Survivors of the tragic San Francisco crash-landing have spoken

A survivor giving account 

Survivors of the Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 accident  have spoken of the terrifying moment a pilot tried to abort a landing seconds before it crashed onto the runway in San Francisco. Two Chinese youngsters died after the airliner struck the runway shortly after the jet reportedly hit a sea wall.

Benjamin Levy a survivor and eye wittiness said: "The nose of the plane, as you know, goes up a little bit. And then full throttle starts hitting hard and then we felt that we were going up again, so that's why I said maybe the guy is about to pull one of those almost mislandings and go back up”. "But it didn't happen, we just crashed back. So as I say - if we flipped, none of us would be here to talk about it."

In the muddled moments after the crashlanding, Wen Zhang grabbed her four-year-old son, who hit the seat in front of him and broke his leg. Spotting a hole at the back of the jumbo jet where the bathroom had been, she whisked her boy to safety."I had no time to be scared," she said.

Xu Da another survivor and product manager from China was sitting with his wife and teenage son near the back of the plane. He stood up and saw a gaping hole through the back of the plane where its galley was torn away along with the tail.

Xu and his family escaped through the opening. Once on the tarmac, they watched the plane catch fire, and fire fighters hose it down.

Eugene Rah said: "The seat I was sitting in, it has one more strap coming across my chest here in addition to the one that goes around the waist because It was a sleeper seat. If I did not have that, I would have hit the ceiling: that's how hard the impact was."

Fred Hayes filmed the crash from around a mile away "I was watching it come in and I did notice that nose being up in the air. My initial reaction was that it was trying to abort the landing and go back up," he told CNN. "There was big boom and then it pitched forward and bounced off its nose." One of the flight attendants described the chaos as she and her colleagues began their evacuation of more than 300 people.

Lee Yoon He told South Korean media that she first went to the cockpit to see if the pilots were alive. She then made three announcements telling the 291 passengers to remain calm and prepare to evacuate. There were four pilots on the plane: two in the cockpit and two more reserve pilots in the main cabin. One of the reserve pilots opened the front door with an axe and ordered the evacuation.