normal landing that the incident took place. there was no declared emergency. there was no emergency vehicles on the runway. air traffic control from the tape that we re now starting to hear and the transcripts basically had no warning what was about to take place. so, we re looking at an operational and executional or a mechanical failure at the point upon which the aircraft touched the ground or was in the final seconds upon touching ground, don. what we do know, richard, though, something incredible happened, something out of the ordinary once the plane did land. i want to get to washington, d.c., we have information from the ntsb, the national transportation safety board, rene, what do you have? the ntsb go team, of course, in situations like this, they are automatically dispatched. they are en route there to start the investigation in to what went wrong here. we do know that chairman debra hurstman will be going to the
confirmed at this time. so, cnn asking to confirm reports that the u.s. coast guard was conducting a search and had found a body. the u.s. coast guard saying to us and this is, quote, in full, i cannot confirm that, i know there has been a helicopter lunched and we are assisting the responding agencies but other than that nothing else has been confirmed at this time. new information now, rene marsh is checking with the faa and from the national transportation safety board. what do you know, rene? well, don, we re still waiting for more information about the folks who were on board this plane, but, again, we do know that at this point the ntsb saying that they plan on getting on a plane from here, washington, d.c., heading with the chairman of the ntsb debra hurstman and she will be leading the investigation there at the airport there in san francisco. so, of course, they re going to have to go through this piece by piece to figure out exactly what went wrong, was this something mecha
not know the answers to at this point. of course, those ntsb investigations, they tend to be quite lengthy. it could be some time before we get any true definitive answers. but we hope that the picture will become a little clearer as the day goes on, but what we really want to know is how the folks are doing on board. again, we just know, again, just based on the pictures here from the people that we ve spoken to from the sources that have spoken to us and they ve seen the pictures themselves, they say that if you were on board this plane, you may have experienced a thump. you may have heard a screeching sound, a scratching sound of the bottom of the plane scraping up against the ground there. that all makes a lot of sense. what we see here, which it looks clear, is that this plane did not impact a building. it did not impact a structure. so, we do know that. but as far as what else, as far as injuries, we don t know that. perhaps some smoke inhalation is
possible. perhaps some overhead bins opened up in the process. again, this is all speculation of what comes along with this kind of crash landing. right. of course, all the details will come out as we hear more from the faa. and, rene, also getting from excuse me, from airline sources here, some of them pilots are saying, if the plane had actually cart wheeled, it would have broke apart. it would not look like it does now. they are saying is the plane pretty much the wing is intact and in a cartwheel, the wings would not be intact. rene, stand by, if you get more information from federal agencies, we d love to hear from you. i m going to go to a witness now, jennifer sorgen, tell us what you know. we heard from other plane they saw the plane cartwheeling. again, the wings appear to be intact. what do you know? i wouldn t say it was actually cartwheeling. we saw it hit, the tail broke off almost immediately upon hitting what appeared to be the
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