We are bringing toer into. Amy . Reporter dan, airport officials are giving us updates, briefings. The next one is scheduled for 7 30. We did get good news at the last briefing. That is of the 60 people unaccounted for, they found all but one of them. You can see how easy it would be to get lost in here. Were told those people had selfevacuated and just hadnt checked in. Officials say they are obviously working off a lost list of names, 307 names in a chaotic situation. That could explain why the briefings have been a couple hours apart. The last one was rather short. Several agencies are working on this, theyre all gathering all the details and comparing with each other, so theyre being very careful what they released to you. In the first briefing, that was full of several local officials. Heres an example of what we heard from the mayor and also the fire chief. Still very active in terms of coordinating the numbers and so forth. Im told the information we received from Asiana Airlines, the manifesto included 291 passengers with 16 additional crew, for a total of 307. Our thoughts and our prayers are with all the of the passengers from the flight. Were deeply saddened by this incident. Our hearts are with our friends and the families of those affected. Reporter we have been told they havent found a cause of the crash, but the fbi detected no evidence of a crime, no hint of terrorism. Not only is this where theyre dealing with survivors and family members and the investigation, but theyre also updating us on airport operations. Were hearing from people stories of lines that lasted three hours. Take a look at this live picture of people sacked out on the floor, just waiting, waiting for their planes. We did have an airport shutdown for a while, but now we have two runways up and running. So while people did experience cancellations earlier in the day, now were just dealing with delays and reschedules. We have talked to people who gave up, rebooked their flight for tomorrow, so they will be back. So things are trying to get settled here, but a lot of flights to get rescheduled and readjusted to try to get people moving again. Reporting live at sfo, amy hollyfield. Its a process that will take hours. Thats a big job. We talked to san joses airport, they took 25 flights, 4,000 passengers, and oakland had 11 flights, so they are all scrambling to try to get people to where they need to be. This plane came down at 11 30 this morning, 11 33 after about a 10 1 2 hour flight from the International Airport in south korea. This is one of four run waists at the airport, most of the time used for rivals and departures for some of the bigger planes. In fact the longest runway they have. Nbc 7s reporter jon alston spoke with witnesses who saw the stunning images of what they were able to see. John, walk us through what they saw. First off we just obtained video that add some texture and context to the timeline of what happened this morning around 11 30. This is video, cell phone video taken by amrit singh who was in one of the hotels. You notice the plane is not on fire. The plane did not catch fire immediately. That was much later. There is video of passengers sliding down the chute. The top of the fuselage is intact. There are shots of passengers Milling Around the plane before the fire started. This was not a case of my god, the plane is on fire, we have to get out. In fact some people said it was almost nonchalant. Earlier we did talk to some witnesses who did see the actual impact. The tail was very low. When it hit, sparks flew, and then it for some reason he must have lost control, this wing hit, it spun around and then there was a big explosion. I heard two loud bangs. I immediately turned around. I was here walking on this end of the land, and i looked over and saw the plane with the fuselage very high angle from the ground. It was probably almost 45 degrees. The Tail Assembly had now been broken loose. Reporter back live, that seems to be what a lot of this is the millbrae waterfront where dozens of people have been arriving today on this Holiday Weekend with their cameras, cell phones, watching the fuselage across the bay as it sits there and the investigation begins. Theres a sweeping pattern, and as wayne mentioned, yes, planes have been taking off and landing on the perpendicular run raye. There are no air operations near the crash site behind me. Since were here, we may try this. Behind me, you can see the fuselage that is still there and will be there for some time. If we pan to the right, if we did do this, were kind of dos this on the fly. As we pan to the right at the beginning of the runway, you should see the tail, the entire tail section of that asiana flight, which broke off much earlier upon the first impact, which witnesses said occurred with the tail so low. The tail is quite a dance away from the remainder of the aircraft. John, thank you very much. We continue our Live Team Coverage right now with the way this crash is affecting other passengers trying to flying out ofs airport. Reporter you can imagine, because this is such a major airport, theres a lot of people flying into and out of the west coast, and theyre using what they thought would have been old, reliability sfo to do that. Unfortunately at this hour theres a lot of people who are basically backed up. I want to show you right now, this is the traffic of people coming into the International Airport. We are on the departures level. Now, when you walk inside, you may have noticed amy in earlier, this is video of what it looks like inside, the backup of people who are really trying to get information to how they are going to leave sfo. A lot of people who are in that line realize that they are not flying out of San Francisco tonight, instead they are simply trying to get information. I did talk briefly with a woman trying to get to luxembourg, as we were talking to her, she got information when she could fly out, which isnt until tuesday. They found me on one flight on louvre tansa, and i will be in luxembourg on tuesday. That was perfect, because i thought i would only be there on wednesday. I had a doctor appointment. It was two runwayings, and the only way to tell us was to come down, check in and be here. Reporter good thing you have it. Yes. Reporter what youre seeing now is video, hopefully of some of the flights that actually started pulling into the terminal here. As you know, there was a groundstop of traffic coming into sfo for a few hours. Then they were able to open up two runways. Some of those flights that were in air did manage to touch down. Of course theres a lot of people waiting to get aboard those flights. Coming back here live, i should mention that for a lot of the pages who are coming here, they are telling me that they simply just do not have a lot of information thats getting to them through their airlines. So what they are choosing to do is come here and try to find information as they get into the terminals. A lot of people are making phone calls and waiting for as long as an hour and a half to try to get any information to when their next flight will leave, or when theyll be able to get booked on a different flight. Of course, this is a pretty busy Holiday Weekend action so a lot of people today were trying to fly out before sunday. Unfortunately thats all going to roll over now, because a lot of the flights are booked on sunday. A lot of these people who are stuck here right now probably wont get out of the sfo under monday or tuesday. Reporting live at the international terminal, abc7 news. Thank you very much. Again, this is a live picture of the fuselage of asiana flight 214 that crashed this morning around 11 30, with 307 people on board. Two people were killed, sadly, in this. If you look very closely, you can actually see investigators beginning the process of Milling Around. I see a couple heads bobbing around here and there Mark Matthews spoke with a woman who witnessed the crash. Hes live at terminal 3, where is there is a crush of people, trying to make their flights and get out of town. Mark . Reporter were at the united gates. This is going to take all night to get sorted out. People keeping arriving at the airport from other flights. They really have no place to go. Bob wagner is trying to get to. Anchorage. Reporter for . For an alaskan cruise. Reporter when does the boat leave . Monday at 4 00 p. M. Reporter do you have a reservation . On a flight . Reporter yeah. No. We were coming in about 15 minutes after the accident. We actually saw the smoke on the runway when we diverted down to the other airport, i forget, san jose or something, and we got bussed up to here. Now were in this line waiting to see if we can get any flights to anchorage. With all your best friends. Yeah. Reporter as far as you can see, i was speaking with a couple women who would flown in from christchurch. Their balings went on the airport without them. They are stuck in San Francisco, no bags, no way to get a hotel room, because theyre being told the hotels are full. I did talk to an employee who was handing out vouchers at a discount. Whether or not there are actually rooms at the hotel, she wasnt able to tell me. Mark matthews, abc 7 news. We have a statement now from the democratic leader, nancy pelosi. I know the writing is a bit small on there, so let me read that to you today our thoughts and prayers are with the passengers and crew on board flight 214. No words can console those who lost loved ones in this terrible tragedy. All of San Francisco shares in their shock and grief. We will do everything we can to care for all those affected and their families. Our city is immeasurably grateful for the Swift Response of the flight crew who quickly evacuated passengers for the air Traffic Controllers who effectively diverted traffic, for the brave First Responders and hopped staff ensuring the switch recovery of the injured. Their actions are a testament to the strength, courage and selflessness that defines the bay area. San Francisco Mayor lee just released a statement, too on behalf of the people of San Francisco, i would like to offer my thoughts and prayers to those affected by the airlines accident this morning involving Asiana Airlines flight 214 from south korea. We are deeply saddened by this incidents. Our hearts are with the friends and family of all those affected. Those comments from San Francisco mayor ed lee. Katy has been working all asp trying to speak with survivors. She joins us now from San Francisco international. Ka katy . Reporter earlier we had a quick statement from a teenager who tried to talk before Police Stopped him. We interviewed a survivor, a man from india. We have the video. Take a look. These him walking, leaving with his family. His arm is in a sling. I asked him his injuries. He said he has a broken collarbone. It was a jolt, and then, you know, it dropped down and the whole plane was shaking. Reporter were people screaming . Yeah. Reporter what was the evacuation like . We used the chute to get out of there. You know, the moment it it was a loud bang and, you know, we knew something was wrong. Reporter dysfire or Something Like that . I want the fire started as people were evacuating. Reporter its much quieter here in the international terminal. We saw the families who had been in the reflection room waiting to get in touch with their loved ones. They had been in the room all day, all afternoon, but you see in this video them leaving en masse. We saw people through a windows downstairs out on the tarmac loading onto a bus. Its possible that those were the actual survivors, the passengers from the plane. And now that we see how quiet it is here, the police have all left, its very reasonable that maybe all of the survivors and all of the family members have left sfo or at least left the public areas where we could see them. Live in the international terminal, abe7 news. Thank you very much. Abc aviation expert john nance is on the phone with us. We saw some pictures of investigators. What is job one when they get on scene . Is it the wreckage . Talk to the pilots . What do they do first . Really its organization, but job 1 is to make sure that the wreckage is preserved and nothing gets moved until they do all the appropriate things, including photograph and catalog every single solitary piece before its disturbed. Of course, the rescue is always the first. Once that is over, fire is out, then its a matter of leaning on the authorities to make sure they dont gomes with anything until the board gets there. From there, they will go through a very meticulous program, including putting toe a number of different teams to look into different aspects that might have contributed to the crash. John, eric thomas is with us, hes the local morning anchor and quite the aviation expert as well. Hello, eric. Hi, john. Im still baffled by the extreme noseup angle of this aircraft as it was coming in for the landing. Do you have any explanation for that . Yeah, lets stick to what we know. We know it was too low, obviously. We know it was too slow, and the combination of that with the noseup angle is what also told me at the very first that there was a major problem in trying to make the runway, and the missing element here is power. Now, did they push the power up at 500 feet or 600 feet and the engines did not come up . Or was it a situation that for some reason they didnt get to the throttles in time and trying to do a goaround. I find that highly unlikely with a professional crew, but we wont know. If they fit in the data recorder that the throttle came um and engines didnt, then we have a smoking gun. John, the ntsb has obviously doing some enormous things over the year to make air travel safer. Is this the finest organization of its kind in the world . Yes, but i would say weve got other equally fine organizations that have grown up in the stead of ntsb, learning from them. They all keep in touch with each other. The australians have a superb latif organization, the europeans, certain countries do, but ours have pretty much led the way. I dont want to be overly complimentary. The ntsb was the organization that bakley said we get rid of any consideration of blame. We need to find the facts, lay them out, find out how the causal chain occurred, never just one cause, and any cause that we find, a contributory cause can become part of anof ws it. That methodology is now being used in all sort of industries, and even to a mior extent, even in medicine to get to the heart of problems there. There were over 300 people on the plane. The authorities isolated the survivors, kept them away from the media. What is the role of the passengers in terms of sharing information with the investigators . How does that play out . Well, we probably wont know the full report on that for some time, because the methodology thats been used here is a little unusual, not totally. First of all, looking to, you know, the rescue of those folks and figuring out who was there. It was there and this was a question for all of us on the media to ask ourselves as well, was there too much sequestering of these folks from the media and from people who want to know . Or was that appropriate for the situation, including the state of shock . Thats nothing we can answer right now, but as this evolves, that will be an interesting aspect, was the steps that were taken to keep everybody pretty much under wraps. John, how valuable can passengers be in an investigation when they describe smells, sounds they heard . Can that be critical information as well . Without question there are many instances, and youve been a veterans of this for a quarter of a century, where youve got very sincere eyewitnesses who saw something that just didnt happen. I could give you a lot of examples of that, but basically theyre telling you the truth, but what they saw is not what actually happened. In many cases, however, you can triangulate on different reports and come up with a lot of truth. In this particular case, the fact that there was very noseup, completely coincides with what we saw in the physiology of the accident and we had several eyewitness reports. The ntsb will talk to everyone who they can get to talk to them. They will find out a tremendous amount of information and harmonize that to be able to add to what we will know of the crash from the more formal versions, more formal sources of the flight data reporter and the surviving pilots, of course. John, some of the passengers we were told had a lot of spinal injuries. The doctor was surmising that might have been from a hard hit p how important are those types of injuries to the investigation . They are very important in that the passengers of injury and how the airplane came down, will harmonize with the recommendations the board will eventually make, including the crash survivability of seats and anything else that might be derived from it. To make crashes more survivable. Theres no question here in my mind that when the tail hit and began to come off, that rotated the airport forward increased the downward rates in which it hit the ground, bounced, and thosel impacts were probably extremely heavy, so i am not at all surprised. Are you at all surprised that the plane didnt break up completely . Well, not real will. There was an early report from mob who said they saw it cartwheel. That does not mean spin laterally. That means end over end. That was catastrophic. If that doesnt happen, im not surprised to see the fuselage remain intact. This is a tough and wellbuilt bird. They are line metallic they are incredibly tolerant of the forces theyre designed to withstand. When you start messing around with them in ways they were not designed to take, they can be very fragile. But if a fuselage is not tumbling, the chances that it stays largely together are very high and the survivability after that is extremely high. John, this is eric again, as much as they are looking back to find the cause of an incident like this, they are equally forwardlooking, right . You want to be sure this plane is as good as it can be. As a matter of fact, thats one of the things that as it comes out of this process, ntsb process, whether its here or anywhere else in the world, we want to find out everything that contributed and then find a way to make sure that no single contributing factor can ever be a contributor in the future. You wont be able to wipe out all of them, but by not going after one thing and saying somebody that did a, b and contract, when youre looking at everything that supported it, including certain certification things, then ear making all of aviation safer for the future. Its been 12 years since a major accident of a major airframe in the United States. Which is really stunning when you think about how many thousands of flights take off and land every since the day. 32,000 over the continental United States every day. I go back and check that every now and then. John, before we let you go. You talked about training. Obviously the flight attendants training made a huge difference in saving all these lives. Inch undoubtedly. To get people off an airing like this after the massive shot that all the flight attendants had gone through as well, and to get them out before the fuselage is fully engulfed in flames and smoke, thats a huge accomplishment. Thats a result of many years of training airbus can be lauded for pushing this kind of training, and airlines for accomplishing it in asia as well as throughout the world. Basically flight attendants are to get you off the airplane safely as fast as possible. All the other duties are ancillary to that one thing, and they do it well. Thank you very much, john nance, kind enough to come on with us today. Thank you for the wealth of information. We appreciate it enormously. Well, people having lunch alternate a strahan overlooking the restaurant saw the entire incident. The plane was coming in a little low. The tail seemed to have clipped the back of the runway, the tail seemed to fall off, and then the plane came down, hit heart, was scooting around, and then it began to roll, the winds hit and it took off almost like a cartwheel, and flat down and burst into flames. Witnesses tell us that plane was burning for at least 45 minutes. But thankfully not until most of the people got off that plane. Weve heard from so many witnesses. We have another one on the telephone with us. Ricky ramos is joining us. Go ahead. What did you see today . Ricky . Yes, good afternoon, guys. Basically i was checking in at the Marriott Hotel right across the runway. We just heard a loud bang and explosion. When we looked, the plan was just coming to a rest, and believe it or not, it took them a while to open the doors. I remember just screaming open the doors, get out, and it took them a couple secople seconds t the doors. I dont remember seeing the back doors opened, only the first two doors were opened. Finally we started seeing the passengers thats interesting. These are your pictures were putting on the air now. If you can, put a number on that. By the time you saw the plane come to rest and the doors open, are we talking ten seconds . A minute . Just ballpark that if you can. I would say easily 15 seconds. When its happening, it seems like a lot longer, but it was definitely around 15second mark before i saw that could explain why people got out in such large numbers. 15 seconds is a pretty rapid response, i would think. Correct. You were there when the Emergency Responders rushed to help these folks . Correct, i got to the scene there were no firefighters at the scene at the time, so i saw all the First Responders getting to the scene. There was also a united aircraft very, very close to the actual scene, and i thought that plane was also involved, but thank goodness, it wasnt. Absolutely. Then planes were still in the air while this was happening . Im sorry . There were planes still in the air getting ready to land. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. We started seeing all of the planes approaching. They went around. Not one single plane approached the airport after the incident. They all flew somewhere else. Ricky, thank you so much for coming on and for shares thof photos. We really appreciate it. Ricky ramos who witnessed this. My pleasure. Thank you. Now, weve got a news conference, another briefing is about to get under way in the international terminal, you museum area, lets show you a picture of the podium. Theres been a couple briefings. So stay tuned for that. Theres the podium were expecting authorities to come out and brief the media one more time. This will be the third briefings since this happened, if my math is correct. Weve talked a lot about the safety of the boeing 777, never a fatality before today, the safety of Asiana Airlines just got a fivestar rating last year, they have a good track record, and the safety of sfo. There have been at least 17 air accidents at or near sfo, according to the Flight Safety foundation, which records aviation statistics. The worst acts claimed the lives of 11 people back in 1937 when United Airlines douglas d3 from burbank crashed into the San Francisco bay. The copilots dropped his microphone and jammed the controls. A hijacking led to the death of the two hijackers and passenger form the hijackers demanded money and wanted to be taken to the then soviet unit. There were 86 people on board. Two cargo planes accounted for seven fatality and three people died in a private jet. Eric thomas and aviation experts is with us, and weve talked a bit about the safety of sfo, which is interesting given that its a tricky airport. The cross runways, fog, wind everything else. Runways are too close. If youre a pilot, this is not one of your favorite ways to land. They cross each other, and the weather and its foggy. Its foggy all the time. We have a lot of delays here because of that. Half the amount of planes per how when it is foggy. We brought up the 17 incidents at sfo. One that we havent mentioned is called flight of the resolution for people who follow that. 19 people were killed in october 1953 when a British Commonwealth pacific plane flying from