777 Aircraft crash lands in San Francisco

06 Jul, 2013

An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 with more than 300 people on board crashed while landing at San Francisco airport after a flight from Seoul on Saturday and burst into flames, and a number of people were injured.

Pictures taken immediately after the crash showed passengers streaming off the plane. TV footage from the air later showed the badly damaged fuselage of the Boeing 777 blackened by fire.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency in Seoul said the plane had carried 292 passengers and 16 crew members.

Rachael Kagan, a spokeswoman for San Francisco General Hospital, said 10 critically injured people had been taken there, including two children, six women and four men. She said most of them spoke only Korean. There were no other immediate reports of casualties.

Lynn Lunsford, spokesman of the Federal Aviation Administration, said the plane was Flight 214. Air traffic at the airport was halted after the crash, which took place under sunny skies with only a slight breeze.

Images on television station KTVU in San Francisco showed the plane lost its tail in the crash. Fire engines were on the scene, and the fire, which had burned through the cabin’s roof, appeared to be out.

The National Transportation Safety Board said on its Twitter feed that it was sending an investigative team to the scene.

The FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said her agency was also sending investigators to the scene. She said airport was closed but one runway could be opened shortly, Brown said.

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