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Facebook's Sandberg says she had planned to be aboard reportedly fatal flight

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg posts to the social network, saying she was originally planning on taking an Asiana Airlines flight from Seoul, South Korea, that wound up crashing at San Francisco's main airport. Two people have reportedly died as a result of the crash.

Edward Moyer Senior Editor
Edward Moyer is a senior editor at CNET and a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world. He enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. ¶ For nearly a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures.
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Edward Moyer
2 min read
Screenshot by CNET

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said she had planned to be on a flight that crashed on landing at San Francisco's main airport Saturday in an accident that reportedly killed two people. Meanwhile, a Samsung executive who was on board very quickly posted an eyewitness shot to the Web.

Sandberg posted to her page on the social network that she had originally intended to be on board the Asiana Airlines flight from Seoul, South Korea. "Thank you to everyone who is reaching out -- and sorry if we worried anyone," she wrote, explaining that she had switched to a different airline to take advantage of frequent flyer miles.

The shot by Samsung executive David Eun shows the smoking, tailless plane at the side of the runway with its emergency slides deployed and other passengers making their way toward where he is standing.

Screenshot by CNET

"I just crash landed at SFO. Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine. I'm ok. Surreal..." reads a tweet Eun sent with a link to the photo.

It's not clear at the time of this writing exactly what happened or precisely what the injury or fatality count might be. A Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman confirmed the crash, of Asiana Flight 214, and local television station KPIX reported that the San Francisco Fire Department had confirmed that two people had been killed and 61 injured.

The airport -- San Francisco's SFO -- has been closed to in-coming and out-bound traffic.

A Facebook representative told CNET that the social network had no official comment to make. "Her post says it all," the rep wrote in an e-mail. "Sheryl and her family are shocked and saddened but thankfully safe."

CBS News has ongoing coverage of the crash here. And here's a video posted by CBS: