SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — An Asiana Airlines flight from Seoul, South Korea, crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport today, forcing passengers to jump down the emergency inflatable slides to safety. It was not immediately known whether there were any injuries.
Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said Flight 214 crashed while landing on runway 28 left at 11:26 PDT.
A video clip posted to YouTube showed smoke coming from a jet on the tarmac. Passengers could be seen jumping down the emergency slides.
Television footage showed the top of the fuselage was burned away and the entire tail was gone. One engine appeared to have broken away. Pieces of the tail were strewn about the runway. Emergency responders could be seen walking inside the burned-out wreckage.
Stephanie Turner saw the plane going down and the rescue slides deploy, but returned to her hotel room before seeing any passengers get off the jet, she told ABC News. Turner said when she first saw the flight she noticed right away that the angle of its approach seemed strange.
“It didn’t manage to straighten out before hitting the runway,” she said. “So the tail of the plane hit the runway, and it cartwheeled and spun and the tail broke off … I mean we were sure that we had just seen a lot of people die. It was awful.
“And it looked like the plane had completely broken apart,” she said. “There were flames and smoke just billowing.”
A call to the airline seeking comment wasn’t immediately returned.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team of investigators to San Francisco to probe the crash.
