Boeing 777 Crashes At San Francisco Airport

Asiana Flight 214 from Seoul crashed while landing at San Francisco Airport today. Early reports suggest the plane was unstable as it touched down, which led to the tail of the plane breaking off. There are no official casualty reports yet, but passengers were seen walking off the plane. Preliminary estimates say one or two dead and 75 being transported to area hospitals. (Others are reporting two dead and several dozen injured.) Eyewitness report: "You heard a pop and you immediately saw a large, brief fireball that came out from underneath the aircraft," Anthony Castorani said on CNN. "At that moment, you could see that that aircraft was again starting to lift and it began to cartwheel [Ed: he likely means spinning horizontally, like a top]. The wing broke off on the left hand side. You could see the tail immediately fly off of the aircraft. As the aircraft cartwheeled, it then landed down and the other wing had broken." The media has estimated about 290 people were on board the plane. The top of the cabin was aflame at one point, but it's not known yet whether that affected the passengers. "Federal sources told NBC News that there was no indication of terrorism." Some images from the news make it look like the plane may have tried to touch down too early, hitting the seawall just before the runway.

Interesting Photos & Data on Twitter

[McGruber]

Some interesting photos and data have shown up on twitter today. First, here is (I think) the original source of that photo taken by a passenger: https://twitter.com/Eunner [twitter.com]

Second, here is a photo, taken across a small bay, showing the plane crashing: https://twitter.com/stefanielaine/status/353591123958173696/photo/1 [twitter.com]

And, most interesting, a comparison of flightpath data (from flightaware.com) of yesterday's flight against today's flight: https://twitter.com/sbaker/status/353611787750494208/photo/1 [twitter.com]

While I am no expert, it looks like it hit the ground short of the runway, like the previous crash of a 777 (BA 34).

Re:silly eyewitness

[msauve]

He said "cartwheel" when he meant "spin." I suspect he meant "rudder" when he said "tail," and "elevator" when he said "wing."

Re:Not geek news...

[hawguy]

This doesn't really sound like geek news.

One rumor I heard was that ILS (or some portion of it) wasn't functioning on the runway the plane was landing on (28L) so the pilot was making a manual approach without the automated glidepath alerts he'd normally have. If this is true, then this gives the story a technology/geek tie-in, and touches on issues like whether or not humans (pilots in particular) have become too reliant on machines and when the machines fail, humans don't have enough experience without them to be an adequate back up.

Though I haven't seen the ILS issue reported in any official reports, so maybe it's not true.

Re:Pilot error?

[AJWM]

I am a pilot.

You're wrong.

Re:Open airplanes

[AK Marc]

By definition. The FAA exists, not to protect the flying public, but the flight industry. Perceptions of a design fault are not allowed, but a human error is allowed. Almost always, the problem is tracked down to a single human they can name and identify. This is to make us feel better about getting into an airplane.

My first guess, based on the crash description, is that they'll find the flaps were not in the proper position, and this will be blamed on pilot error. Go ahead, check me on this. I haven't seen anything that is related to the cause yet in the news. The pilot, with insufficient flaps, came it too fast, and too steep, pulled up too late, and the tail struck early. Maybe there'll be some mechanical fault found, that can be blamed on maintenance, but even then, they'll assert the pilot should have seen the excessive descent and high airspeed for the flap setting and should have modified his approach accordingly.

The crash was 100% pilot error, even if the cause was a design/maintenance issue that prevented proper flap deployment. Or at least the report will state. But now, I have to wait a long time to find the position of the flaps at touch down.

Re:Open airplanes

[AK Marc]

This will be pilot error. My guess is improper flap position. Even if the flaps failed, he should have made a safe landing. But trusting the flap indicator over the airspeed and altimeter will be called an error. Is it an error to trust one instrument over another? It is when you made them both. He *obviously* should have paid attention to the correct one. Or possibly, he was too tired after a long flight and royally screwed up. He should have been adding throttle at the end, not pulling up and letting off. But he was trying to land with no flaps on a flaps approach, rather than executing a missed approach and getting away from that ground to figure out why. If he had scrubbed 50 mph with the "flare" at the end and didn't touch tail, we likely would never have known.

The pilot will be fired, and the crew rotation will be reviewed, yet again. We'll be no safer, but we'll be told we are.

Re:Open airplanes

[Colonel Korn]

Unfortunately, most airplane accidents and incidents are due to pilot error, ATC error and maintenance mechanic error (I think in this order). Problems with hardware or firmware that are unrecoverable in spite of following proper procedures are pretty damn rare. For example, AF447 was not directly caused by any hardware failing - it was due to the pilots not following procedures and good practice.

If you read the black box transcript from AF447 the most notable single problem was that two of the three qualified pilots in the cockpit believed that the stick was being pushed forward, when in fact it was being pulled back.

When a plane stalls, a common panicked reaction is to pull back on the stick in an attempt to point the plane back into the sky. A lot of training goes into eliminating this instinct, because the solution is actually the opposite - point the noise toward the ground to regain speed. IIRC, the copilot was pulling back on the stick for the last several minutes even as the pilot and the alternate pilot (or a flight engineer or something, I forget) were saying things like, "we're pushing on the stick, why aren't we gaining airspeed?"

The communication problem was largely caused by an major Airbus design flaw: the sticks between the left and right seats aren't linked. In other planes, the pilot would have known the copilot had the stick pulled back because the action would make his own stick move back as well. On AF447, the pilot saw nothing other than the copilot's hand on the stick and assumed he was doing the right thing, and in the understandable confusion as they struggled to gain control of the plane the copilot never verbally corrected the misconception.

Certainly pilot error in response to some external factors that aren't that uncommon (like a pitot tube freezing) was the direct cause of the crash of AF447, but a more sensible flight control design would have likely prevented the pilot error.