San Francisco jet passenger calls crash "surreal"
A passenger on the Asiana Airlines flight that crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport called the crash "surreal" and said he was "just trying to process" the frightening ordeal.
David Eun, a Samsung executive who was on board the plane, posted a photo online showing passengers leaving the wreckage.
In a subsequent tweet, Eun wrote: "Lots of activity here. Friends, pls don't call right now. I'm fine. Most people are totally calm and trying to let the fire and rescue do their jobs. Just like during 9/11, most people are great and try to be helpful in crisis..."
At least 2 people were killed and dozens were injured in the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team of investigators to San Francisco to investigate the crash.
Witnesses of the crash described a hard landing that produced a big plume of smoke and a loud noise. Kelly Thompson, who saw it unfold from the parking lot of the Westin Hotel at the airport, told the Associated Press that "it was a horrible thud. The airliner bounced and then slid to a stop on the runway."
Anthony Castorani saw the crash from his hotel room across from the airport. He told CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod that everything appeared normal until the pilot landed.
"When the wheels appeared to touch down... you saw a big white plume of smoke, not the normal plume that you see with the gear coming down, and then immediately after that, you hear a pop and kind of a fireball of sorts come out from what looked underneath the plane," he said
Castorani said there was then immediately white smoke all around the bottom of the plane, "and you could begin to see the plane was kind of doing a slide in a way and began to cartwheel, not end over end cartwheels but kind of a side motion diagonal cartwheel."
Kate Belding, who was jogging on a path near the airport, told the AP she noticed the plane approaching the runway in a way that "just didn't look like it was coming in quite right."
"Then all of a sudden I saw what looked like a cloud of dirt puffing up and then there was a big bang and it kind of looked like the plane maybe bounced (as it neared the ground)," she said. "I couldn't really tell what happened, but you saw the wings going up and [in] a weird angle."
Marilyn McCullough, who was a passenger on a different plane on the runway at San Francisco International, tweeted a photo of the crashed Asiana Airlines jet:
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said she was originally scheduled to be aboard the flight that crash landed with her family and three colleagues.
"We switched to United so we could use miles for my family's tickets," Sandberg wrote in a Facebook post. "Our flight was scheduled to come in at the same time, but we were early and landed about 20 minutes before the crash. Our friend Dave David Eun was on the Asiana flight and he is fine."
As for Eun, he later tweeted: