Asiana 777 "was right at the landing phase and for whatever
reason the landing went wrong," said Waldock, director of the
Embry-Riddle University accident investigation laboratory in Prescott,
Ariz. "For whatever reason, they appeared to go low on approach and then
the airplane pitched up suddenly to an extreme attitude, which could
have been the pilots trying to keep it out of the ground."
The last time a large U.S. airline lost a plane in a fatal crash was
an American Airlines Airbus A300 taking off from John F. Kennedy
International Airport in New York in 2001.
Smaller airlines have had crashes since then. The last fatal U.S.
crash was a Continental Express flight operated by Colgan Air, which
crashed into a house near Buffalo, N.Y. on Feb. 12, 2009. The crash
killed all 49 people on board and one man in a house.
Flying remains one of the safest forms of transportation: There are
about two deaths worldwide for every 100 million passengers on
commercial flights, according to an Associated Press analysis of
government accident data.
Just a decade ago, passengers were 10 times as likely to die when
flying on an American plane. The risk of death was even greater during
the start of the jet age, with 1,696 people dying – 133 out of every 100
million passengers – from 1962 to 1971. The figures exclude acts of
terrorism.
Asia remains one of the fastest-growing regions for aviation in the
world. Even with slowing economies in Japan and China, airlines there
saw 3.7 percent more passengers than a year ago, according to the
International Air Transport Association.
Finding enough experienced pilots to meet a growing number of flights
is becoming a problem. A 2012 report by aircraft manufacturer Boeing
said the industry would need 460,000 new commercial airline pilots in
the next two decades – with 185,000 of them needed in Asia alone.
"The Asia-Pacific region continues to present the largest projected growth in pilot demand," the report said.
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Associated Press writers Joan Lowy in Washington, D.C., Scott
Mayerowitz in New York and Pauline Arrillaga in Phoenix contributed to
this report.
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