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
taking place a little too early. we ve got on the phone with us right now mary schiavo formerly of the u.s. department of aviation, so, mary, this is an incredible sight that we re seeing right here. so many eyewitness accounts of what may have happened as this boeing 777, this aviation expert we just talked to said this is one of the more safer planes out there and that this accident would happen. what s the first thing at hand for investigators to piece together what happened, how, and why? well, they will have a tremendous amount of information from two recordings from the cockpit voice recording and from the tower recording and also the air traffic controllers were supposed to have eyes on that plane. so, they will have a tremendous amount of information. but i think jim tillmon s right, i think for them to come in, san francisco is you know, there are winds and all that sort of thing but the 777 is a very heavy, reliable plane, you know, tens of thousands of planes land in san
beginning of the runway. the cobblestones where it meets the water. jim tillmon mentioned there s a blacktop area that tells the pilot, okay, this is the, you know, runway that we re starting to approach. so he actually may have come in too low as we ve been talking about. there was a northwest wind. it s a proverbial northwest wind at only about 7 miles per hour, so that does create for those flights that come in this correction a little bit of a headwind so they can keep the nose up, you can see it here. i asked jim tillmon about this earlier, if this happens to be an airport that promotes a certain challenge to a lot of pilots. yeah. he said absolutely not. you think of new york, you think of washington international. right. you think of san francisco. he painted the picture that these are airports that these pilots are proficient enough to understand how to read the weather and how to read the potential weather conditions right. and how to make landings near water
on board. looking at the pictures now that we re seeing, this is starting to become a lot clearer as to, you know you asked the question mechanical or pilot. yeah. no one can come down one side or the other until we ve got the final sure. judgment from the ntsb, but listening to what mary schiavo said and listening to what your other guest said, we re looking more toward the flying of the aircraft rather than the aircraft itself. mechanical or execution was my question and it sounded like jim tillmon was laying toward execution and he laid out the many reasons why. in fact, richard, now as we re looking at the various images of the plane in its current state, take a look at this if you are anywhere near a screen, richard, and jim tillmon, aviation expert, we have a tweeted-out picture that we received from i m believing he was a passenger, david un, and his picture shows i guess the number of people who were coming out of
people ask when they see an accident of this caliber, they think what was the weather right away. right. we know san francisco it often has overclassed overcast conditioned. right. but you ruled it out. that wasn t the issue today. they ll still put a report on it, but, you know, don, hour by hour, they couldn t have been better. sky conditions, visibility, unlimited ceilings and light winds. it seems like, don, it also created a situation where you had eyewitnesss, you heard them earlier, who were able to get a clear view whether it was someone who was in a hotel room nearby, whether it was somebody else who we talked to that was in a plane on the tarmac, they were able to see the contact that took place yeah, those are the pictures. right there on the edge on the approach to that tarmac, to that runway for landing, that the tail hit. and you can see the debris field. yeah. and jim tillmon, well, he speaks much more profish aboabo