0 provided to us by kgo. that is the san francisco airport. and i believe you are looking at members of the national transportation safety board. we call it the ntsb, walking across that runway where that plane crashed so spectacularly. two people dead in that. all in all, 307 people on board. we are awaiting a news conference by the national transportation safety board. so far as we know, they have begun some preliminary looks at the data recorder, for instance, those black boxes, as we call them, have already been shipped to washington. they are already downloading some of the data so they can know a little bit at this point. but what we also know is that the ntsb doesn't dribble out information it gets bit by bit. it tends to collect it and look at all of it before it gives you their kind of big-picture story. we do know some things that are happening, that happened as those, what must have been terrified passengers, came down on that plane. they said that there was absolutely no announcement that, in fact, something was about to take place, and they felt that they were coming in too low. we have had our richard quest report to us that some of the data that he has seen suggests that that plane came in at too steep an angle and was traveling too slowly. so, lots of hints about what happened, but it isn't over until the ntsb issues its report. a short while ago, i did speak with ntsb chairman deborah hersman, who joins us from the crash site in san francisco. deborah hersman, thank you so much for joining us. i know that you will look at everything, but i also know that when investigate yoferz gors ge scene, some things catch their attention. what has caught your attention? >> well, you know, when we went out there last night and took a look at the aircraft, i will tell you, you can see the devastation from the outside of the aircraft. the burn-through, the damage to the external fuselage. but what you can't see is the damage internally, and that is really striking. and so, i think when we look at this accident, we're very thankful that we didn't have more fatalities and serious injuries, and we had so many survivors. it's really very, very good news as far as a survivable accident, which many accidents are. >> and was it miraculous or was it the result of something that so many did survive? >> you know, i would say much of this is the result of the hard work of the aviation community, taking accidents, taking lessons learned and plowing them back in, whether it's the design of aircraft or training of crew members, and even passengers. and we can't stress this enough. many accidents are survivable. it's about knowing where those exits are and listening to the flight crew in an emergency situation. very important. >> and let me ask you. i hope you heard our richard quest, who reported that the flight data that he's seen shows a plane that is coming in too steep, the angle of it, and too slowly for that runway. what does that tell you? >> well, you know, we're going to have to corroborate a lot of information, the radar data, the atc information and the flight data recorder parameters, and also interview the pilots, which we hope to do in the coming days. it's really important to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together to not just understand what happened but understand why it happened so we can prevent accidents like this from occurring in the future. >> sure, i can understand that it would be less important that the pilot may have been coming in at too steep an angle and at too slow a pace and you need to know why is that so? >> sure. and you know what? stabilized approaches have long been a concern, safety concern for the aviation community. we see a lot of runway crashes, either landing short or landing long, runway overruns, runway excursions. a very significant threat in the aviation environment. we want to understand what was going on with this crew in this airplane so we can learn from it. >> on this plane and on many planes, are there not redundant systems that would have flaps, if everything were working well, that would have flashed saying too steep, too slow? wouldn't that have been in place? >> well, you know, there are a lot of systems to help support the pilots as they come into airports, especially busy commercial airports like this one at san francisco. there has already been a discussion about that glide slope being out of service, but there are a number of other tools available to the pilots, some less sophisticated, like the lights, the precision approach lights that they were talking about that show you if you're too high or too low coming in but also some things that are more technologically advanced, like things on this airplane that can give you gps information. >> i want to now bring in cnn's rene marsh, who has the latest with the flight recordings. rene? >> that's right, candy. we know at this very moment they're at the ntsb lab, and we know that simply because the ntsb has shared pictures online of the actual flight recordings inside of the lab. so, we're working to turn that around for you. but i can tell you that the analysis of the data that is happening as we speak, they're tryi ining to pull that data of. that's already happening. on the flight data recorder, that holds information like altitude, the speed, the position of the plane. and the cockpit voice recorder is capable of picking up things like the background noises and any warning signals that may have gone off, candy. >> what else is critical to these investigators as they try to figure out what went on? >> well, we know that they're also going to look at things like human performance, specifically those four pilots who were on board. they're going to be looking at their training. did they follow all of the procedures? any possibility of fatigue? because remember, this flight was more than ten hours long, an international flight. they're also going to look at blood and alcohol tests. and the flight crew will also be interviewed as well. additionally, it will be very important to look at the mechanics of the plane. was everything working correctly? >> can you tell us about the two fatalities? >> right. we know that they were two 16-year-old girls. they were reportedly found on the runway, but there are still so many questions. exactly where were they seated in the plane? did their positioning play a role at all in their death? were they strapped in? these are all critical questions that you can bet the investigators are going to try to get to the bottom of so that they can paint a fuller picture of what may have went wrong here on this flight. candy? >> rene marsh following the ntsb investigation for us. thanks, rene. i want to now bring in our richard quest, because richard, you earlier when we spoke have found out some fairly important information that certainly leads one to believe at least one of the causes of this crash. tell us about it. >> yes. this is -- [ inaudible ] this coming in too steep. if you compare the trajectory, you can see there is a much steeper rate of descent down to the runway and, indeed, much slower. now, that is not the whole of the whole equation. and deborah hersman was talking exactly about that. they might not have had a glide slope because it was inoperative, but there was a barrage of other tools. so, they will really need to understand, why did the pilots make this particular descent and this particular approach on this particular flight? and then i think it's really what this investigation is going to be about. it will fall into two distinct areas. it will fall into the nature of this flight and what lessons have been learned after the crash that happened of all the passengers on the ground. because deborah hersman's quite right when she points out, as you might expect, that modern aviation has become so reliable that when you do what's known as a survivable accident, as it was, the goal is now to focus on how you get as many people out in as best condition as you can. >> richard quest, thank you so much for your expertise on this issue. and we appreciate the information. i want to now bring back in our rene marsh. rene, i know you have been following the march of these black boxes from that plane, and presumably, that runway back to washington. what can you tell us? >> right. well, candy, we can tell you we spoke about this right off of the top, that they're in the lab. and here's the proof here. we just pulled these pictures down from the ntsb's twitter feed. so, this is a realtime look here at this photo as we show it to you. you're looking at one of the investigators pulling out these flight recorders out of those brown paper bags there. and this is a process that is happening as we speak. they are downloading critical, critical information. we're talking about the beginning, the middle and the end as it relates to how this all unfolded, how it came to be that this plane had to make this crash landing. that that you're looking at on your screen there, that is going to be so critical in this investigation. candy? >> and there is -- first of all, black boxes are not black. second of all, what is it in these -- there more than one recorder. one records data, the sort of thing richard was just talking about, altitude and all that. and the other one is what? >> right. one does record -- there are two different boxes that we're talking about there. you see two of them there. they're both located in the tail section of the plane, and you know, one might think while panic broke out off of this. you can see with your own eyes, they are pretty much intact and we got word from the ntsb that they are in good shape. so, what do you find on these things? well, on the first one, which we said is the flight data recorder, well, that is going to give just information about the plane. what was it doing? how fast was it going? how high was it? what's the altitude? what position was the plane in? so, that's going to be critical because they're going to want to analyze the flight path of the plane. that paints a picture. then the other box that we're talking about here, that is the cockpit voice recorder. well, that will be critical because you're going to maybe pick up voices of the pilot minutes before this crash landing happened. if there was some sort of warning signal or sound that went off, you may hear that. you may hear any other background noise that was going on at the time of the approach, even leading up to this. and again, you know, they are so, so painstaking when it comes to putting the pieces together. so every little tiny piece of evidence is going to fit together in a nice, big puzzle to at the end of this all give us a full picture, hopefully, of what went wrong. candy? >> thanks so much, rene marsh. on the left, those are the black boxes. on the right, that is a picture of what is left of that plane after that horrific crash landing. the pictures on the right are live. the pictures on the left are off twitter. so, we bring you all venues here as we are covering this story, which we will continue to cover, by the way. we are awaiting a news conference by the national transportation safety board. we, of course, will cover that live. right now we're going to go to break and after the break, we are going to reliable sources for a look at how the plane crash story unfolded on social media, including a tweet from survivors as they raced away from the wreck. i'm the next american success story. working for a company where over seventy-five percent of store management started as hourly associates. there's opportunity here. i can use walmart's education benefits to get a degree, maybe work in it, or be an engineer, helping walmart conserve energy. even today, when our store does well, i earn quarterly bonuses. when people look at me, i hope they see someone working their way up. vo: opportunity, that's the real walmart. does your dog food have? 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