777 Crash at San Fran

[widgeon13]

Crash at San Francisco, aircraft sitting off to side of runway and charred top of the aircraft, significant damage from fire but mostly at the top of fuselage from front to back, missing the tail section, cockpit intact. Down at 11:26 AM/PT

From South Korea.

[daepp]

They are saying the tail fell off. I'm no pro but it made ll the way across the ocean and then the tail fell off on landing??? Sounds like user error to me.

[Don Plumley]

Looks like a tail strike on landing, low approach.

[Rick V]

FAA: Asiana Airlines flight crash lands at San Francisco airport

[Don Plumley]

Here is the live ATC I picked up from airliners.net

http://archive-server.liveatc.net/ksfo/KSFO-Twr-Jul-06-2013-1800Z.mp3

Update: They check in at 21:00

[bell]

Someone who was watching said the nose came up suddenly as it got close to touch down.....out also appears it contacted the ground/wall before the end of the runway.......so the low approach sounds reasonable.....do pilots actually fly these or are they controlled by computers nowadays?

[Don Plumley]

This forum discussion and links are pretty interesting:

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/5809207/

[Don Plumley]

Looks like a visual approach as the ILS was out. Beautiful clear day, perfect day to attempt a carrier landing. Reports are all Pax are accounted for.

The ILS 28R was out of service

!FDC 3/3512 SFO FI/T IAP SAN FRANCISCO INTL, SAN FRANCISCO, CA.
ILS OR LOC Z RWY 28R, AMDT 11A...
ILS RWY 28R CAT II&III, AMDT 11A...
ILS OR LOC Z RWY 28L, AMDT 23A...
LDA/DME RWY 28R, AMDT 1A...
LDA PRM RWY 28R (SIMULTANEOUS CLOSE PARALLEL), AMDT 1A...
ILS PRM RWY 28L (SIMULTANEOUS CLOSE PARALLEL), AMDT 2...
PROCEDURE NA.

So the crew wouldve done a visual approach (unless they did a GPS, which I dont know if AAR is approved for), and with the impact markings/debris starting at the sea wall, I'm wondering if the crew got low and slow on a visual. There is a PAPI-L on the left side, but with all the construction going on with that runway, I am not sure if the PAPI is still available.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

100% fly-by-wire on the triple-7 IIRC. I had one of the senior engineers on that project as a flight student back in my CFI days, told me a lot about that plane. Very advanced/sophisticated but it's not for the technologically averse.

Hope everyone's okay.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

It does sound like a tail prang but we'll have to wait and see. Boeing doesn't particularly need any bad press - they better hope it ends up being pilot error and not the auto land system or any of the automated systems. And that the safety systems worked and got people off.

[Don Plumley]

Here's a photo from the web:



Looking for one showing the strike.

[widgeon13]

Looks like fire damage was done after coming to rest.

[Don Plumley]

I note the pax with their carry on bags. That photo is from a pax that posted on twitter (https://twitter.com/Eunner).

Here's the strike, the photo is bad, that's SF Bay at the edge:



And another showing what I think is the vertical stab:

[nynor]

damn. that tail must have hit HARD. i hope they had changes of underwear available! its good that all survived.

[AFC-911]

Holy s!

That said, it could have been much worse.

[BE911SC]

I'll predict a fuel supply issue that lead to flame-out or loss of thrust control on final. (See: the BA 777 that crashed at Heathrow.) The pilots were too busy to start blabbing on the radio. (Aviate, navigate, communicate--in that order.) Kept the nose coming up to stretch it out and make the runway, tail-strike on the rock wall and she slammed down in the overrun.

[ZOA NOM]

2 dead, likely air crew sitting in the tail section. Glad this was my day off...

[BlueSkyJaunte]

I'm certain that in the end, no matter what the problem was, it will be determined that pilot error was the root cause.

[BE911SC]

Pilot error is the cheapest answer. Boeing and Asiana certainly pray it's not something they did! (I fly Boeings and love them but they are not blameless in many an accident.)

[nynor]

Originally Posted by BlueSkyJaunte

I'm certain that in the end, no matter what the problem was, it will be determined that pilot error was the root cause.

isn't that the case ~90% of the time?