Saturday morning started like any other morning at San Francisco International Airport. But after the marine layer had dissipated, that would change. At 11:27 AM, Asiana Airlines flight 214, a Boeing 777-200ER, experienced a hull-loss accident upon landing at the airport. The crash landing caused the tail and landing gear to separate from the plane, the aft pressure bulkhead to burst, and the plane to spin like a top. The crash of flight 214 was the first fatal accident to happen on American soil since the Colgan Air crash in Buffalo, New York, which killed all 49 passengers and one person on the ground. Killing two and injuring 183, the flight from Shanghai via Seoul hit the seawall and left a trail of debris as it spun out of control off the runway and into the dirt nearby. The accident was the first involving a fatality for the 777, going to show the outstanding safety record of the model first delivered in 1995.
Among the 307 passengers and crew on the flight, two were killed, 183 were injured ten of which were in critical condition (as of the this writing that number has been downgraded to 6), and 122 walked away uninjured. Most of the injuries consisted of head trauma from the initial impact and burns from the fire that ensued. The two that were killed were Chinese 16-year-old girls Ye Meng Yuan and Wang Li Jia. The flight had 141 Chinese citizens on board, including 70 students and teachers traveling to the US for a summer school program. 91 passengers and crew were South Korean citizens, 61 were American citizens, and the other 11 were citizens of 6 other countries.
Witnesses reported seeing the plane flying extremely low before the accident, and passengers reported hearing the engines revving and the plane tilting upwards seconds before impact. The National Transportation Safety Board has indeed confirmed that the plane was flying too low and too slow to make a safe landing. They have also stated that according to the cockpit voice recorder, the pilot called for a go around, which of course, failed, hence the engines revving moments before impact. Because the plane survived the crash for the most part, the two black boxes were easily recovered, and thanks also to eyewitness and survivor testimonies, the NTSB knows exactly what happened. The investigation must continue however to determine a cause.
At this point so early in the investigation, everything is still on the table, including pilot error and mechanical failure.
