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The tail ultimately smashed into a seawall and broke off before the rest of the fuselage hit and ground and spun across the tarmac.
Crash survivor Brian Thomson, who was returning from a martial arts competition in South Korea and walked away physically unscathed, said he's not concerned about lack of experience in the cockpit.
"At some point you have to start at hour one, hour two. It's just natural. Everyone starts a career someway, somehow. Starts a new plane someway, somehow. They have to have training," he said.
The Air Line Pilots Association, a union representing more than 50,000 pilots at 33 American and Canadian airlines, says the NTSB is releasing incomplete, out-of-context information that could lead to unfair characterizations of Asiana's pilots.
"Without the full body of facts surrounding a catastrophic event, partial or incomplete information can lead to erroneous conclusions and, in turn, skew the perception of individuals' behavior. This could then lead to misguided assessments of the crew's intentions and actions," the union said in a statement.
Hersman said the NTSB is representing passengers and trying to be transparent.
In the U.S., drug and alcohol tests are standard procedure after air accidents, the same is not required for foreign pilots. Hersman said the Asiana pilots had not undergone any tests.
The flight originated in Shanghai and stopped over in Seoul before making the nearly 11-hour trip to San Francisco.
Nearly 20 survivors remained hospitalized Wednesday, and families arrived to care for many of them.
Two flight attendants thrown from the airliner during the accident were among those hurt. One of them has been identified as 25-year-old Maneenat Tinnakul, whose father told the Thairath newspaper the family was given a visa to visit their daughter in San Francisco. He said Maneenat suffered a minor backache.
Another flight attendant, identified as Sirithip Singhakarn, was reportedly in an intensive care unit.
Meanwhile, fire officials continued their investigation into whether one of their trucks might have run over one of the two Chinese teenagers killed in the crash. The students, Wang Linjia and Ye Mengyuan, were part of a larger group headed for a Christian summer camp with dozens of classmates. Several of those camps have been canceled and the students are returning home.
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Associated Press Writer Haven Daley contributed to this story from Scotts Valley, Calif.
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