<p>Sad for the two who died and 10 critically injured but surprised such low numbers with over 300 aboard, including 291 passengers! Seems like the crew and passengers acted quickly to keep harm to a minimum.</p>
<p>Did the tail come off when the landing gear came down and the plane was in the air or did it come off when the plane hit the ground?</p>
<p>razor…I doubt the tail failure occurred when the gear was extended, since gear extension normally occurs further out from the runway. It looks like there’s a trail of wreckage from the breakwater up onto the runway, so at least visually it looks like he landed short of 28L which could reasonably cause the tail section to break off and could also cause landing gear damage or shear. The remainder of the fuselage didn’t travel all that far down the runway, and with the exception of the fire damage seemed to be more intact than in many other crash scenarios.</p>
<p>It looks like it hit tail down nose up.
They have resumed limited use of runways.
It was pretty intact. If it had spun or flipped the wings would have been sheared off.</p>
<p>CNN has just reported that sixty people are unaccounted for.</p>
<p>It sounds like perhaps when the tail hit and was broken off, the flight attendants who were sitting in the back were thrown out.
[Passenger:</a> ‘We just jumped off’ plane - CNN.com Video](<a href=“http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2013/07/06/blitzer-interviews-sf-crash-passenger.cnn.html?rv]Passenger:”>http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2013/07/06/blitzer-interviews-sf-crash-passenger.cnn.html?rv)</p>
<p>The Asiana jet had different engines than the British Airways jet, so while the accidents may seem similar the causes may be very different.
[Here’s</a> what happened in the Asiana 777 crash | KING5.com Seattle](<a href=“http://www.king5.com/news/aerospace/Experts-Boeing-777-has-fantastic-safety-record-214495201.html]Here’s”>http://www.king5.com/news/aerospace/Experts-Boeing-777-has-fantastic-safety-record-214495201.html)</p>
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<p>Not sure if you count the Japan Air Lines flight that was attempting to land at SFO in 1968. The plane landed in the bay two miles short of the runway.</p>
<p>[“Shiga</a>” in the Bay](<a href=“http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/Shiga-SFBay.htm]"Shiga”>"Shiga" in the Bay)
<a href=“http://www.airdisaster.com/reports/ntsb/AAR70-02.pdf[/url]”>http://www.airdisaster.com/reports/ntsb/AAR70-02.pdf</a></p>
<p>“Some UNCONFIRMED witness reports make it sound POSSIBLE that the pilot lined up to land on the wrong runway initially, then made a late bid to correct to Runway 28L which he was cleared to land on.”</p>
<p>I never believe these witness reports. It would be very unlikely that someone could tell that the pilot lined up on the wrong runway, as opposed to merely being slightly off course. Or sometimes ATC will change runways, but not at the last minute. Unless the witness was clairvoyant, they would have no idea. People generally don’t know what they are looking at anyways.</p>
<p>I suspect that it will be some time before we find the true cause of the accident, until then we can only speculate. I think that this was not just a botched landing. Anyone landing that short could recognize it in an instant, particularly in good weather like that. SFO is very controlled, though it can be a little stressful with so much traffic. Runway 28L and R are both very long runways, no hurry to land on brick one. People love to blame the pilots, as it is the easiest answer, but I suspect there was more going on than just screwing up the landing. If you saw yourself in that predicament, most anyone would accomplish a go around. On a senior airplane like the 777, those pilots had plenty of experience.</p>
<p>I would say possibly wind shear, because this is generally how it looks, but there was no convective activity nearby (at least that I saw on the radar). Wake turbulence from the proceeding aircraft could be a factor. On a long leg like this, pilot fatigue is always an issue. If I was to make a guess, I’d say some sort of aircraft malfunction on short final. There is very little time to react if something happens right before landing, whether it was a flight control malfunction, engine failure or pitot/static instrument failure.</p>
<p>It’s all Monday morning quarterbacking, but I never automatically blame the pilots. Who knows? Maybe the zombies moved from the back of the airplane up to the cockpit (just saw World War Z).</p>
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<p>Why would you say that they had time to grab their carryons?</p>
<p>The passengers using Twitter after the fact probably had their cell phones in their pockets.</p>
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There are eye-witness photos of passengers walking away from the wreckage pulling their wheelie bags
<a href=“http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2013/07/07/1226675/432010-plane-crash-lands-at-san-francisco-airport.jpg[/url]”>http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2013/07/07/1226675/432010-plane-crash-lands-at-san-francisco-airport.jpg</a></p>
![http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2013/07/07/1226675/432010-plane-crash-lands-at-san-francisco-airport.jpg[/url]](http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2013/07/07/1226675/432010-plane-crash-lands-at-san-francisco-airport.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>Just listened to the tower recordings on the news and I didn’t hear any mention of them being lined up on the wrong runway. Asiana’s transmissions were basically unintelligible, but that’s not all that uncommon even though English is SUPPOSED to be the international language for Air Traffic Control and aviation. The last transmission prior to the impact (may have been right at impact) was completely garbled, so I couldn’t tell if it was tower or an aircraft speaking or what was said. If they were improperly aligned, it apparently wasn’t bad enough for anyone in the tower or any other aircraft to mention it.</p>
<p>Cockpit voice recorders and black boxes will provide a lot of information. At least they’ll be easy to recover in this instance.</p>
<p>Looks like one out of ten passengers visible in that photo is pulling a rollaboard.</p>
<p>During an evacuation, you aren’t supposed to take baggage (at least not anything as big as a rollaboard). Although if you are wearing something like a Scott-E-Vest with all of your stuff in it, then you will end up with all of your stuff without clogging up the evacuation by getting your baggage.</p>
<p>i live in san francisco and this astonished me. i thought my city was better than this.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what you think should have been better, enfieldacademy. It sounds like the emergency response was very fast, the fire was put out as fast as possible, the injured were taken to hospitals and treated, and the investigation into the cause started right away, with NTSB inspectors en route within an hour.</p>
<p>I landed at SFO in a 777 4 days ago. Nothing remarkable in the landing other than it seemed as if the pilot let quite a bit of the runway go by before touching down. Those 2 parallel runways are very long, so there was no worry of running out of tarmac. Other times I’ve landed there it seems as if the plane barely cleared the seawall before landing, giving the effect as if we were landing in the bay. </p>
<p>The problem with the Asiana flight, according to the latest reports, seems to have been that the approach was too low and the angle of the approach was off - the nose was too high, the tail too low, causing the tail to hit the seawall.</p>
<p>I happened to drive by SFO today on 101 at about 11:15 - I understand the crash happened at 11:33. I was in Daly City all day, just north of the airport in the flight path of planes heading west from SFO. I heard the first sound of a plane at around 5:30 and checked online to read that 2 runways had been re-opened for departures.</p>
<p>It’s frightening to be so close to this tragedy, my heart goes out to the passengers and their families.</p>
<p>“i live in san francisco and this astonished me. i thought my city was better than this.”</p>
<p>So…whatever are you talking about? Airplanes can’t crash at your airport? Is your stretch of runway magically better than any other cities runways?</p>
<p>enfieldacademy, your comment puzzles me. I can’t see what your city did wrong.</p>
<p>Here’s our (non-expert) theory: Pilot came in too low, and pulled up at the last second with the tail striking the seawall. That would account for the debris field starting literally at the seawall, and the tail snapping off but no other large chunks. There was no distress call, no alarms going off in the cockpit, and no indication of mechanical problems.The pilot’s pull-up prevented the plane from crashing into the seawall, which would have resulted in many more deaths, possibly all on board.</p>
<p>This is pretty amazing:</p>
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<p>[‘Surreal</a>’ escape: How survivors fled badly damaged Asiana Flight 214 - U.S. News](<a href=“U.S. News: Latest Breaking Stories, Video, and Photos on American Politics, Economy, and Society | NBC News”>U.S. News: Latest Breaking Stories, Video, and Photos on American Politics, Economy, and Society | NBC News)</p>
<p>maybe enfield’s comment was some attempt at humor??? otherwise, it is a weird comment.</p>
<p>“Here’s our (non-expert) theory: Pilot came in too low, and pulled up at the last second with the tail striking the seawall. There was no distress call, no alarms going off in the cockpit, and no indication of mechanical problems.”</p>
<p>If it is accurate that the pilot came in too low, we do not know why that happened. There are a number of things that could cause that. It is logical that there would be no distress call if something happened right before landing. A pilot would have his or her hands way too full to shout out a distress call to someone who really could not help them besides get a fire truck out there and be ready to collect the bodies. It’s not as if some ATC guy could say a magic word that would enable the aircraft to fly better.</p>
<p>We can have no idea whatsoever if there were alarms going off in the cockpit until the pilots have been interviewed and the cockpit voice recorder reviewed. How can anyone have that information at this point? The same with mechanical problems, you need the pilots to be interviewed, and the black box recovered and analyzed. Crash investigations and safety reports can take months. There is absolutely no way that anyone on the ground or in the cabin can give an accurate analysis of what happened.</p>
<p>What can you tell us about the recordings they have released between the pilot and the tower, busdriver? Your insight/experience is very helpful.</p>