777 Crash at SFO

[RP#62]

I'm watching the coverage of the Asiana 777 crash at SFO.  It looks like they landed short and hard and drug the tail.  The whole empennage separated just aft of the rear pressure bulkhead.  You can see debris from the sea wall up to the runway threshold.  Hitting the tail that hard would have slammed it down and collapsed the gear and most likely ruptured the tanks and ultimately started the fire.  Hopefully most if not all got off before the fire started.  That's my speculation anyway.

-RP

[Patrick]

Boy, what a shame. I'm not a 'big' plane guy. Doesn't the 777-200 have auto-land ? It sure appears they came in under/low on the glide-slope. The crew didn't notice that, or did something happen late on final ? It appears they came in very nose high, but I haven't read much else.
I've read that 10 are badly injured and 2 are dead.

[RP#62]

Boy, what a shame. I'm not a 'big' plane guy. Doesn't the 777-200 have auto-land ? It sure appears they came in under/low on the glide-slope. The crew didn't notice that, or did something happen late on final ? It appears they came in very nose high, but I haven't read much else.
I've read that 10 are badly injured and 2 are dead.

Yes indeed.   They have autoland, autothrottle and autobrake.  Once its dialed in the pilot doesn't have to touch anything until they're on roll out.  They usually like to hand fly the landing though.  Too early to know whether pilot had his head up his butt or the engines wouldn't spool back up or what.  Its a shame.

-RP

[Patrick]

Late last night I read that an emergency was declared, it didn't say when though.

[indiandave]

Was delcared 1.5 sec before crash - the crew knew they where going down. Note the plane may have the above items - But it take a lot of trianing and manit to keep those system up - the Glide slope was INOP on that runway (would need for autoland system). I know as I'm a A&P airline mech for 23 years and have had to keep system going and checking out. This seems to be a crew problem, this is not a US carrier and the Asian Stander is WAY LESS than for a US base carrier for crew hours behined the yoke. Not placing blame just the fact.

[Patrick]

I know that some like to 'hand-fly' especially during the landing phase. Good practice. So, it appears they were 'supposed' to be doing just that if the glide-slope was out. It'll be interesting to see what the recorders and crew have to say and what the outcome will be. Didn't declare the emergency until 1.5 seconds before impact ? Amazing. We'll see what happens, but, I'm putting my money on pilot error.

[RP#62]

I'm with ya Indiandave.  I've had my A&P coming up on 40 years. Looks like by the time they realized what was going on, they were literally behind the power curve and couldn't arrest the descent.

-RP