777 Crash and Fire at SFO

[Highkeas]

I just heard that Asiana flight 214 into SFO on July 5 (the day before the accident) had a go-around.
I wonder what the cause was.

[Schwartz]

i have to ask, why do flight attendants have four point seatbelts, crew five point seatbelts and pax two point seatbelts that have not been used in automobiles in 40yrs?

Cost and lack of consumer tolerance for wearing more restraints. Why don't school busses have any seatbelts? Similar reasoning.

[Schwartz]

This article has some more specifics about the pilots:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/pilot-of-crashed-asiana-airlines-jet-was-still-in-training/article13064389/#dashboard/follows/

Highlights mine:

Lee, 46, a 19-year veteran with Asiana, has logged more than 9,700 hours of flying, piloting A320s and Boeing 737s and 747s to various destinations, including San Francisco. He had just 43 hours of flying time with Boeing 777s, and had made eight landings with them, in London, Los Angeles and Narita, Japan. He was still on a “familiarization flight” program when he was at the controls Saturday; a senior colleague with more experience landing 777s, including at San Francisco, sat beside him as co-pilot.

Choi Jong-ho, a senior aviation policy official with South Korea’s Transportation Ministry, said Monday that South Korean investigators had arrived in San Francisco and interviewed the four pilots on Flight 214, who worked two-man shifts during the flight.

...

Any challenge to the pilots would have been further complicated by the shutdown of a ground-based electronic system called a glide scope indicator, which helps keep planes at the correct descent angle. But the pilots had been notified that the system had been turned off, government and Asiana officials here said.

“Ultimately, it’s the trainer pilot who is responsible for the flight,” Yoon, the Asiana president, said, referring to Lee Jeong-min, 49, the more experienced pilot who sat in the co-pilot’s seat when Lee Kang-guk was landing the plane. He had 3,220 hours of flying time with 777s.

“Familiarization flights” are part of the routine for pilots learning to fly a new kind of plane, officials at both the Transportation Ministry and Asiana said. At Asiana, the pilots are required to go through manual and simulator training - Asiana has run its own simulator training center since 1998 - and make 20 familiarization flights in the presence of more experienced “mentor” or “trainer” pilots.

...

South Korea’s aviation industry long had a tarnished safety record that mainly involved Asiana’s bigger, older domestic rival, Korean Air. In 1983, a Soviet fighter jet shot down a Korean Air 747, killing all 269 people on board. In 1987, a Korean Air 707 disintegrated over waters near Myanmar in an explosion that South Korea attributed to a North Korean terrorist attack. All 115 people on board were killed.

Eighty people died in 1989 when a Korean Air DC10 passenger jet crashed while landing in Tripoli, Libya. In 1997, a Korean Air 747 slammed into a hill while approaching the airport in Guam, killing 225 people.

Since then, South Korea has tightened safety regulations and pilot qualification requirements, as well as improving pilot training. It also has struggled to address long-running skepticism over its cockpit culture.

With most pilots recruited from the air force, strict hierarchy ruled among South Korean pilots, so much so that investigators and critics at the time said that co-pilots were not able to challenge the pilots even when there was an obvious mistake.

Both Asiana and Korean Air have been gradually hiring more non-veterans, including foreign pilots, partly because there were not enough South Korean air force veterans to meet the rising demand for pilots - especially in recent years, when they expanded overseas routes as budget airlines joined the competition for the domestic market. Now they fill roughly half of the cockpits. (Lee Kang-guk was one of them, joining Asiana in 1994 as a trainee pilot.)

...

[3WE]

It DOES NOT DEPEND! There are strict rules that dictate how many flight crew will be aboard the a/c depending on the SCHEDULED flight time.

Wrong.

Go back and read the question.

"Aren't there relief crews on long haul flights?"

It depends how long the flight is.

[3WE]

What I meant is that can't visualize the mechanics of how this happened.

This has happened before with both big and little planes.

The mechanics is very simple tunnel vision and the fact that you tend to be slowing up anyway as you are on short final...

Muscle memory to bump nose up trim...

That works well as long as you check the ASI.

But if you are feeling a bit too comfortable on your 10-zillionth landing, and maybe mentally frazzled and don't give a rat about all the red lights on the PAPI....

[3WE]

The Captain, according to CNN , has only 43 hours on type. Is that a material factor in allowing a stall to develop?

I really don't think this should matter.

You have a visual approach slope indicator (yeah, the PAPI flavor, just using pain language). It works on a 172 and a 777.

You have a little gauge towards the upper left that you are supposed to watch- whether you are flying a 172 or a 777. (it's called an airspeed indicator)

You have a target airspeed you are supposed to maintain whether you are flying a 172 or a 777.

While the mistake of speed decay gets made from time to time, this is again, the most basic of airmanship fundamentals that you are supposed to have about the time of your first solo.

[AVION1]

Tell me again.....which airline is it that employs you as a Training Captain on 777's ?

funny !


But again, as we speak....those poor pilots are receiving a LOI (Letter of Investigation) from the FAA. You have 10 days to answer the LOI.
From there the FAA can take several options, one is to take an action on their certificate or drag them to a testing facility so they can take a test.

[BoeingBobby]

funny !


But again, as we speak....those poor pilots are receiving a LOI (Letter of Investigation) from the FAA. You have 10 days to answer the LOI.
From there the FAA can take several options, one is to take an action on their certificate or drag them to a testing facility so they can take a test.

These are Koren nationals. You think the FAA has the ability to file an LOI on them let alone give them a 709 ride? Are you a 121 or 135 pilot?

[BoeingBobby]

Wrong.

Go back and read the question.

"Aren't there relief crews on long haul flights?"

It depends how long the flight is.

Quote:

Originally Posted by phoneman Don't they have a second flight crew on a long haul flight such as this?

Depends...

And it doesn't neccesarily gaurantee you will get quality sleep, or be on your right circadian rythim nor not land at the end of 6 hours (you chose the number) of boredom in a cockpit staring into the sun and mentally fried.

I DO NOT see anything in this post other than DEPENDS do you?

[Dispatch Dog]

Looking at the speed decay, is it safe to assume that no A/T was used?

I've only got 300 old hours, but by the end of hour 1, I think I had grasped and never let go of the concept of appropriate airspeed, especially on approach.

With an experienced and senior co pilot in the right seat, it should rule out the classic junior pilot reluctance to say anything. In this situation, it was the co-pilot's job to say something. So how can almost 17,000 flying hours not maintain the basic concept of piloting?

There has to be something missing here.

[Leftseat86]

Eyewitness account from a pilot aboard UAL 885 744 that was holding parallel to 28L near the start of the runway. These guys had the best seats in the house:

http://www.subchat.com/otchat/read.asp?Id=1080154

[Myndee]

Hello strangers.

My airline is based out of SFO, so I fly there a lot. Anyone who flies into that airport knows there is little or NO room for error on the approach. It's a rather nerve wracking landing because the aircraft's shadow catches up with it when it is still over the bay!

I've talked with some pilots and everyone seems to agree that it was pilot error. Nice try blaming the ILS.

I think we will find that despite CRM, we will see cultural norms here. Death before dishonor. How many times have we seen it? Nobody says anything and allows the plane to crash. Ugh.

[Myndee]

There was no question that this aircraft stalled. I talked to one of our pilots. SFO is our hub, so a lot of our pilots saw what happened. LOW AND SLOW.
It's so irritating. These young girls needn't have lost their lives.

CAUSE OF CRASH: Dumbassery

Thank you, Boeing, for building a great product, and the cabin crew is to be commended for saving nearly everyone.

Just looking at the flight info on flightaware, the airspeed around 300ft seems too low. I am wondering if it was in a stall around that height.

11:26	37.5900	-122.3070	297°	West	169	194	1,400	-1,380	FlightAware
11:27	37.5988	-122.3270	299°	West	145	167	800	-1,380	FlightAware
11:27	37.6016	-122.3340	297°	West	141	162	600	-1,320	FlightAware
11:27	37.6045	-122.3410	298°	West	134	154	400	-900	FlightAware
11:27	37.6073	-122.3480	297°	West	123	142	300	-840	FlightAware
11:27	37.6103	-122.3550	298°	West	109	125	100	-120	FlightAware
11:28	37.6170	-122.3740	294°	West	85	98	200	120	FlightAware

[Myndee]

Those pilots should surrender their pilot's licenses and ASIANA airlines should be banned from flying into the United States. And their passports should be confiscated.

I concur. I am willing to bet that these pilots didn't have sim training on this approach.

Evan gets a welcome back, but I don't?

[Myndee]

Gabriel said: Airbusses

I call them Airbii.

Do we know if the CVR recorded anything else but the stick shaker, and the pilots decided to ignore, like a sink rate or GPWS?