San Francisco Airport (SFO)

[Aviador]

[textarea]Asiana 777-200ER crashes at San Francisco airport

As visual evidence accumulated showing signs of a runway under-shoot, the US National Transportation Safety Board says it will dispatch a team to investigate.

Full Story: http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articl ... rt-388004/[/textarea]

Any thoughts or speculations about what could have caused the accident. I wonder if it could be something similar to the BA Heathrow 777 accident a couple of years back?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Any thoughts or speculations about what could have caused the accident. I wonder if it could be something similar to the BA Heathrow 777 accident a couple of years back?

Apparently this aircraft wasn't equpped with Rolls Royce engines as in the LHR incident.

A lot of speculation on another site that is frequented in the main by pilots and other aviation professionals that concentrated on the ILS glideslope for the runway in question and its parallel neighbour. It seems the glideslope has been out of action and will be until August.

The consensus of these professionals, some of whom piloted commercial aircraft onto the glideslope-less runways at SFO in the hours before this incident, is that it should not have been a problem for a qualified airline flight crew but that it might have been.

I'm in no way qualified to make any sort of judgement.

However, I know that we do have some professional pilot and ATC staff as members and I'd be very interested in anything they might care to say about this tragic incident.

 

[lysander]

According to a report on the BBC the aircraft's speed was too low as it approached the runway threshold.

 

[Aviador]

The American NTSB has confirmed the speed of the Asiana aircraft had reduced to 102 knots prior to the accident.

On another note I see by overhead images of the runway it appears the runway threshold had been moved recently with the old touchdown markers blacked out and the news ones further down the runway. Had the accident happened prior to the new touchdown markers being painted, the aircraft would probably have hit the sea before the runway which would likely have lead to significantly more fatalities.

SourceAerial Overview of sea wall to final position (Photo: Reuters)

 

[Jerry]

My departure from San Francisco on my flight to Portland with Alaska Airlines.