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.

Comments

Wrong week . . .

[cashman73]

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking!

Re:Wrong week . . .

[binarylarry]

Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue!

Re:Wrong week . . .

[Grog6]

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines

.

Open airplanes

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the problem with non-free airplanes. If the blueprints had been free under a freedom preserving license I'm sure the problem that caused the hiccup had been found.

Re:Open airplanes

[PolygamousRanchKid]

This is the problem with non-free airplanes. If the blueprints had been free under a freedom preserving license I'm sure the problem that caused the hiccup had been found.

. . . and the plane could have been printed on an off the shelf 3D printer . . .

Re:Open airplanes

[Rich0]

Almost any accident can be prevent by a prescient pilot always making PERFECT decisions.

I tend to agree. Perhaps the biggest design defect in both cars and aircraft is allowing humans to directly manipulate their control surfaces. Imagine the carnage that would result if elevators had handles that could be used to directly manipulate the motors and brakes (as in, no handle, no brake).

For what we spend on wars and such, we could probably replace the entire highway infrastructure with automated cars, giving a free one to start out with to every person over the age of 16 in the USA.

Re:Not geek news...

[hedwards]

The real news here is that this happened today and we're reading about it today. I would have expected to have to wait at least a fortnight for the initial report to show up here. Followed by a week of dupes.

Re:777...

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw you, the triple-6 is a hell of an aircraft.

CNN reports at least 450 dead

[Anonymous Coward]

and about 700 more shuttled to hospitals around the state. They also found nine other uncrashed planes in the vicinity.

Re:Photo

[Trepidity]

My favorite part of the reporting this evening was when CNN had text on-screen quoting the words of a caller who said the plane had lost both wings. In the background behind the text was helicopter footage of the plane, with both wings quite clearly still attached...

Re:news for nerds

[PPH]

He posted a picture of the crash:

We warned you: Turn off the damned phone!

Re:Except

[bill_mcgonigle]

Heck, the majority of them will get "axis" wrong if you ask them to define it in their own words...

"My sister always axis me if she can borrow my car."