another theory is shadowing another airliner. turn off your transponder and get near that airliner so any radar blip you come up as is interpreted as being a regular commercial airliner. it s sort of hiding in the wide-open. the question is, could that really be done? it makes an interesting theory. we are trying to figure out if we can simulate that one to just try it. another idea, just turn your transponder off. flying on the regular commercial highways in the sky, you might not be picked up as being a threat. military would say it has to be a commercial airline he at that altitude in that room. maybe the general aviation would ignore it. it is hard to say. there are all sorts of theories. we are trying as many as we can plug in. there was no extra fuel on board. so, by now, the plane would have to be on the ground somewhere and wouldn t someone have scene it, know it, suspected there
another plane had crashed, there clearly was no way to definitively connect what happened to that plane to what had already happened in new york city and washington. at that moment. we do not know whether that crash of that plane is related to what has become an obvious terrorist attack. but i think it would be fair to say that none of us believed in ridiculous coincidences. so we all assumed at that point that it would be too great a coincidence for a fourth commercial airliner to be involved in a catastrophic event, and not be connected. we didn t know the story. we didn t know that what turned out to be within of the most dramatic stories of that entire day. at the time we didn t know about the heroism of the passengers and how they had prevented that attack from taking place.
concern right now more or as much as the fact that people were on this plane and are certainly very scared. all right. dana bash, stand by. we re going to need you throughout the evening here on cnn. again, breaking news here on cnn. a large commercial airliner crashed and burned just a short time ago at the san francisco international airport. you re looking at pictures from the scene now. you can see the top of the fuselage burned out here. you can also see on a wider shot that there is no rudder. the tail section is completely off of this plane. this is a boeing 777 from asiana airlines which is a large south korean airline. this is what we know right now. the faa is calling this a crash landing. the tail broke off the plane as we had been saying. you re looking at it there. the top of the fuselage burned, pieces of the tail and other parts of the plane were flying everywhere we re told.
the debris field and once it hit down. next to the survivors, this tells the story, this video that you re seeing there, i think that tells the whole story. incredible. don lemon, back to you. thank you very, very much. this is cnn breaking news. it is the bottom of the hour. i m don lemon live here in new york and i want to welcome our viewers here in the united states and around the world watching cnn international and other networks. we are following breaking news here on cnn. here s the information that we have for you just a short time ago at the san francisco international airport a large commercial airliner crashed and burned just a short time ago. it is a passenger plane, a boeing 777 from asiana airlines, which is a large south korean airline. we have live pictures as well as pictures from passengers who were fleeing that plane. the one you just saw was a passenger.
this is cnn breaking news. hello, everyone, i m don lemon in new york. the pictures are incredible. the stories coming out of san francisco incredible as well. i want to welcome our viewers here in the united states and around the world watching cnn international and other networks. we are following breaking news and we have a team of people who are going to hp us out, our richard quest is here, fredricka whitfield will stay with us as well as well as aviation expert jim tillmon and also reporters dan simon and other folks from around the globe will be helping with the worldwide resources of cnn. let me tell you what s happening now as you re looking at this incredible picture coming out of the airport there in san francisco, a large commercial airliner crashed and burned just a short time ago at the san francisco international airport. the pictures you are looking at, the ones earlier, were live, these were pictures taken from passengers who were fleeing that plane as it made that c