According to officials of the National Transportation Safety Board, two Asiana Airlines Flight 214 attendants were thrown from from the back of the plane during the crash at San Francisco airport that killed two teenage girls on Saturday, reports the Daily Mail.
The attendants were found on the edge of the runway and were injured, but survived.
“Two flight attendants were ejected from the aircraft during the impact sequence so they were not at their stations when the aircraft came to rest,” NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said at a news conference Tuesday. “They were found down the runway and off to the side of the runway. Those flight attendants survived, but they obviously had gone through a serious event and have injuries.”
Hersman also revealed that the pilots told investigators that they were relying on automated cockpit equipment to control the plane’s speed during its final approach, but realized too late that they were flying too low and too slow. Questions arose about whether a mistake was made in programming the “autothrottle” or if the equipment malfunctioned.
The South Korean Boeing 777 crash landed on Saturday when it came in too low and too slow for landing. The pilot at the controls was only halfway through his training and it was his first time landing that type of plane. It was also the co-pilot’s first time as a flight instructor.
Two 16-year-old girls, Ye Meng Yuan and her classmate Wang Linjia, died in the crash, but 305 other passengers miraculously survived.
