Another tragedy…

Just got this one… I just hope we didn’t have any military folks aboard…

KTVU.com

SFO — 

A plane crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport Saturday morning after its tail came off while it was touching down on the runway.

According to a witness, around 11:20 a.m. the plane was just about to land — its landing gear had come down — when the tail of the plane came off.

After wobbling for a minute, the aircraft flipped upside down, coming to a stop on runway on it’s back.

The plane, reportedly a Boeing 777, was coming from South Korea, according to flight tracking information.

Truly sad, and makes one wonder about what is going on with Boeing aircraft, or whether this was contract maintenance done by the airline… NTSB is going to have their hands full with this one.

And SFO is going to be shut down for quite a while, possibly days depending on where and how the wreckage is positioned.

Thoughts and prayers…

Edit- Looks like a total failure at the aft pressure bulkhead… no tail looks like the whole tail separated cleanly AT the aft bulkhead. And further video looks like pieces of the tail are in the over-run along with a bunch of luggage strewn from the over-run to the touchdown area.  The fire is a curious part at this point…

Edit 2- Looks like everyone actually got off the airplane, and maybe limited to NO deaths… One can hope.  Also apparently never flipped over, hit hard (possible accelerated stall, tail hit first) collapsed the gear and skidded off the runway.

Comments

Another tragedy… — 28 Comments

  1. The news reports say it came to rest on its back but the photos show it on its belly.

  2. Robert- Yep, good for them

    Jonathan- I ‘think’ that might have thought it was upside down since they didn’t see a tail sticking up.

  3. The photos show a belly landing (no flip) and the slides deployed. I doubt if there is a serious loss of life on this one.

    As WSF suggests, they are very lucky that they made it to land.

  4. Sure looks like he landed a bit short. Early witness accounts claim he hit the sea wall, then the runway, and slid off to the side.

    Crash trucks were there immediately.

    Only two fatalities as of 2140 UTC.

  5. WSF- Yep, now appears to be a bad landing.

    LL- Concur!

    Jonathan- Thanks, think you’re probably right! Looks like only 2 dead, which is damn lucky…

  6. That the APB remained fairly intact, is no surprise.
    The data on the CVR and FDR will tell the story.

  7. Rev- Sorry…

    Skul- Yep, that it will, and as more reports come in and better video, it’s looking more and more like a short landing. At least as of all balls UTC they do have runways back open.

  8. Ev- Yep, looking more and more like pilot error; too low, too much sink rate, too slow…

  9. 2030 “news” report says tail hit landing light and support mounted on/near seawall.

  10. Brighid- Now apparently down to 1 missing, 2 dead… MUCH better than it could have been.

    Stretch- Thanks for that update!

  11. If he would have been a few feet lower, it would have been a Really Bad Day for everyone onboard.

  12. Best reporting seemed to come out of Fox.
    Commentators mentioned several times that eye-witnesses are often wrong when relating their observations.
    I’m a bit amazed and pleased, that there were so few fatalities.
    The initial NTSB report will be interesting.
    I’m curious to see if my post crash guesses are close.

  13. When I saw on the news after I got to work was that a 777 went down in SFO and the first thing I though was “aw crap”. I then was afraid that it was one of “mine”. From the looks of it looks like it was a heavy tail strike on the wall from the pictures and asking opinions of some of the other mechanics. We basically think it was “Pilot error” he came in too slow and his glide slope increased because of lack of lift. A 777 is a large airplane and I am glad that most of the people survived, it really could have been worse.

  14. When I was stationed out that way, we were banned from flying on Korean Air, supposedly because their safety record was so bad…

    Asiana is the only other Korean airline I know of, and a popular one in SE Asia because of their low rates.
    I might be dating myself a bit here, but you could fly from Naha to Manila for about $75.

    Hope the AF doesn’t jump the gun and ban their guys from Asiana too.

  15. Rick- Correct!

    drjim- Absolutely, I’ve flown in and out of SFO for years, and that would have been a horror story…

    Skul- Agreed with all.

    Bob- Yep, agreed now that we have more video and better idea of what happened.

    MSGT- Yep, I remember that.

    Differ- It has been mentioned, but this one just looks like pilot error on a ‘short’ landing.

  16. There’s a missing piece to the puzzle here… for some reason SFO rolled the emergency equipment for this flight while it was on short final. What we don’t know is why. Did the pilots request it? If so, why? Did the SFO tower do it on their own? If so, what did they see? It’s not something they do on whimsy…

    Not much question it landed short — look at the wreckage distribution in the videos — or that the tail hit first (suggesting, but not proving, that the pilots increased the angle of attack in an effort to stretch the glide in a low energy situation) — or that the tail broke off (it will, if you hit it hard enough). And in all likelihood, the main gear sheared as it is designed to do when it hit short.

    But, as Paul Harvey used to say, “and now for the rest of the story”. Which is going to take a while to get figured out.

  17. I am reminded of a couple of old pilot’s sayings:

    Maintain thy airspeed, lest the ground rise up and smite thee

    How do you tell a crash was pilot error? The pilot’s last words (or, in this case, the last entry on the voice recorder) is “Aw, shit.”

    I’m sure you’ve seen the film of the DC-8 being flown (by remote control, of course) into the desert to test and, hopefully improve, crashworthiness. Seems to have worked. A plane crashes and only two people are killed out of three hundred.
    I remember the Tenerife incident when two planes collided on the runway and killed over 500 people.

  18. IAn- Yep, especially since they are now saying NO equipment rolled until after it hit the deck…

    SFC- Yep, and I’ve seen those films more than once. Thankfully Boeing builds a pretty tough bird…

  19. xS3- Thanks, now appears it was a bad landing, and one of the two young deaths was possibly due to being run over by a responding vehicle.