NTSB to look at black boxes, pilot navigation system in investigation of deadly San Francisco plane crash
The National Transportation Safety Board is looking at black box recordings and the shutdown of a key navigational aid as investigators try to find the cause of a deadly plane crash at San Francisco International Airport that killed two and left at least 182 injured.
An NTSB team arrived Sunday at the scene of the crash and Chairman Deborah Hersman told Fox News the agency is assessing the damage and has recovered the black box recordings from the plane’s cockpit.
Asiana Airlines Flight 214, a Boeing 777 plane flying from South Korea, slammed into the runway on Saturday morning, breaking off its tail and catching fire before slumping to a stop that allowed some passengers to flee down emergency slides into thick smoke and a trail of debris. Firefighters doused the flames that burned through the fuselage with foam and water, and police officers on the ground threw utility knives up to crew members so they could cut the seat belts of those who remained trapped as rescue crews removed the injured.
San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee said at a news conference Saturday evening that all 291 passengers and 16 crew members had been accounted for, but officials said 182 people were taken to area hospitals. As of Sunday, 19 people remain hospitalized with six in critical condition, one being a child.
Dr. Margaret Knudson of the San Francisco General Hospital said among the 53 people they have treated, they have seen large numbers of abdominal injuries, some spinal fractures — with a few causing paralysis — and patients with head trauma.
She also said they were “surprised” to see a few patients with severe road rash, describing it as when someone crashes on a motorcycle without wearing leather.
“There’s going to be many, many more surgeries to come,” she added.
Joanne Hayes-White, the San Francisco Fire Department chief, said Sunday that it was “nothing short of a miracle that we had 123 people walk away from this.” Hayes-White said there was major structural damage inside the plane, as some seats were buckled.
Hersman said the NTSB is currently focusing on gathering perishable information from the accident scene and getting the airport fully operational again. The black box recordings will help detail events before and after the crash.
“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,” Hersman said. “If the data’s good, it will help guide our investigation.”
Authorities are also looking into what role the shutdown of glide slope — a pilot navigational aid — had in the crash.
Hersman said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the system is a ground-based aid that helps pilots stay on course while landing and it has been shut down since June. The pilots, however, were notified before the crash that the system wasn’t available.
Aircraft security experts told Reuters that the glide slope system is not essential for routine landings, but it’s not unusual for airports to disable them for maintenance reasons.
“The pilots would have had to rely solely on visual cues to fly the proper glide path to the runway, and not have had available to them the electronic information that they typically have even in good weather at most major airports,” said Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who crash landed a plane in New York’s Hudson River in 2009, told a CBS news affiliate, according to Reuters.
“What that means is that then the automatic warnings that would occur in the cockpit when you deviate below the desired electronic path wouldn’t have been available either. So we don’t know yet if that’s a factor in this particular situation, but that’s certainly something they’ll be looking at,” he said.
Kevin Hiatt, CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, which describes itself as an international non-profit organization that provides aviation safety guidance, believes conclusions on what caused the crash could be months or years away, USA Today reports.
An Asiana airlines spokesperson told Reuters that the two passengers killed in the crash were Ye Meng Yuan and Wang Lin Jia, both 16-year-old students. Chinese state media said the students attended Jiangshan Middle School in eastern China.
South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport released the identities of the two pilots flying the jetliner at the time of the crash. The two were identified as Lee Jeong-min and Lee Gang-guk. The ministry said that four pilots were on board and rotated in two-person shifts during the flight from Seoul, South Korea, which was estimated to last more than 10 hours.
Asiana CEO Yoon Young-doo offered an apology during a televised news conference, where he bowed while saying, “I am bowing my head and extending my deep apology” to the passengers, their families and the South Korean people over the crash.”
Yoon said that it will take time to determine the cause of the crash. But when asked about the possibility of engine or mechanical problems, he said he doesn’t believe they could have been the cause. He said the plane was bought in 2006 but didn’t provide further details or elaborate. Asiana officials later said the plane was also built that year.
Yoon also said that the Flight 214 pilots are all veterans, with more than 10,000 hours of flight experience. “And one pilot has 9,000, almost 10,000 hours’ experience,” he said.
It was not immediately clear what happened to Asiana Flight 214, but witnesses said that the plane appeared to sway back and forth, and kick up dust during the landing. Initial reports indicated that the plane’s tail broke off from some impact. An aviation safety expert interviewed by the Associated Press suggested that part of the plane may have hit a seawall at the end of the runway.
- SUMMARY
- 2 dead in plane crash
- 182 people immediately taken to the hospital, 49 seriously injured
- 132 people treated at a triage
- 123 people found in the terminal uninjured
Benjamin Levy, who told KNTV
“We were maybe 5 meters, 10 meters above the water way still out of the landing area. And so when the pilot realized it, he put some more gas to try to correct and lift up the plane again, but it was too late. So we hit the runway pretty bad, and then we started going back up in the air again and then landed again pretty hard,” Levy said.
Moments after the violent landing, some of the passengers were able to escape via inflatable ramps, while others were taken to area hospitals.
Vedpal Singh, who was sitting in the middle of the aircraft and survived the crash with his family, said there was no forewarning from the pilot or any crew members before the plane touched down hard and he heard a loud sound.
“We knew something was horrible wrong,” said Singh, who suffered a fractured collarbone and had his arm in a sling.
“It’s miraculous we survived,” he said.
A visibly shaken Singh said the plane went silent before people tried to get out any way they could. His 15-year-old son said luggage tumbled from the overhead bins. The entire incident lasted about 10 seconds.
The flight originated in Shanghai, China, and stopped over in Seoul, South Korea, before coming to San Francisco, airport officials said. The airline said there were 16 crew members aboard and 291 passengers. South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said that the plane’s passengers included 141 Chinese, 77 South Koreans, 61 Americans, three Canadians, three from India, one Japanese, one Vietnamese and one from France, while the nationalities of the remaining three haven’t been confirmed. Thirty of the passengers were children.
“I couldn’t really tell what happened, but you saw the wings going up and (in) a weird angle.”
- Kate Belding
David Eun, a Samsung executive who was aboard the flight, sent out an online message immediately after the landing.
“I just crash-landed at SFO,” Eun said. “Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine. I’m OK.”
Another survivor, 34-year-old Wen Zhang , said she could feel the plane’s tail hit the ground and walked onto the tarmac with her injured son through a hole that opened up in the aircraft.
President Obama, who was at Camp David in Maryland, was informed of the crash and was being kept up to date by local, state and federal authorities, the White House said.
Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said she, her family and several colleagues had been scheduled for the flight but had switched at the last minute.
“Taking a minute to be thankful and explain what happened,” Sandberg wrote in a Facebook post. “My family, colleagues Debbie Frost, Charlton Gholson and Kelly Hoffman and I were originally going to take the Asiana flight that just crash-landed.”
TV news footage showed the top of the fuselage was burned away and the entire tail gone. One engine appeared to have broken away and pieces of the tail were strewn about the runway. Passengers could be seen jumping down the inflatable emergency slides. Fire trucks could be seen spraying white fire retardant on the wreckage.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye offered her condolences to the families of passengers and said her government would make all necessary efforts to help handle the aftermath, according to her spokeswoman Kim Haing.
“I offer my deep condolences to the families of the passengers who suffered from the unexpected Asiana plane crash,” South Korean President Park Geun-hye said, according to her spokeswoman Kim Haing. Park said that the South Korean government will make all necessary efforts to help handle the aftermath, according to Kim.
Asiana is a South Korean airline, second in size to national carrier Korean Air. It has recently tried to expand its presence in the United States, and is a member of the Star Alliance, which is anchored in the U.S. by United Airlines.
The 777-200 is a long-range plane from Boeing. The twin-engine aircraft is one of the world’s most popular long-distance planes, often used for flights of 12 hours or more, from one continent to another. It is a smaller, wide-body jet that can travel long distances without refueling and is typically used for long flights over water. The airline’s website says its 777s can carry between 246 to 300 passengers.
A tweet from Boeing said the company’s thoughts are with those affected by the crash. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by today’s incident at SFO,” Boeing said on its Twitter account. “We stand ready to assist the NTSB.”
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
NTSB to look at black boxes in investigation of deadly San Francisco plane crash #sanfran #sf #planecrash #ntsb
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