Nose tilt caused New York plane accident, says safety board

The nose of a Southwest Airlines plane that crash-landed at New York's La Guardia airport tilted down just before landing, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said yesterday.

The safety body said its preliminary investigation had found that the plane had been nose-up when it was just 32 feet (9.8m) above ground but was pitched down by three degrees at touchdown.

As a result, the Boeing 737-700's front landing gear, which collapsed on landing, hit the ground first. Ten passengers were wounded in the incident.

The NTSB did not say if the nose-down angle of the plane was responsible for the landing gear collapsing or if it should have been capable of coping with the shock.

A Southwest Boeing 737 aeroplane sits on the tarmac after passengers were evacuated, at La Guardia Airport in New York, in this photo courtesy of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) made available on July 23, 2013. US safety regulators launched an investigation on Tuesday into the collapse of the front landing gear on the Southwest Airlines plane shortly after it touched down at La Guardia Airport on Monday evening. - Reuters

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Pilots in Asiana crash relied on automatic equipment for airspeed

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A British Airways Oneworld jumbo jet lands near the charred remains of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 on the runway at San Francisco Airport International Airport in San Francisco, California July 9, 2013. The Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 flying from Seoul, South Korea broke apart and burned after crash-landing short of the runway on Saturday.


The pilots aboard the Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 that crashed in San Francisco relied on automatic equipment - an auto-throttle system - to maintain airspeed and did not realize the plane was flying too slowly until it was just 200 feet (60 meters) above the ground, the head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday.

In her third detailed briefing on Saturday's crash that killed two Chinese passengers and injured more than 180 other people, NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman also said two flight attendants were ejected from the plane after its tail hit a seawall in front of the runway and was torn off. Both were found injured but alive on the side of the runway.

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Stunt performer, pilot killed in Ohio air show crash

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A woman performing a wing-walking stunt and her pilot were killed on Saturday when their biplane crashed and burst into flames while doing aerobatics at an air show in Ohio, organizers of the event said.

Veteran stuntwoman Jane Wicker and her pilot, Charlie Schwenker, died when their Boeing Stearman crashed around 1pm EDT (1am, Malaysian time) at the Vectren Dayton Air Show in Dayton.

Video footage of the incident replayed on television and the Internet showed that at the time of the crash, the duo appeared to have been executing a stunt in which the vintage plane flips as Wicker is out on one of its wings.