Aviation Nigeria
The Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 that crashed at San Francisco's airport on Saturday was travelling "significantly below" its intended speed and its crew tried to abort the landing just seconds before it hit the seawall in front of the runway, the US National Transportation Safety Board said on Sunday.
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.
A stall warning sounded four seconds before impact, and the crew tried to abort the landing and initiate what's known as a "go around" manoeuvre just 1.5 seconds before crashing, Hersman said.
"Air speed was significantly below the target airspeed," she said.
Later on Sunday, the local fire department said that an emergency vehicle rushing to the scene of the crash may have run over one of the two teenage Chinese girls killed in the incident.
San Francisco's medical examiner is now conducting an autopsy to determine the cause of the girl's death, fire department spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge said.
"One of the deceased did have injuries consistent with those of having been run over by a vehicle," Talmadge said.
More than 180 people were injured in the crash, at least two dozen of them seriously.
Hersman said it was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash. The data recorders corroborated witness accounts and an amateur video, indicated the plane came in too low, lifted its nose in an attempt to gain altitude, and then bounced along the tarmac after the rear of the aircraft hit a seawall at the approach to the runway.
Asked whether the information reviewed by the NTSB showed pilot error in the crash, Hersman did not answer directly.
"What I will tell you is that the NTSB conducts very thorough investigations. We will not reach a determination of probable cause in the first few days that we're on an accident scene," she told reporters.
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. Stanford hospital said late on Saturday that three people were in critical condition and 10 in serious condition there. At least five people were still being treated at other area hospitals on Sunday morning.
Some of the injured at San Francisco general suffered spinal fractures, including paralysis, and others sustained head trauma and abdominal injuries, according to Margaret Knudson, chief of surgery at the hospital.
The plane was coming in from Seoul when witnesses said its tail appeared to hit the approach area of a runway that juts into San Francisco Bay. The impact knocked off the plane's tail and the aircraft appeared to bounce violently, scattering a trail of debris and spinning before coming to rest on the tarmac.
The crash was the first fatal accident involving the Boeing 777, a popular long-range jet that has been in service since 1995. It was the first fatal commercial airline accident in the United States since a regional plane operated by Colgan Air crashed in New York in 2009.
"For now, we acknowledge that there were no problems caused by the 777-200 plane or [its] engines," Yoon Young-doo, the president and CEO of the airline, told reporters on Sunday at the company headquarters on the outskirts of Seoul.
Asiana on Sunday said the flight, which originated in Shanghai, had carried 291 passengers and 16 crew members. The passengers included 141 Chinese, 77 South Koreans, 64 US citizens, three Indians, three Canadians, one French, one Vietnamese and one Japanese citizen.
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