that news conference is beginning right now. let s listen in. sfo today. i want to start by kind of reconfirming some of the facts then we ll provide some updated information on passenger numbers for you. so, again, this morning pat 11:27 a.m., we had incident involving asiana flight 214, this is a flight that originated in shanghai and continued on through seoul airport on its way to san francisco. it s a boeing 777 aircraft, and our manifest count, the number of individuals onboard the aircraft, 291 passengers and 16 crew for a total of 307 onboard the aircraft. as i mention, we do have updated information on the status of those passengers and crew and for that i m going to turn it over to assistant deputy chief dale karnes. dale? good evening.
emergency slide, rushing away from the plane. others just simply jumping out of those emergency doors. earlier we heard from the national transportation safety board. the ntsb. that group will be leading this crash investigation here in the united states. listen to what the chair, debra hersman, said just a little while ago here in washington. we had a boeing 777 asiana flight 214 that was originating in seoul, south korea, destined for san francisco. they were coming in on runway 28 left at san francisco international airport and they crashed on landing. we have a number of investigators who are launching with us here from headquarters. they are being led by investigator in charge bill english. we have a number of subject matter experts who are going to
yes, there s lots of talk about whether that was operational, whether there was a possibility that the pilots had not properly readjusted or set their altimeters and other strumting co instruments coming in. also, of course, there will be the issue in the investigation of the configuration of the runway and the seawall at the end which is, of course, necessary. but on the pilot chatter lines, obviously there s lots of talk about what might have gone wrong. such as the ils having a problem with improper settings on the altimeter. improper or not good crew resource management. in other words, if you were below your glide slope and below where you needed to be on your map and there are diagrams out there, aren t there now, showing that substantially 214, asiana 214 was at a steeper rate of
boeing 777, asiana airline 214 from seoul, south korea, landing there in san francisco, according to christina, what she saw it appeared in her view that the tires slipped. she said it looked like the plane rocked back as it was landing, the tail came off as it hit the ground there, and then she says other parts of the plane started coming off and it started to break apart and then swing around and that s a fascinating description because as we spoke with jim tillmon who is an aviation expert and retired pilot, when i asked him just looking at the debris field and just hearing the description of at least one other eyewitness that we spoke to and what they saw as the plane was landing, it was jim s assessment that potentially it may have been that the tail may have hit the ground with the nose pitched up, that it could be that perhaps that landing was taking
suddenly he saw this let s call it a crash landing. any time there s a situation everyone wants to know did weather play a role. let s put this to rest right now i m sure investigator also find this out as well. conditions could not have been more ideal for flight. yes, in the morning hours from san francisco in the bay area southward to san diego we have a marine layer that moves into the layer and the higher humidity the visibility drops but that burns off 10:30 in the morning. and 64 degrees the conditions were perfect. partly cloudy skies. ceiling unlimited, visibility ten miles plus, the top of the scale so probably even better than that. humidity again it was ideal, the winds were light so we didn t have any thunderstorms in the area which could have produced a downdraft or microburst, nothing of the sort. you can see the marine layer in white, that is the cloud cover and the marine layer offshore. as we look at the radar with the