Probe begins after Asiana Airlines botched landing in Hiroshima

The aircraft's landing gear is thought to have struck 6.4-meter-tall wireless communication tower located 325 meters away from the runway, a transport ministry official said. It may have been flying too low due to poor visibility amid low cloud, or because of turbulence. Passengers and crew got off the damaged aircraft after the landing just after 8 p.m. Tuesday night. The transport ministry found exchanges between the aircraft pilot and air-traffic controller did not suggest any problem even though the aircraft approached the runway at an unusually low altitude, other officials said. Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Akihiro Ota told a Diet committee Wednesday he had instructed Asiana Airlines to "determine the cause (of the accident), and report the steps it will take to prevent this from happening again." Hiroshima police said Wednesday they have investigated the accident site as a crime scene, potentially involving corporate negligence resulting in injury. The Japan Transport Safety Board dispatched five investigators to the site on Wednesday afternoon. Their probe into the cause of the accident is likely to hinge on determining why the aircraft came in too low. Their tasks will include assisting investigators from South Korea's Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board, also dispatched to the scene. The injury count is still unclear, with the transport ministry reporting 27 people injured, and Hiroshima police saying Wednesday afternoon that 23 passengers and 2 crewmembers had sustained minor injuries. The injured included three children -- 11-month-old and three-year-old girls and a five-year-old boy, and 12 men and 10 women ranging in age from their 20s to their 60s, the police said. The police said 17 of the injured are Japanese, five South Korean, two Chinese and one a U.S. national. According to Asiana Airlines, the aircraft was carrying 73 passengers from 10 countries, including 46 Japanese, nine Chinese and eight South Koreans. The airline said the pilot had logged over 8,000 hours' flying time and the copilot over 1,500 hours. Hiroshima airport is known to be prone to fog and clouds, according to the transport ministry. It is equipped with a high-level instrument landing system to help pilots land safely in reduced visibility, but as was the case for the Asiana aircraft Tuesday, cannot be used for planes approaching from the east. Most landings at the airport are from the west, but because of northwesterly winds the aircraft instead came in to land from the east, outside the path of the system's ground transmitter. The runway remained closed on Wednesday. All 50 domestic flights out of the airport scheduled for Wednesday were cancelled by their respective airlines. Source: Kyodo