Boeing 777 on fire at SFO after tail falls off - Live EMS feed

[rpm]

A few snippets from the AP story with eyewitness account:

It wasn't immediately clear what happened to the plane as it was landing, but some eyewitnesses said the aircraft seemed to lose control and that the tail may have hit the ground.

Kate Belding was out jogging just before 11:30 a.m. on a path across the water from the airport when she noticed the plane approaching the runway in a way that "just didn't look like it was coming in quite right."

"Then all of a sudden I saw what looked like a cloud of dirt puffing up and then there was a big bang and it kind of looked like the plane maybe bounced (as it neared the ground)," she said. "I couldn't really tell what happened, but you saw the wings going up and (in) a weird angle."

"Not like it was cartwheeling," she said, but rather as though the wings were almost swaying from side to side.

Boeing said it was preparing to provide technical assistance to the NTSB. The maker of the plane's engines, Pratt & Whitney, said it was cooperating with authorities investigating the crash.

The most notable accident involving a 777 occurred on Jan. 17, 2008 at Heathrow Airport in London. British Airways Flight 28 landed hard about 1,000 feet short of the runway and slid onto the start of the runway. The impact broke the 777-200's landing gear. There were 47 injuries, but no fatalities.

An investigation revealed ice pellets that had formed in the fuel were clogging the fuel-oil heat exchanger, blocking fuel from reaching the plane's engines. The Rolls-Royce Trent 800 series engines that were used on the plane were then redesigned.

[MarineUS]

[eagl]

Coast Guard found a body.  This is pilot error 99% sure.

Really?  Weren't there 2 or 3 unexplained 777 engine failures during final approach just a couple of years ago?  Engine failure on short final would do this.

Don't jump to conclusions without more information.  I haven't seen any video of the crash, for example.  I do know the ATC audio tape is out there somewhere, but it didn't seem to have anything abnormal on it.

edit - yea now I see someone else posted something about ice in the fuel being the culprit on earlier mishaps.  So there are lots of possible causes and event chains.  It's right on the water, so it could even be something as common as a large bird strike event.

[Karnak]

Interesting:
http://www.ferndaleenterprise.com/category/blog/

Just witnessed the MOST unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen in my life. As my plane landed in SF we hit some turbulence & our plane jolted to the left, turning about 30 degrees before we quickly straightened out-barely making our landing, taking a sharp left & skidding to a stop on the strip between 2 runways. Just as we pulled perpendicular to the incoming runway, we looked up to the left & saw a huge plane (an off duty pilot riding as a passenger on my flight said it was a 777) literally drop from the sky & slam into the ground, almost bouncing it hit so hard. It threw an engine into the center divider that bursted into flames, before the plane turned sideways off the runway & slid until it came to a stop in the dirt. It quickly went up in flames towards the center of the plane & then a few minutes later we saw the emergency slide deploy from the front. No news on passengers. Anyways, long story short Kimberly, they shutdown the airport & nothing is currently coming/going (I’ll keep you posted). Absolutely terrified to board another flight. Pray that everyone gets off that plane!!! — at San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

[rpm]

A passenger account of the crash:

Moments before the crash, passenger Benjamin Levy said he looked out the window and saw the piers in San Francisco Bay just off the airport runway--and they were way too close to the plane. "We were too low, too soon," he said.

"He was going down pretty fast, and I think he just realized he was down too fast," Levy said.

The pilot then pushed on the engines "just as we were about to hit the water."

"I think the pilot must have realized because the pilot tried to pull the plane back up," Levy told The Times in a phone interview. "We hit pretty hard. And I thought the wheels were gone for sure."

He felt the plane crash -- and heard the screams of passengers -- but the aircraft stayed on its belly as it landed hard on a grassy area next to the runway.

Federal investigators were trying to determine what went wrong. But a source involved in the investigation said the plane appeared to clip a sea wall while landing.

Witnesses described the plane coming in very low, and pictures and video from the accident appear to show that the debris field began at the sea wall and stretched for hundreds of feet.

Still way too early but it's sounding more and more like pilot error. Nobody is saying anything about weather except the post Karnak found.

[Sundowner]

Crash video emerges: High nose up attitude on impact?

Regards,
Sun

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/07/us/plane-crash-main/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

[MarineUS]

Holy cow...I can see why people thought it flipped. 

[Karnak]

Holy cow...I can see why people thought it flipped. 

Yeah.  I am glad it didn't.

[Traveler]

in about a year we will hear what actually happened, the black boxes will tell us if the engines were developing power or as was it just a simple, 10 and half hour flight with 10 hours of fuel.  We don't know, the FAA will figure it out.  From the video I've seen. It actually looks like it did a tail slide, when the tail hit the nose rotated down hard,  the wing may have started to rotate in an uncontrolled roll that was stopped by the contact with the ground.   Stall spin at 150 feet, That deck angle  looked to be above 30 degrees. 

[Wmaker]

The spokeswoman of the investigation team said that there was no discussion between the pilots about any anomalies/problems with engines or any other systems of the aircraft. She also said that the speed was below the normal approach speed and that the throttles were at idle until they were advanced few seconds before the impact and that the engines responded normally. The stick shaker is heard four seconds before the impact on the CVR-tape. Crew called go-around 1.5 seconds before the impact.

[Buzzard7]

Just saw a report that one of the teenagers that died may have been run over by one of the rescue vehicles. I hope that's not true.

[guncrasher]

Exactly right!  Making judgements about it when it was not witnessed as part of the flight crew is simply irresponsible.

looks like it's gonna be a pilot error after all.


semp

[Golfer]

This is gonna be a good one to learn from.  Culture, training, experience, proficiency and fatigue are all going to be players.  Will it "fix" the cultural deficiencies Eastern airlines have regarding to Crew Resource Management?  I doubt it.  Not enough people died and probably not enough will die in the next accident either.

I want there to be something mechanical that caused this.  Deep down I really do.

Where's my $1?  It ain't on a broken Boeing.

[icepac]

It's possible the pilot unlinked from autoland at exactly the wrong moment.

Autoland will advance and retard throttles on it's own and he may have unlinked from it to fly hands on like most do and happened to do it just after autoland had pulled a bit of power.

My dad says he always has hands on the throttle when he goes hands on and is ready to add throttle in case it happens to him.

It could also be that he flew through a shear on short final that sapped his airspeed if that report from a passenger from another plane is valid.

[Golfer]