2 Dead In Boeing 777 Crash At San Francisco Airport

An Asiana Airlines flight from Seoul, South Korea, with more than 300 people aboard crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, littering the runway with debris, and forcing passengers to jump down the emergency inflatable slides to safety.

The San Francisco Fire Department told CBS News that two people were killed. At least 181 people have been taken to area hospitals for injuries, 49 with serious injuries.

San Francisco General said it has received 34 patients, including 23 adults and 11 children. Five were reported in critical condition. Hospital spokeswoman Rachael Kagan said the adult patients range in age from 20 to their 40s. It was not immediately clear the ages of the children.

A spokesperson for San Francisco General said most, if not all, of the passengers taken to the hospital are Korean-speaking. We are working to get interpreters for them," she said, "but they are quite critically injured so there is not a lot of discussion with them at this time."

View a slideshow of photos from the crash site

For several hours, officials were reporting 60 people unaccounted for from among passengers and crew aboard the flight. However, they now say all but one has been located. San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said of the investigation, "This is a work in progress."

A video clip posted to YouTube shows smoke coming from a silver-colored jet on the tarmac. Passengers could be seen jumping down the inflatable emergency slides.

Asiana Airlines issued a statement that listed the number of passengers and their nationalities: 77 Korean citizens, 141 Chinese citizens, 61 U.S. citizens and 1 Japanese citizen.

The passengers from China included a teacher and 34 high school students.

A spokesperson for San Francisco General said most of the passengers taken to the hospital are Korean-speaking. We are working to get interpreters for them," she said, "but they are quite critically injured so there is not a lot of discussion with them at this time."

The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team of investigators to San Francisco to probe the crash. NTSB spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said Saturday that NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman would head the team.

The FBI said that, at this point in time, there is no indication of terrorism involved in the incident.

Meanwhile, President Obama is expressing his gratitude to the first responders at the scene of the airliner crash in San Francisco. The White House says in a statement that Obama has directed his team to stay in constant contact with federal, state and local partners as they investigate and respond to the accident.

The White House says the president's thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those affected by the crash.

Early reports indicate that Asiana Airlines Flight 214 made a hard landing, with the tail of the plane striking the runway and breaking off.

The resulting fire sent black smoke billowing into the air, visible for miles.

"The plane started coming in at an odd angle, there was a huge bang and you could see the cloud of huge black smoke," Kate Belding, who was jogging near the airport at the time of the crash, told CBS Station KPIX San Francisco.

"It was a horrible thud," said Kelly Thompson, who observed the crash a hotel parking lot at the airport. She said the plane bounced, then slid on the runway.

Rescue vehicles were on the scene immediately afterwards, with fire trucks spraying a white fire retardant on the wreckage.

Spokesperson Lt. Cdr. Shawn Lansing told CBS News that the U.S. Coast Guard flew two people with burns from the triage center via helicopter to Stanford University Hospital. The severity of the burns is unknown.

The airport was closed for several hours, with flights diverted to Oakland, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Jose and Seattle. At about 3:30 p.m. PT, the airport announced that two runways have reopened.

rnold Barnett, an aviation expert at MIT, told KCBS it was possible the plane could have experienced a power shortage that caused the pilot to lose control. He said a similar incident occurred involving a Boeing 777 at London's Heathrow Airport in 2008.

British Airways Flight 38 landed hard about 1,000 feet short of the runway and slid onto the start of the runway. The impact broke the 777-200's landing gear. There were 47 injuries, but no fatalities.

An investigation revealed ice pellets that had formed in the fuel were clogging the fuel-oil heat exchanger, blocking fuel from reaching the plane's engines. The Rolls-Royce Trent 800 series engines that were used on the plane were then redesigned.

Bill Waldock, an expert on aviation accident investigation, said he was reminded of the Heathrow accident as he watched video of Saturday's crash. "Of course, there is no indication directly that's what happened here," he said. "That's what the investigation is going to have to find out."

The Asiana 777 "was right at the landing phase and for whatever reason the landing went wrong," said Waldock, director of the Embry-Riddle University accident investigation laboratory in Prescott, Ariz. "For whatever reason, they appeared to go low on approach and then the airplane pitched up suddenly to an extreme attitude, which could have been the pilots trying to keep it out of the ground."

Asiana is a South Korean airline, second in size to national carrier Korean Air. It has recently tried to expand its presence in the United States, and joined the Star Alliance, which is anchored in the U.S. by United Airlines.

The 777-200 is a long-range plane from Boeing. The twin-engine aircraft is one of the world's most popular long-distance planes, often used for flights of 12 hours or more, from one continent to another. The airline's website says its 777s can carry between 246 to 300 passengers.

The last time a large U.S. airline lost a plane in a fatal crash was an American Airlines Airbus A300 taking off from JFK in November 2001.

Smaller airlines have had crashes since then. The last fatal U.S. crash was a Continental Express flight operated by Colgan Air, which crashed into a house near Buffalo, N.Y. on Feb. 12, 2009. The crash killed all 49 people on board and one man in a house.

Asia remains one of the fastest-growing regions for aviation in the world. Even with slowing economies in Japan and China, airlines there saw 3.7 percent more passengers than a year ago, according to the International Air Transport Association.

Finding enough experienced pilots to meet a growing number of flights is becoming a problem. A 2012 report by aircraft manufacturer Boeing said the industry would need 460,000 new commercial airline pilots in the next two decades -- with 185,000 of them needed in Asia alone.

"The Asia-Pacific region continues to present the largest projected growth in pilot demand," the report said.