NEW YORK - Two flight attendants on the South Korean plane that crash-landed were sucked from the aircraft and thrown down the runway upon impact, according to crash investigators.
The news was among several new details that emerged Tuesday as federal investigators continued to sift through the charred wreckage of Asiana Airlines’ Flight 214 in search of answers behind Saturday’s crash at San Francisco International Airport that killed two Chinese schoolgirls and injured scores more.
One of the pilots told authorities he knew the Boeing 777 was coming in too slow and too low and tried to correct the plane’s path at the last minute but it was too late, according to The Los Angeles Times.
The landing gear and the plane’s tail hit the seawall dividing the runway from the San Francisco Bay. The aircraft spun 360 degrees before coming to a stop, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.
Authorities are looking into whether the plane’s autothrottle had malfunctioned.
“Two flight attendants were ejected from the aircraft during the impact sequence so they were not at their stations when the aircraft came to rest,” NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said at a televised news conference on Tuesday evening.
“They were found down the runway and off to the side of the runway,” she said. “Those flight attendants survived, but they obviously had gone through a serious event and have injuries.”
Hersman also said that, according to interviews with crew members, the plane was “sent into a 360 degree spin” when it crash landed. Of the three pilots in the cockpit at the time of the crash, the first officer was hospitalized and released with a cracked rib and the other two were not admitted to a hospital.
Hersman said that the pilot flying in the left seat was about halfway through his initial operating experience on the Boeing 777. He was experienced on other types of aircraft.
The instructor pilot in the right seat “reported that this was his first trip as an instructor pilot,” Hersman said. It was the first time the two had flown together.
Meanwhile, the camp that the two teenage girls who died in the crash were supposed to attend with a group of 35 Chinese students and chaperones has been canceled in wake of the crash.
The group was on its way to a three-week summer camp at West Valley Christian Church in Los Angeles. They were going to stay with host families, study English, sight-see, visit universities and explore career opportunities.
“These are amazing, amazing gifted, talented, great prospects with a lot of talent that are coming over here,” West Valley Christian School administrator Derek Swales told ABCNews.com today. “It’s just devastating to think that superstar kid in the classroom with all that potential was just taken.”
The two fatalities were identified as Wang Linjia and Ye Mengyuan, both 16 and students from China. The students had been in the rear of the aircraft, where many of the most seriously injured passengers were seated, NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman said.
Meanwhile, why the crash occurred and who is to blame are the focuses of the safety investigation. The National Transportation Safety Board has been meeting with the four pilots of the Asiana Airlines jet that crash-landed at San Francisco Intentional Airport Saturday.
The NTSB is expected to provide more information on the pilots at a news conference on Wednesday evening.
Federal investigators have yet to indicate whether the crash can be attributed to pilot error, while they continue to analyze data recovered from the plane’s black boxes.
Investigators have said Flight 214 was flying “significantly below” its target speed during approach when the crew tried to abort the landing just before the plane smashed onto the runway.