S.F. Fire Chief: 2 Fatalities in Boeing 777 Crash Landing Found Outside Jet (UPDATE)

• SF Fire Chief: 2 found dead outside jet, 181 taken to hospitals

• All aboard accounted for

• Terrorism ruled out

• Passenger: "Tail ripped off"

• National Transportation Safety Board sending investigation team

• Listen to air traffic radio

SAN FRANCISCO (TheBlaze/AP) -- San Francisco's fire chief says the two people who died in the Asiana Airlines crash were found outside of the heavily damaged jetliner.

Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said late Saturday that she did not know the ages or genders of the victims, adding that authorities have accounted for all the passengers and crew members aboard the jetliner that crashed at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday morning.

Asiana Flight 214 from Seoul, South Korea had more than 300 passengers and crew members aboard when it made a hard landing, lost a tail and caught on fire at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday morning.

More than 180 people were taken to nine area hospitals, but the majority had relatively minor injuries. As of Saturday evening the number of fatalities stood at two while at least five people were reported in critical condition.

Earlier Saturday, Hayes-White had reported that authorities did not know where "upwards of 60" people were after the crash. She says the confusion stemmed from survivors being brought from the wreckage from two different locations.

Terrorism has been ruled out.

This photo provided by Antonette Edwards shows what a federal aviation official says was an Asiana Airlines flight crashing while landing at San Francisco airport on Saturday, July 6, 2013. (AP)

The SF fire chief said at the press conference that there were 291 passengers and 16 crew aboard the flight. Initially 48 were transported to hospitals while 190 went to a safe location at SFI. Of those 190, 82 were later taken to hospitals, the chief said, making the total transported to hospitals at 130. At least 60 were unaccounted for, she said at the time; now all have been accounted for while the number taken to hospitals increased to 181.

Watch live coverage from KCRA:

The Federal Aviation Administration said Flight 214 crashed while landing at 11:36 a.m. PDT. A video clip posted to YouTube showed smoke coming from a jet on the tarmac. Passengers could be seen jumping down the emergency slides.

Television footage showed the top of the fuselage was burned away and the entire tail was gone. One engine appeared to have broken away. Pieces of the tail were strewn about the runway. Emergency responders could be seen walking inside the burned-out wreckage.

It wasn't immediately clear what happened to the plane as it was landing, but some eyewitnesses said the aircraft seemed to lose control and that the tail may have hit the ground.

Passenger David Eun tweeted a photo of the crashed aircraft with emergency slides deployed and passengers evacuating.

Image source: David Eun via path.com

"I just crash landed at SFO. Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine. I'm ok. Surreal," Eun wrote. "Fire and rescue people all over the place. They're evacuating the injured. Haven't felt this way since 9/11. Trying to help people stay calm. Deep breaths..."

"Lots of activity here. Friends, pls don't call right now. I'm fine. Most people are totally calm and trying to let the fire and rescue do their jobs. Just like during 9/11, most people are great and try to be helpful in crisis..." he wrote.

Image: KCRA screenshot

Stephanie Turner said she was standing outside her hotel watching the runway and photographing another plane when she actually snapped a photo of the crash as it happened.

Image source: Stefanie Turner/Twitter user @stefanielaine

Turner told ABC News she saw the plane going down and the rescue slides deploy, but returned to her hotel room before seeing any passengers get off the jet. She said when she first saw the flight she noticed right away that the angle of its approach seemed strange.

"It didn't manage to straighten out before hitting the runway," she said. "So the tail of the plane hit the runway, and it cartwheeled and spun and the tail broke off ... I mean we were sure that we had just seen a lot of people die. It was awful.

"And it looked like the plane had completely broken apart," she said. "There were flames and smoke just billowing."

Image source: Twitter user @DoreCalifornia

Kate Belding was out jogging just before 11:30 a.m. on a path the water from the airport when she noticed the plane approaching the runway in a way that "just didn't look like it was coming in quite right."

"Then all of a sudden I saw what looked like a cloud of dirt puffing up and then there was a big bang and it kind of looked like the plane maybe bounced (as it neared the ground)," she said. "I couldn't really tell what happened, but you saw the wings going up and (in) a weird angle."

"Not like it was cartwheeling," she said, but rather as though the wings were almost swaying from side to side.

Doug Yakel, a spokesman for the airport, said he did not yet know how many passengers were aboard the flight. "We also don't have any information at this time to the status of those passengers," he said at a brief news conference.

Eunice Bird Rah tweeted that her father had been a passenger and posted several photos he texted her from the crash site and inside the airport where survivors were being checked out.

Image source: Twitter user @EuniceBirdRah

Image source: Twitter user @EuniceBirdRah

Image source: Twitter user @EuniceBirdRah

Rachael Kagan, a spokeswoman for San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, told KCBS radio in San Francisco that 10 passengers had been taken to the hospital - two children and eight adults, all in critical condition.

A call to the airline seeking comment wasn't immediately returned.

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.

Boeing said it was preparing to provide technical assistance to the NTSB.

Numerous flights headed to San Francisco were diverted to other airports. A United Airlines flight bound for San Francisco was sent to Los Angeles airport, and passengers were told the San Francisco airport would be closed for at least three hours Saturday afternoon.

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 oneWorld alliance, anchored by American Airlines and British Airways.

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 flight was 10 hours and 23 minutes, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking service. The aircraft is configured to seat 295 passengers, it said.

The Boeing 777 is a smaller, wide-body jet that can travel long distances without refueling and is typically used for long flights over water.

The most notable accident involving a 777 occurred on Jan. 17, 2008 at Heathrow Airport in London. British Airways Flight 28 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.

A fire truck sprays water on Asiana Flight 214 after it crashed at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, July 6, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP)

AP

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."

The last time a large U.S. airline lost a plane in a fatal crash was an American Airlines Airbus A300 taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York in 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.

Flying remains one of the safest forms of transportation: There are about two deaths worldwide for every 100 million passengers on commercial flights, according to an Associated Press analysis of government accident data.

Just a decade ago, passengers were 10 times as likely to die when flying on an American plane. The risk of death was even greater during the start of the jet age, with 1,696 people dying - 133 out of every 100 million passengers - from 1962 to 1971. The figures exclude acts of terrorism.

But airline crashes remain in the public's memory much longer than a wreck on the side of the road. Flying isn't natural and crashes involve many fatalities, often accompanied with horrifying images.

Those in the airline industry often say that you are more likely to die driving to the airport than on your flight. There are more than 30,000 motor-vehicle deaths each year, a mortality rate eight times greater than that in planes.

There are still some corners of the world where flying is risky. Russia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia have particularly high rates of deadly crashes. But America, Europe and Asia - with the exception of a few low-cost carriers - have remained very safe.

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.

This post has been updated.