Asiana plane smashes antenna in Japan runway accident

Tokyo

AN Asiana Airways plane smashed into a communications antenna as it came in to land at a Japanese airport, footage showed on Wednesday, injuring 27 people in an accident with echoes of the airline's fatal 2013 crash in San Francisco.

Aerial footage from Hiroshima airport in western Japan showed the localiser - a large gate-like structure, six metres high that sits around 300 metres from the start of the runway - splintered, with debris spread towards the landing strip.

Sets of wheel marks were visible on the grass area in front of the runway, while large fragments of the localiser - which aircraft use to find the landing stri…