San Francisco plane crash: 'it was the most terrible thing I've ever seen' The two men piloting the plane at the time of crash were named as Lee Jeong-min and Lee Gang-guk, both from South Korea. The first man, in his late 40s, had 12,387 hours of flying experience, including 3,220 hours on the Boeing 777. The second had 9,793 hours flying experience and 43 hours on the Boeing 777, according to the South Korean Transport Ministry. Elliott Stone, an American passenger, said: "All of a sudden the engine sped up like he (the pilot) knew he was short. Then the back end hit and everyone's head went up to the ceiling. The back got the worst of it. The fight attendants there got hammered. People fell out. It was the most terrible thing I've ever seen. He said he saw people strewn 500 yards down the runway from the plane. Benjamin Levy, 39, who was sitting in the exit row, said: "I know the airport pretty well so I realised the guy was a bit too low, too fast, and somehow he was not going to hit the runway on time. He put some gas and tried to go up again. But it was too late, so we hit the runway pretty bad, and then we started going up in the air again, and then landed again pretty hard. Everybody was screaming. Eyewitnesses described how the plane hit with a "bang," and then "pancaked" on the runway, spinning 360 degrees and leaving a trail of debris. Several described it as "cartwheeling" before being enveloped in flames and smoke. Passenger Vedpal Singh, who suffered a fractured collarbone, said: "It's miraculous we survived." As investigators began examining the cockpit voice recorder, and black box data recorder, it emerged that a navigation system which helps pilots make safe descents had been turned off at San Francisco airport for weeks. Aviation experts said it was not unusual for airports to take such systems offline for maintenance, but pilots have grown to rely on the decades-old technology even in good weather conditions like those in the city at the time. Without the "glide path" system, automatic warnings would not have gone off in the cockpit if the pilot's approach angle was wrong. Chesley Sullenberger, the retired pilot who landed a stricken plane successfully in the Hudson River in New York in 2009, told CBS: "The pilots would have had to rely solely on visual cues to fly the proper glide path to the runway, and not have had available to them the electronic information that they typically have even in good weather at most major airports." We don't know yet if that's a factor in this particular situation, but that's certainly something they'll be looking at.