[Bobalu]

Pilots gotta train!

I feel sorry for the guy.

I wonder what was up with the co-pilot??
(is his responsibility, with a trainee)

[Lmo56]

Great ... Airlines tell you what type of aircraft you are flying when you make the reservation - I wonder if they are gonna start telling you about the pilots' qualifications ...

[tcrlaf]

“has 9,793 hours of flying experience, but only 43 hours with the Boeing 777 jet”

Asiana is about to meet many US ambulance-chasing attorney’s.

Korea will likely invoke the Montreal Treaty on all non-Koreans aboard.

[ElkGroveDan]

Before you all get that rope up over the branch, consider a few things. It says he had landed 747s at SFO previously, so it's not like he was a "new" pilot by any means. Also listening to the ATC voice traffic, it sounded to me like he was saying he was having "problems" a minute or two prior to the impact. That tells me it wasn't a case of, "whoops I came in too short." More likely there were issues with non-responsive aircraft controls.

My gut tells me that "pilot error" will not be the final conclusion. I'm going with some kind of equipment failure.

[Political Junkie Too]

If he was training on the aircraft at that airport, perhaps the airline should have rescheduled the training to a date when the glidepath radar was operational?

I'm hearing that it was down because of construction and/or maintenance.

-PJ

[Polynikes]

This confirms what I initially suspected from the start. Someone in the cockpit really screwed the pooch as in a rookie was in command and botched the landing. SFO is not a particularly difficult approach and landing but it has its quirks that can surprise a rookie and have the situation spiral out of control very quickly.

When an airline spokes person said there were 3 pilots in the cockpit with over 10,000 hrs between them and one had over 9,000 hrs that was a red flag as in 1 was very experienced and the other 2 were relative rookies.

There is a pretty good break down of the situation on Ticker Forum by a user Eleua.He appears to be a pilot of B-767-300s and knows SFO quirks.
http://tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=222505&page=2

The post is about half way down the page.

[dswyndon]

In training? Most likely he was in training to learn the English Language to fly the plane & take directions in English from ground control. There are 6 levels to English language proficiency for pilots to master. He must have been at the lower end of the 6scale. This has been an ongoing problem w/Korean pilots whether it be Asiana or Korean Air

[GeronL]

I just watched an episode of “Running Man” where a lot of the show took place at an Asiana Airline training facility. wierd

[Timber Rattler]

Lee, who started his career at Asiana as an intern in 1994, has 9,793 hours of flying experience, but only 43 hours with the Boeing 777 jet.

Well, he's hardly a rookie, and I still want to know what happened to the left engine.

[toldyou]

Why are so many blaming the pilot before a full investigation is done? Every single pilot flying on every airline today was “in training” at one time.

[Texas Eagle]

Epic fail.

Look for Obama to name Lee Kang-kook the next head of The FAA.

[Cheerio]

"He has a lot of experience and previously flown to San Francisco on different planes including the B747... and he was assisted by another pilot who has more experience with the 777," the spokeswoman said

That is why we still have two in the cockpit.

Airliner Cockpit Concepts Mulled: Solo And Unmanned

Aviation Week & Space Technology Jun 24, 2013 , p. 20 Pierre Sparaco

Move to one-person cockpits could be quietly taking its first steps
Printed headline: The End of Redundancy
Do you remember Michael O'Leary's ironic remark about the envisioned one-pilot flight crew? Ryanair 's chief executive last year claimed direct operating costs could be significantly reduced by eliminating the first officer on commercial flights

[George from New England]

If this was an American company I doubt they would be this forth coming to the public. Hey if this was the U.S. govt they would outright lie to the public.

[JimRed]

Had the pilot been Japanese, he might have to be put on suicide watch. Two dead, lots hurting, his fault; point of honor.

[RayChuang88]

The pilot has a LOT of hours flying the 737--but only 43 hours on the 777. One major concern of mine is whether the pilot--because of his unfamiliarity of the instrument panel of the 777--did not follow proper procedures for a full-manual landing approach and emergency go-around.

[Grampa Dave]

OJT is really a no/no when landing a full load of passengers at an airport with the landing strip on the water on one side and with hard pavement on the other side.

[Old Yeller]

He had 10,000 hours of flight time on the 747. He’s not a rookie.

[teletech]

It looks like they set up a bad approach and then tried to salvage the landing instead of instituting a missed approach procedure. It appears they got low and slow which is ALWAYS a bad combination.

[KTM rider]

“Thank You for Flying with Harbor Freight, we hope you enjoyed your flight”

[ek_hornbeck]

As far as I’m aware, having pilots in training fly passenger planes is standard operating procedure. That’s one of the reasons for having co-pilots, so in this regard, the airline did nothing wrong as far as policy is concerned. If the trainee was failing to execute his tasks, the copilot should have stepped in.