Stall warning came a second before San Fran crash
Coroner fears one of victims run over by a rescue vehicle. Pilots of Asiana Flight 214 were flying too slowly as they approached San Francisco airport, triggering a warning that the Boeing 777 jetliner could stall, and they tried to abort the landing but crashed barely a second later, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said yesterday.
The airline said the pilot at the controls had little experience flying that type of plane.
While federal investigators began piecing together what led to the crash, San Mateo County coroner Robert Foucrault disclosed that he was looking into the possibility that one of the two teenage passengers who died on Sunday actually survived the crash but was run over by a rescue vehicle rushing to help victims as the plane burst into flames.
Remarkably, 305 of 307 passengers survived the crash and more than a third didn’t require hospital treatment. Only a small number were critically injured.
Accident investigators are trying to determine whether pilot error, mechanical problems or something else was to blame for the crash. At a news conference, NTSB chief Deborah
Crash investigators work at the scene. Hersman said the Boeing 777 was travelling at speeds well below the target landing speed of 137 knots per hour, or 252kmh. ‘‘We’re not talking about a few knots,’’ she said.
Hersman described the frantic final seconds of the flight as the pilots struggled to avoid crashing. Seven seconds before the crash, pilots recognised the need to increase speed, she said, basing her comments on an evaluation of the cockpit voice and flight data recorders that contain information on what happened to the plane. air traffic controllers that there were problems with the aircraft.
The airline said yesterday in Seoul that the pilot at the controls had little experience flying that type of plane and was landing one for the first time at that airport.
Asiana spokeswoman Lee Hyomin said that Lee Gang Guk was trying to get used to the 777 during Sunday’s crash landing. She says the pilot had nearly 10,000 hours flying other planes but had only 43 hours on the 777.
Among the questions investigators are trying to answer was what, if any, role the deactivation of a ground-based landing guidance system due to airport construction played in the crash.
Foucrault, the coroner, said senior San Francisco Fire Department officials notified him and his staff at the crash site on Sunday that one of the 16-yearolds who was killed may have been struck on the runway. Foucrault said an autopsy he expected to be completed by today will involve determining whether the girl’s death was caused by crash injuries or ‘‘a secondary incident’’.
He said he did not get a close enough look at the victims on Sunday to know whether they had external injuries.
Foucrault said one of the bodies was found on the tarmac near where the plane’s tail broke off when it slammed into the runway. The other was found on the left side of the plane about 9 metres away from where it came to rest.