Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-28EER plane crash
San Francisco, California, USA
Updated on
The Boeing 777-200 operated by Asiana Airlines took off from Seoul, South Korea, for a passenger flight to San Francisco, CA, USA. 291 passengers and 16 crewmembers were onboard. During landing, the plane touched down short of runway impacting the edge separating the runway from the San Francisco Bay, and crashed. 3 people were killed in the accident, 10 people were seriously injured, and 120 people were injured. The majority of survivors escaped without injuries.
The aircraft was on a normal approach and the crew was cleared for a visual approach to runway 28L at San Francisco airport. There were no reports of windshear and no adverse weather conditions.
During the approach there were remarks in the cockpit about being high on the approach, then on the glide path and some time later being below glidepath. The pilot began to pull back on the yoke to reduce rate of descent assuming the autothrottles would maintain the speed set to 137 knots. A lateral deviation developed taking the attention of the crew. 35 seconds prior to impact the automated 500 feet call sounded, shortly afterwards the landing checklist was completed. 18 seconds prior to impact the automated 200 feet call out sounded, 9 seconds prior to impact the automated 100 feet call out sounded, immediately afterwards the first comment for speed was heard. All PAPIs were red (indicating the plane was well below the glidepath) and the speed had decayed into the red/black marked range (well below the normal approach speed), the captain realised the autothrottles were not maintaining the target speed, at that point the pilot flying had already started to move the levers forward. About 3 seconds before impact the call for go-around occurred. A second call for go-around was heard 1.5 seconds before impact, this call came from a different crew member. The plane then impacted the edge separating the runway from the San Francisco Bay.
Following first impact with the ground at high angle of pitch the aircraft lost gear and tail section, skidded along the runway, the tail and right wing rose to about 45 degrees, the left wing entangled with ground sending the aircraft in a spin and separating the engines, the aircraft turned around counterclockwise by nearly 360 degrees with the tail coming down again and stopped, burst into flames and burned out. The aircraft came to a rest left of the runway about 490 meters/1600 feet past the runway threshold. The tail plane, gear and engines separated. All passenger seats remained inside the aircraft cabin, only 3 flight attendant seats were ejected from the aircraft with the flight attendants seated in them.
The fatalities are three young passengers.
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