Asiana pilot was on a training flight

William M. Welch, Chris Woodyard, Doug Stanglin and Gary Strauss | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Raw: Close-up look at Asiana plane damage The National Transportation Safety Board released dramatic, close-up pictures of the plane that crashed in San Francisco on Saturday. Two people died out of more than 300 on board. (July 8)

Flight 214 was flying too slow%2C below target landing speed%2C NTSB says

Report%3A Pilot was making first trip to San Francisco at controls of 777

Coroner says one victim may have been struck by rescue vehicle

SAN FRANCISCO — Asiana Airlines says the pilot of the ill-fated Boeing 777 that crashed Saturday had little experience flying the aircraft and was landing one for the first time at San Francisco International when it slammed into the runway, killing two teenage passengers and injuring more than half the 307 passengers and crew.

Airline spokeswoman Lee Hyomin said Monday that Lee Gang Guk, who was at the controls of Saturday's nearly 10 1/2 hour flight from Seoul as it arrived at SFO, was a veteran pilot with nearly 10,000 hours flying other planes. But he had only 43 in the 777, a jet she said he still was getting used to flying.

Lee had flown Boeing 747 jets into San Francisco International previously and was assisted on this flight by deputy pilot Lee Jeong Min. The deputy had about 12,390 hours of flying experience, including 3,220 on the 777.

National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman said Lee Gang Guk was flying with a supervisory training captain, another captain and a first officer. It was his ninth training flight on a 777, she said.

The revelations came on a day San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said it was "a possibility" that one of the teens survived the crash but was killed on the tarmac by an emergency vehicle driven by one of the first responders at the scene.

"One of our fire apparatus may have come into contact with one of our two victims who was at the scene," Hayes-White said. "I assure you we are looking closely at this."

San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said that while autopsies of the two Chinese girls have been completed, he doesn't plan to release his findings on cause of death for another two or three weeks, after completion of tests.

"This is a very high-profile case and has obviously generated a lot of attention," Foucrault said. "I want to make absolutely sure my conclusions are correct."

The two teens, Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, were from China's eastern Zhejiang province and were among 29 middle-school students and five teachers heading for a three-week church summer camp in Los Angeles. Both were declared dead at the accident scene. The body of the one who may have been struck by the emergency vehicle was found about 30 feet from the aircraft.

The fatalities are the first of a commercial airliner in the USA since February 2009. Remarkably, all but two of the 291 passengers and 16 crew survived. At least 168 people were treated for injuries. Eight remained in critical condition Monday.

At a news briefing Monday morning, firefighters described descending upon a harrowing scene Saturday morning and a swift, heroic rescue operation.

Tom Siragusa, an assistant San Francisco Fire Department chief, said rescuers twice entered the smoke-filled, burning aircraft to search for survivors while navigating crash debris and leaking jet fuel. The top priority was getting people off the jet, Siragusa said. "Everyone rose to the occasion, and I couldn't be prouder of everyone in my department,'' Siragusa said.

Other fire department officials say Asiana crewmembers pleaded for knives to help free trapped passengers.

"It just seemed to be surreal, like it wasn't happening," Lt. Dave Monteverdia said. Rescuers' "only way up" to reach the victims was via the plane's emergency chutes deployed after the crash, he said. Lt. Christine Emmons said that after she and a partner ran up the chute, they pulled out four passengers trapped in the back.

Hersman said earlier that Flight 214 was traveling far below its target speed for landing when it crashed short of the runway Saturday. "The speed was significantly below 137 knots, and we're not talking a few knots," she said.

The flight originated in Shanghai before stopping in Seoul en route to San Francisco. It carried 61 U.S. citizens, 77 South Koreans and 141 Chinese.

South Korean officials say pinpointing an exact cause of the crash may take months or years. "We cannot conclude the accident was caused by a pilot mistake. Whether there was a pilot mistake can be confirmed after all related data are analyzed and inspected," said Choi Jeong Ho, the head of South Korea's Transport Ministry Aviation Policy Bureau.

Hersman said investigators will look at all possibilities for the cause of the crash, including pilot error. "Everything is on the table," she said. Flight data and recorders have been recovered and will be examined by investigators, she said.

She provided details of what investigators found in their initial review of the jet's flight data and cockpit voice recorders: "The approach proceeds normally as they descend. There is no discussion of any aircraft anomalies or concerns with the approach. A call from one of the crewmembers to increase speed was made approximately seven seconds prior to impact."

The "stick shaker," which gives an audible and motion signal warning that the jet is flying too slowly and is about to stall, sounds "approximately four seconds prior to impact."

The pilot requested a "go-around" — to abort the landing, fly around the airport and try again, Hersman said.

"A call to initiate a go-around occurred 1.5 seconds before impact," she said.

Cabin manager Lee Yoon Hye, 40, said she has nearly 20 years' experience with Asiana and knew seconds before impact that something was wrong.

"Right before touchdown, I felt like the plane was trying to take off. I was thinking, 'What's happening?' and then I felt a bang," Lee said. "That bang felt harder than a normal landing. It was a very big shock. Afterward, there was another shock, and the plane swayed to the right and to the left."

Lee said crewmembers deflated the emergency slides with axes to rescue a colleague who seemed to be choking beneath the weight of a slide.

One flight attendant put a scared elementary schoolboy on her back and slid down a slide, Lee said. A pilot helped another injured flight attendant off the jet after passengers escaped.

Lee, who suffered a broken tailbone, said she worked to put out fires and usher passengers to safety in the harrowing moments after the jet went down.

Lee said she tried to approach the back of the aircraft before she left to double-check that no one was left inside. A cloud of black, toxic smoke made it impossible. "It looked like the ceiling had fallen down," she said.

Vedpal Singh, who was sitting in the middle of the aircraft and survived the crash with his family, said there was no warning from the pilot or any crewmembers before the jet touched down hard and he heard a loud sound.

"We knew something was horrible wrong," said Singh, who suffered a fractured collarbone and had his arm in a sling. "It's miraculous we survived."

Passenger Benjamin Levy, 39, said it looked to him as though the jet was flying too low and too close to the bay as it approached the runway. Levy, who was sitting in an emergency exit row, said he felt the pilot try to lift the jet up before it crashed and thinks the maneuver might have saved some lives.

"Everybody was screaming. I was trying to usher them out," he recalled of the first seconds after the landing. "I said, 'Stay calm, stop screaming, help each other out, don't push.' "

Welch reported from Los Angeles, Woodyard from San Francisco and Strauss and Stanglin from McLean, Va. Contributing: Calum MacLeod in Beijing, Associated Press