Plane Crash at San Francisco International

WA Toffee · July 8, 2013

Bruce Wayne said:
There's something quite gruesome about carrying on filming when you know something really quite **** is taking place imo.

Not on the same level, obviously, but it was the same at Wimbledon yesterday. Murray had just won and was going wild and a guy in the crowd was doing likewise, and it was like he'd forgotten himself as he had to suddenly whip out his camera in mid cheer to 'capture' the moment, like his eyes weren't doing a good enough job.

Fecking social media.

I've taken a couple of photos at gigs etc, but pretty quickly realised that much better photos than mine are freely available on the interweb. I'll just enjoy the event and let the professional photographers do their job.

SerenityNigh · July 8, 2013

Late news now, but this was an odd event. From what I can tell, the pilots got the approach too slow and stalled/landed short* (or some combination thereof). For whatever reason they weren't monitoring the approach speed and it became dangerously low. The basic maneuver in this case is to push the nose lower and maintain level pitch attitude while increasing power rapidly; this allows the aircraft to build airspeed and "go around" for another approach. Obviously a big bird like the 777 requires more time, and it's pure speculation to suggest that the pilots could have done this successfully, but the tail strike/short landing appears to be the proximal cause of the event. Whether something else contributed (unusual mechanical event, etc) or caused a distraction is unknown at this point, but early indications are that the engines were performing.

*The yellow chevrons on the runway are a displaced threshold (do not land area) and point to the runway threshold, but generally these big aircraft land 1,000 feet down runway. The SFO runway in use was plenty long enough for the aircraft (over 10,000 ft), so landing short 1,250 ft or more is a major issue.

**All this aside, shocking tragedy for all those seriously injured or who have lost their life, not to mention those who may be permanently scarred by the event.