An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 passenger plane flying from Seoul, the Republic of Korea (ROK), on Saturday crashed while landing and burned partly at San Francisco International Airport, California of the United States, with parts spread on the runway.

An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 passenger plane flying from Seoul, the Republic of Korea (ROK), on Saturday crashed while landing and burned partly at San Francisco International Airport, California of the United States, with parts spread on the runway. (Photo: AP)

The Federal Aviation Administration of the United States confirmed that the plane, bound for San Francisco from Seoul, was on flight 214. The accident was technically termed as "crash landing."

Witnesses recalled that the plane screeched at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) before coming to a stop. The Boeing 777-200 then veered off the runway and let out thick smoke. It eventually rested at an area between two runways, with its tail and left engine gone, and parts of the upper section of passenger compartment burned out.

Pictures posted on some websites, presumably by passengers, showed people were leaving the plane when it touched down.

Local TV footage also showed that the top of the fuselage of the plane was charred and left open, its tail was also gone, but the two wings appeared intact.

A U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) team of experts will be in San Francisco to investigate the Asiana Flight 214 crash earlier on Saturday, NTSB Chairwoman Debbie Hersman announced a press conference held in Washington D.C. in the same day.

Before leaving for San Francisco, Hersman also said that Asiana, the ROK air carrier, and Boeing, the aircraft maker, will be working together to probe into the incident.

Asiana confirmed in Seoul that the Boeing 777-200 carried 291 passengers and 16 crew members.

Authorities ruled out signs of terrorism in the accident.

All flights in and out of the San Francisco International Airport were canceled temporarily. They were diverted Los Angeles International airport.

No further information, as for details such as the casualties of the accident and the cause of the accident, is available at the moment.

U.S. federal authorities investigates Beoing 777 plane crash

U.S. federal transportation authorities are still in the initial stages of their investigation into Saturday's deadly crash landing of an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 commercial plane at San Francisco International Airport, an official said Sunday.

Deborah Hersman, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said the investigators have already talked to law enforcement officials who spoke to the pilots Saturday night and hope to interview the pilots of the aircraft in the coming days.

"It's really important to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together, to not just understand what happened, but understand why it happened so we can prevent accidents like this from occurring in the future," Hersman said in an interview aired on CNN's "State of the Union."

She said the investigators would have to corroborate "a lot of information," including the radar data, the air traffic control information, and the flight data recorder parameters.

Two Chinese nationals were confirmed killed and more than 180 others injured after the Asiana Airlines flight 214 crashed in landing Saturday. The Boeing 777-200 aircraft carried 16 crew members and 291 passengers, including 141 Chinese, 77 citizens from the Republic of Korea and 61 Americans.

According to Hersman, the black boxes of the crashed aircraft -- the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder -- have been sent back to the federal agency's headquarters in Washington D.C. for lab work.

Source: Xinhuanet