At least two passengers were killed and 182 others injured as an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft arriving from Seoul crash-landed and burst into flames at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday. Six of the injured, including a child, were stated to be in critical condition.
However, judging from the scale of devastation, with a large segment of the plane gutted and its tail severed, it was indeed a providential escape for most of the 291 passengers and 16 crew members.
“We’re lucky there hasn’t been a greater loss of life,” San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said.
The two dead passengers were identified as Chinese girl students, Ye Meng Yuan and Wang lin Jia, both aged 16. Both of them were seated in the back half of the plane.
Three Indian passengers were on board the ill-fated flight – Vedpal Singh, his wife and son. “We knew something was horribly wrong. It’s miraculous we survived,” said Singh, who suffered a collarbone fracture and had his arm in a sling.
The flight that originated in Shanghai had 141 Chinese passengers, including about 70 students and teachers who were reportedly on way to summer camps. And there were 77 South Koreans and 61 Americans on board.
Witnesses were quoted as saying that the tail of the plan appeared to be the first to hit the approach area of the runway. Reports said the tail came off and the aircraft bounced violently, followed by fire and smoke billowing from the fuselage.
“It hit with its tail, spun down the runway, and bounced,” said one witness, Stefanie Turner, 32. Despite incredible damage to the plane, left dismembered and scarred, with large chunks of its body burned away, many of the 307 aboard were able to walk away on their own.
There was no warning from the cockpit as the plane slammed the edge of the runway, with the tail being severed by the impact and sending the rest of the aircraft spinning on its belly. Soon enough, the middle section of the plane became a massive fireball with large clouds of thick smoke billowing skyward, and first responders rushed to the scene.
Airport spokesman Doug Yakel said 182 of the 307 passengers and crew were taken to hospitals, with 49 in critical or serious condition. Sunday morning reports said at least six of the injured, including a child, were in critical condition.
A team from the National Transportation Safety Board has begun a probe into the crash. The team has recovered the black fox flight recorders and is assessing the damage, NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman said.
“The cockpit data recording gives a sense of the conversations, the workload and what was going on between pilots not just in the moments of the crash but in the minutes and hours before. If the data’s good, it will help guide our investigation,” she said.
Asiana Airlines CEO Yoon Young-doo offered an apology during a televised news conference. “I am bowing my head and extending my deep apology,” he said.
Yoon discounted the possibility of engine or mechanical problems as the possible cause for the crash. As for the possibility of human error, he said the Flight 214 pilots are all veterans, with more than 10,000 hours of flight experience. One pilot has almost 10,000 hours’ experience, he said.\\
Some aviation specialists said the crash was similar to the one involving an Air France plane in Toronto in 2005, in which all passengers and crew had survived. It was an Airbus A 340 that was also engulfed in a large fire, but all 309 passengers and crew survived.
“Without ignoring the casualty figures from the San Francisco incident, it shows that aircraft crashes like this are proving to be survivable incidents provided there is adequate crew training and an awareness of passengers to know what to do when there is an emergency,” said CNN’s Richard Quest.