The two passenger who died in an Asiana Airlines plane crash at San Francisco International Airport were Chinese schoolgirls, Chinese state media said Sunday.
Both have been identified as Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, students that attended Jiangshan Middle School in eastern China.
The South Korean airline said in a statement that Ye and Wang were both 16.
Huffington Post reports:
A group of 29 students and five teachers had set off from the highly competitive school in Zhejiang, an affluent coastal province. A woman from Zhejiang’s education department had said earlier that they had lost contact with two students. The woman gave only her surname, Tang.
According to education authorities, at least 70 Chinese students and teachers were on the plane heading to summer camps.
The flight came to a crash landing at the San Francisco airport and smoke immediately filled the skies. Many escaped by sliding down the emergency inflatable slides as flames tore through the plane. Officials say 182 people were taken to area hospitals.
Photos of the scene from eye witnesses soon after hit Twitter and now even more photos have surfaced show the severe damage to the aircraft.
The Boeing 777 airplane lies burned near the runway:
Authorities and fire trucks arrived on the scene:
A survivor of flight described the terrifying moments as the Boeing 777 smashed into the ground at the international airport, flinging flight attendants out the back as the tail broke off.
According to Straitstimes:
Right when it appeared to coast for the landing, … (he) sped up, like the pilot knew he was short,” Elliott Stone told CNN.
“And then the back end just hit, and flies up in the air, and everybody’s head goes up to the ceiling. And then it just kind of drifts for a little bit, for a good 300 yards and then tips over. Fire starts,” he explained.
He said he was able to evacuate safely, sitting in the middle of the plane, but the flight attendants sitting in the back “got hammered – because we landed short.
“And then they all fell out – and it was just the most terrible thing I’ve seen,” Stone said.
Our prayers and condolences goes out to the family of the two victims and all injured in the crash.
SOURCE: Huffington Post
Photo Credit: Getty
