remarkable situation as you point out people were strolling off that airplane is unreal. yeah, it is unreal. you know, jim, you said, of course, we worked together for a long time in chicago, i know your expert in both weather and aviation. we re glad to have you on cnn today. i want you to listen to this eyewitne eyewitness, anthony castrarni and then we ll talk, okay? actually it looked like it was coming in very nicely. it was pitched nose up maybe about three degrees. and as it was coming in, it came in. it touched down the runway a little earlier than i ve seen most planes coming in and touching down, but the moment it touched down, the nose was still pitched up. the nose wheel never hit the ground yet, and what you typically see smoke from the wheels coming down on that initial touchdown, there was a larger plume of white smoke. you heard a pop. and then you immediate i had saw a large brief fireball that came
multiple sources throughout the world, again, we have the worldwide resources of cnn on top of this story including our richard quest there in london. we also have a reporter in seoul, south korea, where this flight originated. we have aviation expert jim tillmon who is joining us as well, a reporter in washington who is reporting on the ntsb and the faa portion of this. the official portion and what they re doing. a reporter at san francisco international airport who s actually inside the terminal now. eunice byrd is on the phone now. her father was is on the phone. her father was on that asiana plane and took these photographs. eunice, first off, how is your father? these pictures are unbelievable. how is your father doing? hi, don. my father s doing fine, thank god. he s doing all right. we ve been actually texting for the last hour and a half, two hours, and from where i m sitting right now i can actually see the wreckage right in front of me, and the line of fire
injuries. again, let s go back to fredricka whitfield, who is in atlanta. fredricka covered this story right when it broke on the air, and tom sader is there as well in the cnn severe weather center. tom, we heard there from jim tillmon who is also a meteorologist, he said the conditions were perfect. yeah. the conditions were fine. so, what gives here? you know, we re going to put this to rest as fredricka and i talked about earlier, don, obviously they re going to put this in the reports. there will be full detail of every hourly weather observations, even the conditions at flight level upon its approach. these were ideal flight conditions. we re just going to put it to rest right now. take a look behind me, these are conditions on landing. visibility is ten miles. that s the top of the scale. it was probably better than that. so, it doesn t get any better. ceiling is unlimited which means with partly cloudy skies, obviously we didn t have the thunderstorm activity because the
coming in for that crash landing. don? rene, stand by. i would like to get jim tillmon back up, before i get jim back up, can we roll, again, the air traffic controllers, the portion that we have. and i want jim to listen to that. and then we ll talk about it. let s get it back up. can we play it? 214 out of san francisco, starting with your 214 heavy, emergency vehicles are responding. asiana 214 san francisco tower. asiana 214 heavy, emergency vehicles are responding. we have everyone on their way. jim tillmon, 214 heavy, what does that mean? jim tillmon, are you there? okay.
little. and that s what happened apparently, at least it seems that way. especially you look at the debris, you can see that there was a stick made by the aircraft just prior to the time they even got to the threshold of the runway, nevertheless the runway itself. jim tillmon, stand by. thank you very much. we want to get live, live pictures on the ground, cnn s dan simon at san francisco international airport. dan, we listened to that press conference just a short time ago. you were there. what information are you getting in? reporter: you know, basically they just wanted to confirm the information that we already know, that there was this crash and that they wanted to tell us the process going forward, and that is, a, they want to secure the scene and, b, to let the media know that there are going to be briefings every hour on the hour, so you can expect the next press briefing to be at 6:00 eastern time. meanwhile, don, i m outside of the international terminal, and it looks