SFO OMFG

Just saw the news. Major crash at SFO. Two dead 180 injured.

http://www.fark.com/comments/7829976/Reports-of-passenger-plane-crash-at-San-Francisco-airport-Developing-multiple-news-links-in-thread

It's almost off the main page at FARK.

I actually kinda ignored it because I thought it said private plane. I was wondering why someone crashing his Cessna would be so newsworthy...

A quick scan of info seems to indicate trouble on approach (they talked to the tower about it) and the plane touched down before the runway sheering off the main landing gear. (A witness claims to have seen)

Some sort of very serious failure. Maybe loss of power?

Not to make light of the situation... but I thought this was about me.

Though strangely... I'm in San Francisco today.

Tail hit the ground first

Scary, terrifying stuff.

Yeah. Saw that last night. My shop repairs parts for Asiana's 777 fleet. Scary.

I am just amazed that only 2 people died.

Seems non engine related.. PHEW!!!!!!!!!!!!

Total guess here, but I'll bet the korean culture had something to do with the crash. From what I am told, through my dealings with KAL; In their culture a Co-Pilot does not question a Pilot's judgement.

Not only is it well documented, but I've heard this from maint folks on the ground at Incheon.

http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2008/12/04/malcolm-gladwell-on-culture-cockpit-communication-and-plane-crashes/

From what I've been able to gather, he was too high, then came in too steep and slow (strong possibility of being below stall) and smacked the beginning of the runway.

Here's a graphic to save me the trouble of collating all of the words:

looking at that graphic.. it almost looks like a stall right before the runway

You can see the landing video here from another vantage point:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/07/us/plane-crash-main/

Looks like it hit quite hard.

Knurled wrote: From what I've been able to gather, he was too high, then came in too steep and slow (strong possibility of being below stall) and smacked the beginning of the runway.

From that graphic and the video, that's is exactly what it looks like to me. Was coming in high, probably lowered the nose and reduced power too much, then was a little to low and was probably throttling back up while pitching the nose up. It was probably the beginnings of a power on stall.

If the plane would have completed the stall and dropped the nose, there would have been alot more people dead.

Anyone take guesses as to why the fire was in the front of the cabin rather than at the rear where the impact was?

Most of the fuel on those planes should be in (and near) the wings (makes balancing the plane easier as fuel burns off) and that is what is most likely to burn. Not much to burn easily in the tail except maybe the APU fuel lines.

The plane was likely doomed well out. At some point you get what is called "behind the curve", where it does not matter if you go to full power, you will still loose altitude.

The question is why it was allowed to get so bad. One possibility that is more common then you might think is a behavioral one, cockpit dynamics and such, known as Human Factors.

A couple of the articles mentioned that from the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder that the crew may have thought they were going faster than they actually were, but by the time they realized it and tried to do a go around it was way too late and the plane hit the ground a couple seconds later.

Every article I saw said it was far below the speed of 157 mph, but nobody has actually said what the airspeed was, anyone have any information?

Also, at least one article said that there was a warning that the engines were going to stall. Ugh. Someday, some reporter will understand that wings can stall, too.

This one is weird. I find myself very grateful that so many survived, but the injuries and the two deaths could have easily been prevented, it seems.

tuna55 wrote: Also, at least one article said that there was a warning that the engines were going to stall. Ugh. Someday, some reporter will understand that wings can stall, too.

When people hear stall, they automatically think of engines. It seems reporters choose words to make the story sound better or more interesting.

With the airspeed so low and the nose pitched up that high, that high above the runway screams out they were trying to scratch the landing and go around. They were too low and to slow though. I bet stall warnings were going off like crazy.

I took flight lessons as a teenager in a Cessna 152. It had little holes towards the leading edge of the top of the wing that were stall indicators. It would make an annoying buzzing sound when the wings were about to completely lose lift. I can only imagine that those planes have some crazy multi-stall warning system.

I wanted to point out that my previous post mentioning that there was some kind of distress call before landing appears to be untrue. The controllers were just very on top of the situation and called an emergency very quickly.

So, who is David Eun?

I was talking to my buddy about this last night. He said he flies a military aircraft similar to the 777, and has landed on that same runway multiply times. He said he could not comprehend how this could happen by pilot error alone.

RE Anti-stance: He said the 'glide slope' alarm would have been going off.

tuna55 wrote: Every article I saw said it was far below the speed of 157 mph, but nobody has actually said what the airspeed was, anyone have any information?

On the graph I posted, one of the datapoints is 85 knots.

Stall speed in that trim is supposed to be around 135...

Note that IANAP so this is all regurgitated (yet vetted) info.

In reply to RossD: one of the linked articles said that the "Glide Slope" system was not functioning. It was temporarily shut off during some construction at the airport. The article also said though, that 777's would have multiple redundant landing and warning systems in place, and that losing the availability of that single system wouldnt have been enough to botch a landing on its own.

Duke wrote: So, who is David Eun?

Someone who tweeted and posted a picture on the scene.

Knurled wrote:

tuna55 wrote: Every article I saw said it was far below the speed of 157 mph, but nobody has actually said what the airspeed was, anyone have any information?

On the graph I posted, one of the datapoints is 85 knots. Stall speed in that trim is supposed to be around 135... Note that IANAP so this is all regurgitated (yet vetted) info.

Holy crap they were going 85 on a stall speed of 135? Are you certain? I think you may be misinterpreting, I read that the target landing speed was 135 knots, not the stall speed. Of course, this was based on actual reporters, so you're probably right and they are probably wrong.

But wait! There's more!

http://kotaku.com/asiana-airlines-headline-called-racist-and-in-bad-ta-699270861