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**shiny!** · July 06, 2013, 06:10 PM

Re: Plane Crash at SF Airport

Looks like a fire or explosions took off the top of the plane.

**lakedaemonian** · July 06, 2013, 06:47 PM

Re: Plane Crash at SF Airport

I'd be keen to hear from Biscayne on this one.

My GUESS is pilot error, rather than a flaw with the 777 platform.

With the tail gone, maybe it was landing short and the aircrew attempted to recover/pull out too late.

Sad loss of life, but it could have been worse.

But I'm sure triple seven frequent flyers will be keen to hear what happened sooner rather than later.

I'm flying on one in about 6 weeks again.

I reckon the 777 is about the most comfortable/safest plane I've ever flown on.

**think365** · July 06, 2013, 08:50 PM

Re: Plane Crash at SF Airport

I was driving home from Marin County and saw this up close just after it happened. An unfortunate disaster to see in your own back yard.

Here is the latest update from the San Jose Mercury News Group.

SFO Crash: 2 dead, many injured, one unaccounted for after Asiana flight 214 crashes at SFO

By Kristin J. Bender and Dan Nakaso
Bay Area News Group
Posted: 07/06/2013 12:15:00 PM PDT
Updated: 07/06/2013 06:23:41 PM PDT

SFO -- Two people died and dozens of people were injured after a Boeing 777 crash landed at SFO after a flight from South Korea this morning.

Officials said 181 people were taken to local hospitals, 49 of those with serious injuries. Another 123 people were uninjured. One is still unaccounted for after the crash.

Earlier, officials thought as many as 60 people were unaccounted for from the Asiana Airlines flight 214 that was carrying 307 passengers and crew.

A federal aviation official said the tail ripped off of the airplane as it was touching down on runway 28L about 11:30 a.m. after arriving from Seoul.

A fire broke out on the silver-colored jet, sending massive clouds of black smoke into the
air as the plane came to rest off the tarmac. Passengers scrambled out of the plane as emergency crews raced to the scene.

At least nine hospitals are treating the injured.

A spokeswoman at San Francisco General, which is currently treating 34 victims, reported that five of 10 people, including two children, initially brought to the hospital with critical injuries were now in "serious condition" Saturday night. Others were being treated at Stanford Hospital, Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, St. Mary's Medical Center in San Francisco and other facilities, but there was no word on their conditions.

Two patients were flown to Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, but their conditions were not available Saturday afternoon.

There were 291 passengers and 16 crew members on the plane and evacuation slides were used to get a majority of the people off the burning aircraft as quickly as possible.

Fire crews arrived just minutes after the crash and saw "multiple people were walking to safety," said San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White.
Asiana Airlines released a statement Saturday afternoon saying they are investigating what caused the accident.

"Asiana Airlines will continue to cooperate fully with the investigation of all associated government agencies and to facilitate this cooperation has established an emergency response center at its headquarters," the statement read.

"It was a bit surreal," said passenger Benjamin Levy in an interview with NBC Bay Area, referring to the tail of the plane hitting the seawall and the plane bouncing on the runway twice. "A lot of people were screaming and not really believing what was happening."

Levy is at San Francisco General Hospital being treated for bruised or broken ribs, he said.

Levy said he pulled the lever on the emergency door and had to push aside debris to open it. No slide deployed, he said. Instead, he helped passengers step down onto several feet of debris.

Although video footage shows billowing plumes of smoke, Levy said most of the passengers got out before the smoke began.

"People were pushing each other out," he said. "There was a lot of commotion. I'm so thankful so many people go out of the plane quickly."

Levy, a native Frenchman who has been living in San Francisco with his family for 16 years, says he was watching a Korean movie called "Love 911" about fire rescuers when he looked out the window and realized the plane was too low and close to the water.

"I realized the pilot was going too low too fast," Levy said. "When the pilot realized, he put some more gas to correct the plane again. We hit the runway pretty bad and started going back up in the air again and landed again pretty hard."

National Transportation Safety Board chairwoman Debra Hersman said teams are headed to SFO to look for flight data recorders and begin their investigation. "We have a lot of work to do, as you know, when our teams arrive on scene," she said. The FBI is also assisting in the investigation, and a FBI spokesman said Saturday afternoon that there is no indication that "this is a terrorist attack."

Two of the airport's four runways were reopened late Saturday afternoon but many flights are still being diverted to airports in Oakland, San Jose and Sacramento. SFO officials did not say when full service would be restored.

Seventeen flights that had been diverted from SFO landed at Mineta San Jose International Airport and 10 more were expected, with three of them international flights, said airport spokeswoman Rosemary Barnes.

Officials with the various airlines will have to decide what to do with the aircraft and passengers, some of whom were boarding buses chartered by their airlines, Barnes said.

At Oakland International Airport, five domestic flights and four international flights were diverted after the crash at SFO.

Jesse Sellars was supposed to catch a connecting flight home to Colorado Springs when his plane was instead flown to Oakland.

Sitting on a baggage carousel with a cell phone pressed against his ear, he said he had been on hold for 20 minutes and had no idea how he was going to get home.

"We were dumped here," he said. "United has no support here. They sent a dislocation team, but basically what they said is you're dislocated."

But Sellars put his dilemma into perspective.

"It's hard to complain about being inconvenienced given what's happened," he said. "When the severity of the situation is that level of magnitude."

He and other passengers said they didn't know much about what happened until they were on the ground and allowed to use their cell phones.

"Everybody started checking online, using Twitter," he said. "Most people were really concerned about what happened to the people on the other plane."

Pete Pries, 29, of Campbell, was attempting to return home from a business trip to Amsterdam on a KLM Boeing 747, an unusual sight at Oakland International Airport, not so much in San Francisco. He said the tarmac was like a parking lot of airplanes.

"We parked and waited out there, wherever the plane would fit," he said.

He said that because the airport couldn't accommodate a full jumbo jet of international passengers disembarking at once, they unloaded about 150 at a time.
Robert Herbst, a retired American Airlines 767 pilot and aviation industry consultant in South Carolina, told Bay Area News Group that the damage he saw on television footage suggests a "no-brainer" explanation of the cause of the crash.

"This is very obvious what happened," said Herbst who flew commercial airlines for 41 years before retiring three years ago. "They landed short of the runway. They were too low for the flight path and the tail of the aircraft hit the sea wall."

When landing at SFO, Herbst said, "the nose is pretty high up in the air just before touch down. They weren't high enough and the tail hit the sea wall This is a no-brainer."

Jet fuel in the wings of the 777 then likely caught fire, Herbst said.

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 joined the oneWorld alliance, anchored by American Airlines and British Airways.

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. The airline's website says its 777s can carry between 246 to 300 passengers.

The last time a large U.S. airline lost a plane in a fatal crash was an American Airlines Airbus A300 taking off from JFK in 2001. Former SFO spokesman Mike McCarron could not recall any fatalities in connection with a commercial plane crash at SFO.

Smaller airlines have had crashes since then. The last fatal U.S. crash was a Continental Express flight operated by Colgan Air, which crashed into a house near Buffalo, N.Y. on Feb. 12, 2009. The crash killed all 49 people on board and one man in a house.

Bay Area News Group breaking news reporter Natalie Alund was on a plane from Los Angeles International Airport and about to land at SFO about 12:45 p.m. when her plane was diverted.

"We got in early and were about to land when the plane took a hard left and everyone started freaking out. The male flight attendant came by and told me we were turning around because of a crash,'' she said. "About three minutes later the pilot came in over the intercom and announced what was going on. ... That was scary. Just scary. People were unnerved."

A San Ramon man was reportedly waiting at the airport for a group of Korean exchange students that were on the plane, but no word on the condition of those students.

Even hours later, hundreds of people are gathered on the shoreline to look at the wreckage across the water.

vt · July 06, 2013, 10:11 PM

Re: Plane Crash at SF Airport

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...,1836071.story

**lakedaemonian** · July 06, 2013, 10:28 PM

Re: Plane Crash at SF Airport

Originally posted by lakedaemonian View Post

I'd be keen to hear from Biscayne on this one.

My GUESS is pilot error, rather than a flaw with the 777 platform.

With the tail gone, maybe it was landing short and the aircrew attempted to recover/pull out too late.

Sad loss of life, but it could have been worse.

But I'm sure triple seven frequent flyers will be keen to hear what happened sooner rather than later.

I'm flying on one in about 6 weeks again.

I reckon the 777 is about the most comfortable/safest plane I've ever flown on.

I wonder if the BA38 777 crash is similar enough for their to be a similar root cause?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_38

**c1ue** · July 07, 2013, 01:17 PM

Re: Plane Crash at SF Airport

Some people are saying the problem might be that the autopilot was programmed for the wrong runway. The different runways in SFO are measurably different heights.

**think365** · July 07, 2013, 04:38 PM

Re: Plane Crash at SF Airport

Originally posted by c1ue View Post

Some people are saying the problem might be that the autopilot was programmed for the wrong runway. The different runways in SFO are measurably different heights.

If that is was actually happened, my initial thought was that the pilot should have immediately switched over to manual controls and to VFR (Visual Flight Rules) status. He/she should have relied on a visual assessment of the "glide slope indicator" which would have immediately flashed red telling him he was "too heavy" (Traffic Control Tower talk for "too low"). The glide slope indicator is a light prism that changes colors based on the aircraft's angle of descent. When you are too low, the slope indicator is bright red. It was a crystal clear day (I was there and have a private pilot's license) and it seems unlikely a commercially trained pilot could have (or should have) missed that.

When you are too low on your approach angle and that close to the runway, the proper procedure is to do a "touch and go", not a sudden "pull up" and "go around" (which is how he lost his tail). Once your tires touch the runway and you get some "bounce", then you can go to full throttle and pull up gradually and let the aircraft fly out (just like at take-off). The "touch and go" procedure would have kept the aircraft horizontal, and the "touch" with his wheels would have given him/her the up-bounce and altitude necessary for the tail to clear the runway before he pulled up radically and gave it full throttle. It's a bit of a timing trick and you have to do it all in the right order, but that's what you practice over and over just to get your private pilot's license (not to mention your commercial pilot's license).

Note: I realize that until we get all the facts, the above is nothing more than an educated guess and an incomplete hypothetical about what went wrong and how the pilot could have resolved it. It is just one possible explanation out of many. It was a very horrific outcome that all pilots at all levels of experience will study very carefully for years.

**c1ue** · July 07, 2013, 05:02 PM

Re: Plane Crash at SF Airport

Originally posted by think365

If that is was actually happened, my initial thought was that the pilot should have immediately switched over to manual controls and to VFR (Visual Flight Rules) status.

I wouldn't think 2 or 3 feet of height difference would be all that big of a deal, given the size of the plane in question. Just was passing on others' comments.

As for what should have been done - well, there's always what should be done, and what a panicked person actually does. I have an uncle who used to be an airline pilot; he was off rotation on a 747 that was flying into SFO that lost an engine. Interesting stories he told about that situation.

Having a sudden warning pop up right as you're about to land... might be a lot more stressful depending on when the problem was actually noticed.

**think365** · July 07, 2013, 05:34 PM

Re: Plane Crash at SF Airport

Originally posted by c1ue View Post

Having a sudden warning pop up right as you're about to land... might be a lot more stressful depending on when the problem was actually noticed.

Depending on visibility, you can normally see the "glide slope indicator" at least a mile out as you approach the airport. If the pilot had looked at it, he/she would have had plenty of time to correct the angle of descent, air speed, or altitude (which he clearly needed more of). Manually checking the altimeter would have also provided another c1ue that the aircraft was too low.

It is also possible that there was some other mechanical problem (like the sudden loss of hydraulics causing loss of wing flaps, brakes, rudder, etc.). If that were the case, the pilot had two choices: put the aircraft down in the SF Bay or try to limp along and pray you make it to the runway. Landing in the Bay could have resulted in many more than 2 casualties. In this hypothetical, the pilot chose the later, which would explain him barely making it to the edge of the runway and flying fast and low. Either way, I guarantee these were extremely stressful moments in the cockpit.

vt · July 08, 2013, 01:27 AM

Re: Plane Crash at SF Airport

The pilot had little experience with the 777 model, though he did have a lot of experience with other Boeing models.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/07/lee-kang-kook-pilot-asiana-plane-crash_n_3559084.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D340892

The plane final approach was too low and too slow.

**think365** · July 08, 2013, 02:51 AM

Re: Plane Crash at SF Airport

Originally posted by think365 View Post

Depending on visibility, you can normally see the "glide slope indicator" at least a mile out as you approach the airport. If the pilot had looked at it, he/she would have had plenty of time to correct the angle of descent, air speed, or altitude (which he clearly needed more of). Manually checking the altimeter would have also provided another c1ue that the aircraft was too low.

It is also possible that there was some other mechanical problem (like the sudden loss of hydraulics causing loss of wing flaps, brakes, rudder, etc.). If that were the case, the pilot had two choices: put the aircraft down in the SF Bay or try to limp along and pray you make it to the runway. Landing in the Bay could have resulted in many more than 2 casualties. In this hypothetical, the pilot chose the later, which would explain him barely making it to the edge of the runway and flying fast and low. Either way, I guarantee these were extremely stressful moments in the cockpit.

SFO crash: Asiana Flight 214 crew tried to abort landing, NTSB says

By Mark Emmons, Dan Nakaso, Erin Ivie and Robert Salonga - Staff writers
Posted: 07/07/2013

http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula...ew-tried-abort

San Jose Mercury News: It appears the plane was just seven seconds away from touching down when the crew realized that a disaster was unfolding. A crew member issued a call to increase speed.

When the pilots tried to accelerate, a stall warning sounded, four seconds before impact. The crew requested a "go-round" -- or aborted landing -- just 1.5 seconds before the crash. But it was too late.

The plane slammed down on the airport's runway 28L with what witnesses described as a loud thud at 11:27 a.m. The tail was sheared off by the sea wall and the plane veered off the runway.

Before the approach, Hersman said, there was no indication on either of the two "black box" recorders that the plane was having trouble.

The agency also will be looking into the fact that the ground-based navigational "glide slope" system on 28L had been inoperable since June due to construction to lengthen the runway.

But Hersman said planes were cleared Saturday for a visual approach, which means "you do not need instruments to get into the airport. It was a clear day with good visibility."

Three observations:

1. The fact that the "glide slope indicator" (discussed in my prior post) was intentionally disabled in June by SFO Airport will be a significant issue in the litigation that is sure to follow this tragedy.

2. The fact that the stall warning alarm was going off indicates that the nose of the aircraft was pointed too far up in the air relative to its air speed, forcing the tail down into the sea wall. It appears that the 777 stalled-out (meaning that the aircraft suddenly lost all lift) before the pilot could initiate the "go around". The pilot was wasting precious time asking for Tower permission...he should have just executed the go around sequence as described in my prior post in the proper order without wasting time with the Tower (a pilot's first duty is the fly the aircraft...not chat with the Tower). He had 7 seconds to get it done and asking for permission from the Tower was poor judgement. Given the slow air speed, the only way out would have been to give it full throttle as he pointed the nose back downward, thereby leveling the aircraft, regaining lift (which was imminently to be lost as soon as the stall alarm went off), and flying the aircraft into the "go around" procedure; being aware of a potential touch-down bounce which could stall you out again (requiring a quick but temporary pull back on the throttle and nose eased downward for a few seconds). It takes a great deal of self-control not to pull up too quickly, which is counter-intuitive while your instincts are screaming at you to do just that (a fatal mistake that pilots train over and over again not to make).

3. Had the pilot been "fast and low" (as I originally speculated), instead of "slow and low" as the facts just revealed by the NTSB indicate, the pilot would have IMO had a much better chance of executing the "touch and go" procedure with a bounce off the runway to regain altitude and enough lift for a go-around (as I previously discussed). Unfortunately, "slow and low" is a pilot's worst nightmare fraught with multiple actions and reactions perfectly executed in order to have any chance of avoiding a deadly crash.

**BiscayneSunrise** · July 08, 2013, 08:58 AM

Re: Plane Crash at SF Airport

Hello All, Just some random thoughts:

When the news reports say the glide slope was inoperative they are referring to the electronic glide path that is transmitted from an antenna at the end of the runway. (Google ILS or Instrument Landing System) It gives vertical guidance to the pilots using a display on the main display right in front of each pilot. The glideslope guidance is typically used during the last 5-10 miles of approach before touchdown providing a very accurate and gentle descent from around 2-3000 above the ground all the way down to touchdown. It is intended for guidance during poor visibility (less than 3 miles) and although pilots tend to rely on it even in good weather it is not necessary; desirable but not necessary.

If the electronic glideslope is inoperative then pilots typically rely on the PAPI (google it) which is a secondary vertical optical guidance duplicating the electronic guidance, using a set powerful lights aimed up to the pilots. This is similar to the optical guidance system pilots on aircraft carriers use. It is a very simple but very accurate and a highly satisfactory replacement for the electronic glideslope.

As another alternative to the ground based electronic glideslope all modern airplanes have a function where the onboard flight computer can create a glideslope from GPS data which will guid the pilots down almost as accurately as the ground based system. Certainly on a clear day, the GPS derived glideslope would be another excellent alternative although it does require a few extra key strokes to set up and not something you =would do once the airplane was already in extremis. You would have to have this set up at least a few minutes earlier. . No word on whether the Asiana pilots programmed the computer for the GPS glideslope.

I think a key finding is the captain was new on the airplane. He was plenty experienced and had good training but once on a new airplane even the best pilots suffer from a little cognitive overload in the beginning. It takes a few months to get comfortable and pick up subtle cues. Which leads us to the issue of cockpit hierarchy. It was probably clear to all the pilots in the cockpit the airplane was coming in highly unstable and teh captain was trying to recover from an iffy situation. It is OK to try to recover from an unstable situation but every airline has very clear parameters regarding stable approaches. Usually at the gates of 1000 feet and 500 feet above landing the airplane must be clearly stable and be within specific parameters regarding speed,descent rate and engines revved up. The idea is the airplane MUST approach the runway in the last 3-5 miles in a stable state. Standard protocol is if an airplane is unstable at the 500 and 1000' gate it then a go around is MANDATORY. Even if the captain is flying the copilot is empowered, even required, to order a go around.You will likely hear more about Crew resource management (CRM) and the cockpit culture. Asian pilots had a reputation for being very hierarchical where copilots were afraid to speak up if they saw a situation deteriorating, however with training copilot have gotten better at advocating and captains better at listening. A key inquiry will be why the pilots did not talk about this deteriorating situation earlier than they did. Unstable approaches are really no big deal. They are easily recoverable and even if the situation is unrecoverable, they are easy enough to climb out of, especially if the decision is made earlier enough 500'.

Finally, one key feature of the 777 are the auto throttles. When engaged they are designed to hold steady whatever speed the pilots have selected. On approach, 145 knots is typically set and computer calculates throttle position to maintain a steady speed no matter what ever else is happening. For some reason the auto throttles did not do this. Either they failed, or they were programmed incorrectly or the pilots disengaged the autothrottles. Even if the autothrottles were disengaged, if the speed gets dangerously slow they have what is called a "wake up" function and the auto throttles will reengage themselves and add thrust to maintain a safe speed. For some reason the wake up function did not work. EIther the auto throttles were completely unpowered or the speed deteriorated so quickly the wake up feature just did not react quickly enough.

Greg

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Plane Crash at SF Airport

Plane Crash at SF Airport

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