Plane's tail falls off (?) while landing at SFO
 

Boeing 777 crashes while landing at SFO | www.ktvu.com

Either someone in maintenance did something boneheaded or the pilot really stuffed up the landing and struck the tail. Hope everyone got out OK.

I've been watching this by accident, so's to speak, my youngest son was due to fly out of SFO at 4 this afternoon to return to Tucson. I was checking on weather conditions when the first reports came in.

He was over visiting my oldest son and he hasn't exactly had a great vacation. Between the BART strike and now this his transportation schedule has been chaotic to say the least!

It looks pretty encouraging for the passengers on the plane. So far they haven't announced any fatalities and I'm hoping there aren't any.

Unfortunately it seems there have been fatalities. Though not in large numbers fortunately.

- Peter.

It almost looks as if it caught the rocks on landing...as if they were too low coming in.

Pilot was too low and hit the seawall. There's wreckage in the water and a debris trail all the way back that includes at least one of the main landing gear.

Amazing that only two people died. They were on the runway, so they must somehow have been ejected (perhaps not wearing their seat belts?).

Flight attendants sitting way in the back near the tail?

A 777 doesn't like a 120 kt. approach.

I believe I explained this to you already:

You can't fix stupid.

Let's see what the investigation says. Mechanical failure is a possibility.

Anything is a possibility.

Bet you lunch that it's pilot error..................

I gotta agree with you on this one Brian. The approach into that runway can be visually deceptive. Reports seem to indicate fog had just recently cleared.

Look at the trail of debris all the way back to the sea wall. I suspect it is giong to come out pilot error because of low approach.

Combination of malfunctioning radar altimeter, inop navigation aids at SFO, plus pilots flying the gauges not the plane?

Clear weather, light winds. The ILF was by no means necessary (thousands of planes land across the world every week without it). So far it looks like pure pilot error; no point in trying to make excuses for incompetence.

Don't know if this mobile link will play on regular pcs, but this guy was filming and caught it all. Still a miracle that only two died.

http://ht-mobile.cdn.turner.com/cnn/big/us/2013/07/07/vo-plane-sf-plane-crash-on-cam.courtesy-fred-hayes%20(2013-07-07%2016:29:19.466946)_2380302.mp4

Too low too soon.

If I understood some commentary on CNN correctly, one of those flight tracking websites indicated that the airspeed was down to about 109 knots around the time of landing. Looks like a few folks in the cabin were having a mental siesta...