Teenagers die on flight to summer camp in US
Source: Agencies |
July 8, 2013, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
US officials were examining flight information recorders as they began investigating the crash of an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 that burst into flames after it crash landed in San Francisco, killing two teenage Chinese students and injuring more than 180 people.
There was no immediate indication of the cause of the Saturday accident but Asiana said mechanical failure did not appear to be a factor.
Eric Weiss, a spokesman for the US National Transportation Safety Board, said the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder had been recovered and sent to Washington for analysis. The Federal Aviation Administration was also investigating and Asiana Airlines said South Korean accident investigators were on their way to San Francisco.
NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said there was no indication of a criminal act but it was too early to determine what went wrong.
Over the next few days, investigators will interview the flight crew and look at data from the recorders, radar equipment and other information to determine the cause of the crash, she said. "It's really important to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together."
The plane was coming in from Seoul when witnesses said its tail appeared to hit the approach area of a runway that juts into San Francisco Bay. One witness said the plane appeared to be coming in too low and too fast.
The impact knocked off the plane's tail and the aircraft appeared to bounce violently, scattering a trail of debris before coming to rest on the tarmac.
Pictures taken by survivors showed passengers hurrying away from the wrecked plane. Thick smoke billowed from the fuselage and TV footage later showed the aircraft gutted and blackened by fire. Much of its roof was gone.
Interior damage to the plane was also extreme, Hersman said. "You can see the devastation from the outside of the aircraft, the burn-through, the damage to the external fuselage. But what you can't see is the damage internally. That is really striking."
The two dead Chinese students had been seated at the rear of the aircraft, Asiana said.
The crash was the first fatal accident involving a Boeing 777, a popular long-range jet that has been in service since 1995. It was the first fatal commercial airline accident in the United States since a regional plane operated by Colgan Air crashed in New York in 2009.
"For now, we acknowledge that there were no problems caused by the 777-200 plane or engines," Yoon Young-doo, the president and CEO of the airline, told reporters at the company headquarters on the outskirts of Seoul.
Asiana said the flight had carried 291 passengers and 16 crew members. The passengers included 141 Chinese, 77 South Koreans, 64 US citizens, three Indians, three Canadians, one French, one Vietnamese and one Japanese citizen.
Dale Carnes, assistant deputy chief of the San Francisco Fire Department, said 49 people were hospitalized with serious injuries. Another 132 suffered moderate and minor injuries.
Five people were in a critical condition at San Francisco General Hospital, according to spokeswoman Rachael Kagan. She said a total of 52 people were treated for burns, fractures and internal injuries. Three people were critical at Stanford Hospital.
Survivor Benjamin Levy said he believed the Asiana plane had been coming in too low.
"I know the airport pretty well, so I realized the guy was a bit too low, too fast, and somehow he was not going to hit the runway on time, so he was too low ... he put some gas and tried to go up again," he told reporters. "But it was too late, so we hit the runway pretty bad, and then we started going up in the air again, and then landed again, pretty hard."
Levy said he opened an emergency door and ushered people out. "We got pretty much everyone in the back section of the plane out," he said. "When we got out there was some smoke. There was no fire then. The fire came afterward."
A senior Asiana official said the pilot was Lee Jeong-min, a veteran pilot who has spent his career with the airline. He was among four pilots on the plane who rotated on two-person shifts during the 10-hour flight, the official said.
A San Francisco airport spokesman said a component of the facility's instrument landing system that tracks an incoming airplane's glide path was not working on Saturday. Pilots and air safety experts said the glide path technology was far from essential for a safe landing in good weather.
Asiana, South Korea's junior carrier, has had two other fatal crashes in its 25-year history.
There was no immediate indication of the cause of the Saturday accident but Asiana said mechanical failure did not appear to be a factor.
Eric Weiss, a spokesman for the US National Transportation Safety Board, said the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder had been recovered and sent to Washington for analysis. The Federal Aviation Administration was also investigating and Asiana Airlines said South Korean accident investigators were on their way to San Francisco.
NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said there was no indication of a criminal act but it was too early to determine what went wrong.
Over the next few days, investigators will interview the flight crew and look at data from the recorders, radar equipment and other information to determine the cause of the crash, she said. "It's really important to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together."
The plane was coming in from Seoul when witnesses said its tail appeared to hit the approach area of a runway that juts into San Francisco Bay. One witness said the plane appeared to be coming in too low and too fast.
The impact knocked off the plane's tail and the aircraft appeared to bounce violently, scattering a trail of debris before coming to rest on the tarmac.
Pictures taken by survivors showed passengers hurrying away from the wrecked plane. Thick smoke billowed from the fuselage and TV footage later showed the aircraft gutted and blackened by fire. Much of its roof was gone.
Interior damage to the plane was also extreme, Hersman said. "You can see the devastation from the outside of the aircraft, the burn-through, the damage to the external fuselage. But what you can't see is the damage internally. That is really striking."
The two dead Chinese students had been seated at the rear of the aircraft, Asiana said.
The crash was the first fatal accident involving a Boeing 777, a popular long-range jet that has been in service since 1995. It was the first fatal commercial airline accident in the United States since a regional plane operated by Colgan Air crashed in New York in 2009.
"For now, we acknowledge that there were no problems caused by the 777-200 plane or engines," Yoon Young-doo, the president and CEO of the airline, told reporters at the company headquarters on the outskirts of Seoul.
Asiana said the flight had carried 291 passengers and 16 crew members. The passengers included 141 Chinese, 77 South Koreans, 64 US citizens, three Indians, three Canadians, one French, one Vietnamese and one Japanese citizen.
Dale Carnes, assistant deputy chief of the San Francisco Fire Department, said 49 people were hospitalized with serious injuries. Another 132 suffered moderate and minor injuries.
Five people were in a critical condition at San Francisco General Hospital, according to spokeswoman Rachael Kagan. She said a total of 52 people were treated for burns, fractures and internal injuries. Three people were critical at Stanford Hospital.
Survivor Benjamin Levy said he believed the Asiana plane had been coming in too low.
"I know the airport pretty well, so I realized the guy was a bit too low, too fast, and somehow he was not going to hit the runway on time, so he was too low ... he put some gas and tried to go up again," he told reporters. "But it was too late, so we hit the runway pretty bad, and then we started going up in the air again, and then landed again, pretty hard."
Levy said he opened an emergency door and ushered people out. "We got pretty much everyone in the back section of the plane out," he said. "When we got out there was some smoke. There was no fire then. The fire came afterward."
A senior Asiana official said the pilot was Lee Jeong-min, a veteran pilot who has spent his career with the airline. He was among four pilots on the plane who rotated on two-person shifts during the 10-hour flight, the official said.
A San Francisco airport spokesman said a component of the facility's instrument landing system that tracks an incoming airplane's glide path was not working on Saturday. Pilots and air safety experts said the glide path technology was far from essential for a safe landing in good weather.
Asiana, South Korea's junior carrier, has had two other fatal crashes in its 25-year history.
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