Asiana Airlines Crash Victim Possibly Hit By Rescue Vehicle
Escape chutes inflated inside plane, trapping flight attendants.
July 8, 2013— -- Authorities investigating the Asiana Airlines jet crash at San Francisco International Airport are looking into the possibility that one of the two victims who died may have been hit by a rescue vehicle at the airport, an official told ABC News.
"Late in the incident as we had completed most of the fire attack and rescue of initial victims, it did become obvious to us that one of the victims may have been hit by one of the apparatus on scene," San Francisco Assistant Deputy Fire Chief Dale Carnes told ABC News.
Carnes said that the incident is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and the San Francisco Police Department.
"Literally, until we get all of the facts from the investigation, anything I might offer would just be conjecture. I don't want to give any misinformation out on that," Carnes said.
NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said that an "initial read" of video of the incident "wasn't conclusive."
"We really need to work and talk with people, conduct additional interviews and let the coroner do their work," Hersman said at a news conference today.
San Francisco Plane Crash: Asiana Airlines Flight 214 Crash Timeline
The two fatalities were identified as Wang Linjia and Ye Mengyuan, both 16 and students from China.
Details of what occurred inside the plane after it came to rest and fire broke out indicate there was some confusion and heroism as escape chutes were deployed and passengers began to evacuate.
Two evacuation slides on the plane doors apparently inflated inside the cabin instead of outside, which pinned two flight attendants to the floor, cabin manager Lee Yoon-hye told the Associated Press.
Lee said crew members used axes to deflate the slides and rescue their trapped colleagues.
She also described how one flight attendant put a terrified young boy on her back and slid down a slide. Lee put out fires and helped passengers to safety not discovering until much later that she had a broken tailbone, she told the AP.
"I wasn't really thinking, but my body started carrying out the steps needed for an evacuation," she said. "I was only thinking about rescuing the next passenger."
SLIDESHOW: Plane Crashes at San Francisco Airport
First responders arrived at the scene within minutes of the crash.
San Francisco Fire Department Lt. Crissy Emmons was on duty at the airport when the alert came in.
"The alert was struck and the communication from the tower was, 'Alert three. Alert three. Alert three. Plane crash. Plane crash," Emmons recalled at a news conference today. "I knew from her voice that the event we were going to was real."
Emmons was one of the first on-scene and described the column of smoke coming from the plane, using foam to try to put out the flames and climbing up the plane's emergency chutes to look for passengers and helping rescue the four or five people who were still in the back of the plane.
The investigation into the cause of the crash has noted that the pilot in charge of the flight was in his ninth training flight on the Boeing 777 and was 11 flights short of the worldwide standard to get licensed, company officials said.
Pilot Lee Kang-kook had 43 hours of flight experience on the Boeing 777 and Saturday was his first time landing at the airport with that kind of aircraft, Asiana Airlines spokeswoman Lee Hyo-min said today at a news conference in Seoul, South Korea.
"He is a veteran pilot with almost 10,000 hours on other aircrafts like the 747," she said. "He was in the process of getting a license for the new 777.
"He has flown the new 777 nine times before to Narita [in Tokyo], London, L.A., and more. But, yes, to San Francisco, with that specific 777 type, it was his first," she added.
Lee flew with an experienced Boeing 777 pilot mentor, in accordance with world standards, the spokeswoman said. Lee's trainer Saturday was Lee Jung-min, who has more than 3,000 hours flying the 777, and a total of 12,387 hours flying experience, according to the airline.
"The basic principles of flying a big jetliner are the same whether you're dealing with a 747 or a 777 or a 737 and among those are the ability to land on a runway in clear visual weather," ABC News aviation analyst John Nance said.
"This captain was fully licensed to be doing what he was doing. It wasn't a matter of he needed 10 flights and then he would get his license," Nance continued. "It's a matter of after 10 flights, all his restrictions as a new captain in a new airplane are removed."
During a news conference in Seoul, airline president Yoon Young-doo, defended the pilot's experience.
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