Seconds before crash, passengers knew they were too low - CNN International

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• NEW: The survivors include 26 Chinese students on a summer camp trip
• The two deceased were Chinese teenage girls, Asiana's CEO says
• 182 people were hospitalized, while 123 were uninjured
• Passengers say the plane's rear struck the edge of the runway

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(CNN) -- Asiana Airlines Flight 214 was seconds away from landing when the passengers sensed something horribly amiss.
The plane was approaching San Francisco International Airport under a beautifully clear sky, but it was flying low. Dangerously low.
Benjamin Levy looked out the window from seat 30K and could see the water of the San Francisco Bay about 10 feet below.
"I don't see any runway, I just see water," Levy recalled.

Fire crews attempt to quench the blaze after an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777, inbound from Seoul, South Korea, crashed on landing at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, July 6.

Smoke rises from the crash site across the San Francisco Bay on July 6.

Asiana Airlines Flight 214 remains on the runway on July 6.

A plane sits on the runway on July 6 while emergency crews tend to the crash site.

A helicopter flies above the wreckage on July 6 as people observe from across the waters of San Francisco Bay.

Travelers at San Francisco International Airport look at the departures and arrivals board after Asiana Flight 214 crashed on July 6. The airport, located 12 miles south of downtown San Francisco, is California's second busiest, behind Los Angeles International.

Kevin Cheng talks on his phone as he waits in the terminal after Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash-landed on July 6. He said he was supposed to pick up students who were on board the flight from Seoul.

Passengers wait for the British Airways counter to reopen at San Francisco International Airport on July 6.

Police guard the Reflection Room at the San Francisco airport's international terminal, where passengers from Asiana Airlines Flight 214 were reportedly gathering after the crash landing on July 6.

People are escorted from the Reflection Room at the San Francisco International Airport on July 6.

Traffic backs up on U.S. Route 101 South in San Francisco on July 6. The Bay Area airport was closed to incoming and departing traffic after the crash, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

People look over the wreckage across a cove in San Francisco Bay on July 6.

Deborah Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, speaks to the press at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, before departing for San Francisco with an NTSB crew on July 6 to investigate the crash site.

The San Francisco Giants observe a moment of silence for those killed and hurt in the crash before their baseball game on July 6 against the Los Angeles Dodgers at AT&T Park in San Francisco.

Crews comb the end of a San Francisco airport runway following the crash landing on July 6.

People in Seoul watch a news program reporting about the crash landing on July 6 in San Francisco. Asiana Airlines Flight 214 took off from Seoul earlier Saturday.

The plane crashed on July 6 around 11:30 a.m. (2:30 p.m. ET).

People walk past the wreckage of the plane's tail on July 6.

The burned-out plane remains on the runway on July 6. Passengers and crew members escaped down the emergency inflatable slides.

Rescue workers tend to the crash site on July 6.

Debris litters the runway on July 6.

Airport shuttles arrive on the scene after the crash landing.

Wreckage from the Boeing 777 lies on the tarmac on July 6.

Crews surround the remains of the plane on July 6.

Investigators pass the detached tail and landing gear of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 on July 6.

An aerial view shows the site of the crash landing between the runways on July 6.

Smoke rises from the crash site on July 6 at the airport in San Francisco.

Fire crews work at the crash site at San Francisco International Airport on July 6.

The Boeing 777 lies burned on the runway after it crashed landed on July 6.

An aerial photo of the scene on July 6 shows the extent of the plane's damage.

The burned-out plane sits surrounded by emergency vehicles on July 6.

CNN iReporter Amanda Painter took this photo while waiting at the San Francisco airport on July 6. The entire airport has shut down and flights diverted to other airports.

iReporter Val Vaden captured this photo while waiting in a departure lounge at the San Francisco airport on July 6. Val observed the billowing smoke and emergency responders' rush in.

iReporter Sven Duenwald was at home on July 6 when he saw smoke rising into the air near the San Francisco International Airport.

iReporter Timothy Clark was standing on the eighth floor of the Embassy Suites Airport Hotel when he heard a loud crashing sound from outside. "My daughter told me she heard a plane crash. I used my camera to get a clearer view and I could see a dust cloud. Then people running from the plane, then flames," he said.

A photo provided to CNN by Eunice Bird Rah -- and shot by her father, who was a passenger on the plane -- shows flames and smoke bursting out of many of the aircraft's windows.

David Eun, a passenger on Asiana Airlines Flight 214, posted this image to Path.com along with the message, "I just crash landed at SFO. Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine, I'm ok. Surreal..." It was one of the first photographs taken after the crash.


Plane crash-lands in San Francisco
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Plane crash-lands in San Francisco

Animation recreates 777 crash landing

NTSB: We'll look for flight recorders

Witnesses describe plane crash
Further back in the Boeing 777, Xu Das had the same realization.
The Boeing 777-200LR has been in service since March 2006The plane can carry 301 passengers and travel a maximum distance of 9,395 nautical miles
Asiana Airlines operates 71 aircraft and serves 14.7 million passengers annually
The airline was voted Airline of the Year by Global Traveler in 2011
In 1993, Asiana Airlines Boeing 737 crashed killing 68 people


"Looking through window, it looked on level of the (sea)wall along the runway," he posted on Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter.
Latest developments on the crash
Then, with no warning from the cockpit, the plane slammed onto the edge of the runway. The impact severed the plane's tail and sent the rest of it spinning on its belly.
A massive fireball and clouds of smoke shot skyward. First responders rushed to the scene as horrified onlookers at the airport terminal feared the worst.
Medics found the bodies of two Chinese girls in their mid-teens on the runway, next to the burning wreckage.
Remarkably, 305 others on the plane survived the crash Saturday morning.
"We're lucky there hasn't been a greater loss of life," San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said.
When rescuers arrived, they found some passengers coming out of the water.

Plane loses tail during crash landing
"There was a fire on the plane, so the assumption might be that they went near the water's edge, which is very shallow, to maybe douse themselves with water," Hayes-White said.
Why this flight was survivable
While 182 of them were taken to hospitals with injuries ranging from spinal fractures to bruises, another 123 managed to escape unharmed.

'The wheels ... were too low, too soon'
Some jumped out or slid down emergency chutes with luggage in hand.

Passenger: 'We just jumped off' plane
Harrowingflight
The crash ended an otherwise mundane flight that originated in Shanghai, China. It made a connection in Seoul, South Korea, before flying 10 hours to San Francisco.
Among the 291 passengers were 141 Chinese, 77 South Koreans, 61 Americans and one Japanese, Asiana Airlines said. The airline is one of two major airlines in South Korea; the other is Korean Air.
At the helm of the plane was one of Asiana's veteran pilots who had been flying for 17 years, the airline said Sunday. Three other pilots were also on board, working in shifts.
Once the plane fell short of the runway, passengers found themselves on a roller coaster.
"I thought as the plane was landing, it looked like the pilot was trying to take off again," passenger Noni Singh said.
The airplane dipped sharply.
"And then just boom, the back end just hit and flies up in the air, " Elliott Stone, another passenger, said, "and everybody's head goes up to the ceiling."
Dark gray smoke rose from the plane as it lay on its belly, with no landing gear evident.
Its roof was charred and, in spots, gone. The back of the plane had been lopped off entirely.
Flames and smoke burst out of its windows.
"Honestly, I was waiting for the plane to ... start flipping upside down, in which case I think a lot of people would have not made it," Levy said.
"If we flipped, none of us would be here to talk about it."
Xu and his wife were among the fortunate.
"We quickly slung on luggage and grabbed our child and walked toward the back," Xu said on Weibo. "Saw the kitchen at back mostly disappeared. A huge hole -- very round. We quickly rushed out. Only after coming out did we see three of us had slight bruises."
The big question
Exactly what caused the crash could take up to two years to determine, said Choi Jeong-ho, head of South Korea's Aviation Policy Bureau.
'I just crash landed. I'm OK. Surreal'
South Korean investigators will work alongside officials from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. Their first order of business: locating the plane's voice and data recorders.
The airline purchased the plane, a Boeing 777-200, in March 2006. Asiana CEO and President Yoon Young-doo said there was no engine failure, to his knowledge.
"The company will conduct an accurate analysis on the cause of this accident and take strong countermeasures for safe operation in the future with the lesson learned from this accident," Yoon said.
The survivors
Many of those who survived the crash described chalked it to divine intervention.
"I think it's miraculous that we have survived because things could have been much worse," said passenger Vedpal Singh.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer and author of the book "Lean In," was supposed to be on Flight 2014. But she switched to a United flight, arriving about 20 minutes before the Asiana flight crashed.
"Serious moment to give thanks," she wrote on her Facebook page.
The survivors also included 26 Chinese middle school students who, the Chinese consulate in San Francisco said, were on a summer camp trip.
Not the first time
Prior to Saturday's disaster, Asiana Airlines endured two deadly crashes over the past 20 years.
In 1993, a crash near South Korea's Mokpo Airport killed 68 of the 116 people on board. The Boeing 737-500 went down in poor weather as the plane was attempting its third landing, the Aviation Safety Network said.
And in 2011, a cargo plane headed from Seoul to Shanghai slammed into the East China Sea, killing the only two people on board.
Perhaps one of the reasons so many people survived Saturday's crash was because the Boeing 777 is built so that everybody can get off the plane within 90 seconds, even if half the doors are inoperable.
Still, many questions linger.
Yoon, Asiana's president and CEO, told reporters he could not confirm many details of the crash, pending the investigation.
But he started the press conference by bowing his head in apology.
CNN's Diana Magnay, Mike Ahlers, K.J. Kwon, Kyung Lah, Amanda Watts, Jaime FlorCruz, Joe Sterling, Janet DiGiacomo, Richard Quest, Ben Brumfield, Seo Yoon-jung, Sohn Seo-hee and Dayu Zhang contributed to this report.