Asiana Crew Members Make Emotional Appearance, Speak About Crash
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS/AP) -- The cabin manager of an Asiana Airlines Flight 214 that crashed over the weekend said she and the crew are working as hard as possible to recover.
Lee Yoon Hye spoke at a brief, emotional news conference Wednesday afternoon at San Francisco International Airport. She was flanked by five other crew members, one of whom was in a wheelchair.
Some of them had their heads bowed. Hye spoke through an interpreter and said "they are all in our prayers."
The Asiana flight crashed Saturday when its landing gear and then its tail clipped a rocky seawall just short of the runway. The crash killed two of the 307 people on board and injured scores of others, among them flight attendants from the tail section who were thrown onto the runway.
The flight attendants, especially Lee, have been cited for their professionalism during the evacuation.
Lee and the other attendants not hospitalized, some choking back tears, said they are all trying to recover.
"I hope that all the families who suffered losses from this accident to recover as quickly as possible," Lee said.
She then quickly left the podium.
A dozen survivors remained hospitalized Wednesday, half of them flight attendants, including three who were thrown from the airliner during the accident. One has been identified as 25-year-old Maneenat Tinnakul, whose father told a Korean newspaper that the family was given a visa to visit their daughter in San Francisco. He said Maneenat suffered a minor backache.
Another flight attendant, identified as Sirithip Singhakarn, was reportedly in an intensive care unit.
The doomed flight originated in Shanghai and stopped over in Seoul before making the nearly 11-hour trip to San Francisco.
Investigators have said the plane came in far too low and slow. The exact cause of the crash remains under investigation.
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