Any crash landing you can walk away from they say...

[Teelie]

Fortunately it appears almost everyone did in this case. 2 dead, several injured but looking at this, it could have been far worse.

SAN FRANCISCO —

At least two people were killed Saturday when an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crashed and burst into flames while landing at San Francisco International Airport, a fire department source told KTVU.

Meanwhile, according to dispatcher for the San Francisco Fire Department at least 12 people crash victims have been taken to local hospitals. It was not known how many passengers have survived the crash.

Firefighters and emergency crews from San Francisco, Redwood City, San Mateo responded to the airport and dosed the burning plane with foam to extinguished the fully engulfed aircraft.

Meanwhile, officials have closed all access to the airport and arriving flights were being diverted to nearby Oakland International.

Flight 214 from Seoul, South Korea was on a direct flight and was landing onto runway 28 at around 11:30 a.m. According to a witness, the plane was just about to land -- its landing gear had come down -- when the tail of the plane came off.

After wobbling for a minute, it appeared that the aircraft flipped upside down, coming to a stop on runway on it's back, according to witness Kathy Muhler.

Chopper footage from over the crash showed that the wings were still attached, contradicting the possibility that it rolled over on its back.

When it came to a halt, smoke was pouring from the aircraft. Fire crews responded minutes later, Muhler said.

According to Redwood City Fire Department, three alarms have been called and responding crews are reporting passengers in need of burn treatment.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced it was sending a team of investigators to San Francisco to determine the cause of crash. The team will be lead NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman.

As of noon, all flights into SFO were canceled because of the crash and all roads to the aiport were closed -- CHP suggested drivers avoid Hwy 101 and use I-280 instead.

It was unclear when SFO would be re-opened.

According to his Twitter feed, David Eun, the executive vice president of Samsung, was on the flight when it crashed.

"I just crash landed at SFO. Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine. I'm ok. Surreal..." tweeted Eun minutes after noon Saturday.

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 last time a large U.S. airline lost a plane in a fatal crash was an American Airlines Airbus A300 taking off from JFK 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.

 

[Anita18]

I've only seen the 2 dead reported on KTVU, and they claimed the plane flipped over onto its back (which is clearly not true), so I don't believe anything they say right now.

It's too soon to conclude anything, although I find it amusing that the forums on airliners.net are being overrun with people right now. Obviously that place would be full of folks who know airliners and how they're built, so people are going right to the source to get info.

Some are saying that since the debris field starts at the seawall, it's possible that the pilot came up short of the runway. -shudder-

Also, even though it's a minor quibble considering we don't know casualty numbers yet, SFO being shut down indefinitely is going to be a HUGE EFFING MESS. The only other international airports there is OAK and SJC, and they're both smaller, so I don't think they'll be able to take the overflow. They're reportedly diverting planes all over, including LAX, which is 8 hours away by car. Anyone flying to and from the Bay Area is going to have a headache in the coming weeks.

 

[GENERAL RAAM582]

What's all that white stuff?

 

[Hotwire]

What's all that white stuff?

It's a foam that firefights use to put out jet fuel.

 

[GENERAL RAAM582]

Oh, I see. Anyway, I'm glad mostly everyone got out of that.

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

Wow, working in Seoul I take that very route (and usually that airline) once or twice a year. Hope for the best.

 

[bullets]

2 Dead , 60 missing according to CNN.

 

[Sawyer]

What's all that white stuff?

That's what she said.

2 Dead , 60 missing according to CNN.

Missing, or injured? Because I'm pretty sure it was 60 injured.

 

[Anita18]

Yeah the numbers keep shifting. They do report that they don't expect all the missing to be dead though. In the confusion, passengers might easily have wandered through the airport without checking in with authorities.

In the Airliners.net forums, they're pretty impressed that the fuselage stayed intact, seeing how much damage the plane sustained. And that so many people walked away relative unscathed, seeing how it stopped so suddenly. They must have been thrown around in there!

Also, they had to note an A380 was on approach and had to be diverted to OAK, which would be the very first time an A380 landed at that airport. Plane nerds...

 

[bullets]

Missing, or injured? Because I'm pretty sure it was 60 injured.

It said missing , but now that number has changed. 2 Dead , 1 missing.

 

[Anita18]

From the SFO press conference:

181 transported to hospitals out of 307 total. 49 serious, 132 were transported later after on-site triage.

123 people uninjured and in terminals.

2 dead.

1 person still unconfirmed.

 

[Thundercrack85]

The 777 is actually one of the best plane designs. It has a fairly incredible safety record.

I guess it's too soon to tell what the hell happened, but just thought I'd mention that.

 

[Teelie]

Yeah, the descriptions of what happened are as confounding as the fact it manage to land as intact as it did. Reports of fireballs, of the plane being upside down, then you see the tail is missing and most of the ceiling is missing... no telling yet what caused this.

 

[Warhammer]

If I ever escaped that, I will forever have a new outlook on life. That right there was a miracle.

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

The 777 is actually one of the best plane designs. It has a fairly incredible safety record.

I guess it's too soon to tell what the hell happened, but just thought I'd mention that.

It sounds more and more like pilot error to me. The guy's landing was too sharp and low and when he tried to correct it that's when the tail hit the sea wall and snapped off.

 

[Wontkins]

What's all that white stuff?

Tony Montana was a passenger on the plane.

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

Tony Montana was a passenger on the plane.

 

[Anita18]

It sounds more and more like pilot error to me. The guy's landing was too sharp and low and when he tried to correct it that's when the tail hit the sea wall and snapped off.

Bahahaha, some official in the press conference apparently suggested that the pilot tried to skim the water to put out a fire on the bottom of the aircraft. Even though the landing gear and engines would hit before the fuselage. Yeah...I don't think so.

I wonder if he's a YouTube commenter in his free time.

The Instrument Landing System was out on that runway, so they had to do a manual approach. But with clear visibility and low wind speeds, it should have been a piece of cake for a professional pilot. Indeed, he will have things to explain.....

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

Bahahaha, some official in the press conference apparently suggested that the pilot tried to skim the water to put out a fire on the bottom of the aircraft. Even though the landing gear and engines would hit before the fuselage. Yeah...I don't think so.

I wonder if he's a YouTube commenter in his free time.

The Instrument Landing System was out on that runway, so they had to do a manual approach. But with clear visibility and low wind speeds, it should have been a piece of cake for a professional pilot. Indeed, he will have things to explain.....

Co-pilot too. He should have intervened. They both would have had to have terrible lapses in judgement.

 

[Anita18]

Co-pilot too. He should have intervened. They both would have had to have terrible lapses in judgement.

I think there was a deadly plane crash years ago where the pilot was doing stupid **** and the authoritarian culture dictated that the copilot couldn't correct him. And they killed themselves and nearly all the passengers on that plane because of it.

Oh, I found the article about it: http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/200...ture-cockpit-communication-and-plane-crashes/

Coincidentally, it was a Korean airline then too. (I'm Asian, this doesn't surprise me!) But they reportedly fixed the culture issue since then.

It's possible the plane was on some kind of auto-something or other and they didn't think to correct it until it was far too late.

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

Christ... they're starting to say one of the two teenaged victims on the runway didn't die from the actual plane crash, but a secondary cause, specifically getting run over by one of the rescue vehicles.

 

[Teelie]

They haven't said that specifically at all. They said might have which is still close to she was hit by one but without the details it's too early to say with certainty just yet.

 

[Thundercrack85]

If they did die as a direct result of the crash, this would be the first time a 777 passenger has ever been killed.

 

[Nell2ThaIzzay]

Well things like this certainly help my anxiety about flying.

 

[Anita18]

Well if you think about it, about 30,000 commercial flights happen every day. And a crash like this happens every 5 years or more, and here, only 2 people died. Seriously, watch the videos, it's amazing that the plane's fuselage stayed intact. It took such a beating. The nose bounced up a good 200 feet before it came back down. The fact that it stayed intact saved so many lives. That thing was incredibly well-built.

There are hundreds of worse car crashes that happen every day.