The Two Fatalities In Crash Of Flight 214 Were 16-Year-Old Middle School Students

The two fatalities in the horrific crash of Flight 214 yesterday were both 16-year-old middle school girls. Heartbreaking.

Flight 214 from Seoul to San Francisco crashed on its final approach into the airport yesterday. Investigators haven’t conclusively stated what caused the crash yet, but some  have speculated it may have been caused by the plane “clipping the sea wall” that separates the San Francisco bay from the runway. In addition to the two young girls who died, 182 people were hospitalized.

Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, students at Jiangshan Middle School in eastern China, died in the crash, state broadcaster China Central Television said, citing a fax from the airline to the Jiangshan city government.

The South Korean airline said in a statement that Ye and Wang were both 16.

A group of 29 students and five teachers had set off from the highly competitive school in Zhejiang, an affluent coastal province. A woman from Zhejiang’s education department had said earlier that they had lost contact with two students.

This is heartbreaking. I remember some of the first flights I took on my own as a teenager. Air travel was so exciting when I was younger – I didn’t regard it as the cumbersome necessity to get to a destination that I do now. I remember how hard it was for my mom to watch me get on the plane. I remember how independent and grown up I felt. My heart breaks for the families of these girls.

It’s terrible when there are any fatalities in a crash, but that they were two young school girls with their whole lives ahead of them makes it even worse. That out of all 291 passengers on board it was two teenagers that died is just so incredibly sad. It’s also amazing – seeing the horrific pictures of the wreckage – that more lives weren’t lost.

(photo: YouTube)