Asiana survivor: ‘When the plane stopped I walked out’ with son

SAN FRANCISCO -- Wen Zhang, 34, said her 4-year-old son was eagerly looking forward to staying at an American hotel during his first trip to the U.S. Zhang, her husband and her son, along with her sister’s family, were planning a road trip to Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Sedona, Ariz., during her son’s summer vacation.

But as Asiana Flight 214 was about to land at San Francisco International Airport, something went wrong. The plane’s tail skidded across the runway and a large hole was ripped open in the fuselage just a few feet from Zhang’s seat in Row 40. Bags and air masks tumbled down, windows broke, and the cabin went dark as ashes flew everywhere.

“The plane’s tail touched the ground directly,” Zhang told reporters Sunday morning outside San Francisco General Hospital. “Everybody screamed. It was dark and mostly ash everywhere…. When the plane stopped I walked out…. I take my baby and carry-on baggage and walked out.”

Zhang said her husband grabbed their son, Qixuan Xu, and they walked through the gaping hole, where the bathroom had been, right onto the runway. Qixuan’s left leg was bleeding from being crushed by the chair in front of him. An ambulance rushed them to San Francisco General Hospital.

Her son’s leg was operated on; the rest of her family had suffered only scrapes and bruises.

“I feel lucky because we have six family members traveling on this plane and we are OK,” said Zhang, whose green cardigan was stained with a drop of blood. She was still waiting to talk to her sister, who was taken to Stanford.

Meanwhile, the two passengers killed in the plane crash were identified Sunday as 16-year-old Chinese girls who may have been part of a group coming to the United States for summer camp.

Asiana Airlines identified them as Wang Lin Jia and Ye Meng Yuan. The two were part of a student group from Jiangshan Middle School in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, according to Chinese media reports.

The Xinhua News Agency reported that dozens of students and teachers from various parts of China were aboard the flight the flight, many of whom were going to summer camps in the United States.

The flight originated in Shanghai and stopped in Seoul before flying to San Francisco. More than 180 people were injured in the crash.

The bodies of the two teenage victims were found on the runway, said San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White. It was not clear whether they had been pulled from the plane or were ejected.

Also Sunday, the head of Seoul-based Asiana, South Korea’s second-largest airline, apologized for the crash.

“I sincerely apologize over the accident, and to the passengers on board and their families,” Yoon Young-doo, Asiana’s president, told reporters at a televised news conference in Seoul.

He described the pilots involved as “skilled” and said it could take time to determine what went wrong.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators have arrived at the airport to investigate the crash.

Dozens of survivors were taken to hospitals. Passengers said that despite the chaos, most aboard Flight 214 seemed able to exit quickly and walk from the wreckage without help.

In investigating crash, federal officials were looking into whether the plane clipped a seawall separating the runway from San Francisco Bay, according to a person involved in the investigation. Officials said there was no indication that terrorism was involved.

“We were too low, too soon,” said passenger Benjamin Levy, who described looking out his window, seeing piers in the bay and thinking the piers were closer to the plane than they should have been.

The pilot of the Boeing 777 seemed to rev the engines “just as we were about to hit the water,” Levy said. “The pilot must have realized [and] tried to pull the plane back up.... We hit pretty hard. I thought the wheels were gone for sure.”

Levy, a 39-year-old San Francisco technology executive who had traveled to Asia on a business trip, heard screams as the plane, carrying 291 passengers and 16 crew members, slammed into the ground.

When emergency crews arrived, the white, wide-bodied jet was emitting black and white smoke as it sat on a stretch of brown grass near the tarmac. The tail was gone and pieces of the plane littered the runway. Flames had burned a gaping hole through the top of the aircraft.

Multiple sources said there was no reported trouble or declared emergency on the plane before it landed.

Asked at a news conference if pilot error was a factor, Deborah Hersman, chairwoman of the NTSB, said: “Everything’s on table at this point. We have to gather all the facts before we reach any conclusions.”

On Saturday night, all 307 on board had been accounted for, authorities said. A total of 182 people had been taken to hospitals, including 49 in serious condition. Among the passengers were 77 Korean citizens, 141 Chinese, 61 Americans and one Japanese, according to South Korea-based Asiana.

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victoria.kim@latimes.com