Airplane Crash-Lands at US Airport

A Boeing 777 aircraft on Saturday crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport, United States, British Broadcasting Corporation reports.

Firefighters and rescue teams were at the scene of the downed Asiana Airlines Flight 214. The aircraft had taken off from South Korea’s capital, Seoul.

The flight recorder or black box from the doomed aircraft revealed that the craft was 'significantly below' its intended speed and its crew tried to abort the landing less than two seconds before it hit a seawall, severing the tail section of the plane and almost flipping onto one side.

'He was training,' a spokeswoman for Asiana Airlines, Lee Hyomin, told Reuters of pilot Lee Kang-Kook. 'Even a veteran gets training,' the airlines spokeswoman said. 'He has a lot of experience and previously had flown to San Francisco on different planes, including the B747 ... and was assisted by another pilot who has more experience with the 777.'

The black box aboard the Boeing 777 jetliner set out three crucial moments that show the plane was approaching the runway too slowly and that the pilots were trying to correct the problem. Information collected from the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder indicated that there were no signs of trouble until seven seconds before impact, when the crew tried to accelerate, NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said at a news conference at the airport.
 

Interior damage to the plane also was extreme, Hersman said on CNN earlier on Sunday.

'You can see the devastation from the outside of the aircraft, the burn-through, the damage to the external fuselage,' she said. 'But what you can't see is the damage internally. That is really striking.'

The NTSB released photos showing the wrecked interior cabin oxygen masks dangling from the ceiling. 

There were 292 passengers and 16 crew on board, South Korea’s official news agency Yonhap reported.

 

 

Six people remained in critical condition at San Francisco General Hospital on Sunday, including one girl, a hospital spokeswoman said, and 13 others were in less serious condition.

At least five people were still being treated at other area hospitals on Sunday morning.

Source / Source