Free Republic

The flying pilot of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 told National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials that he was "blinded" temporarily by a flash of light at 500 feet, or 34 seconds before impact -- about the same time the pilots realized they were flying too low and going too slow. The NTSB doesn't know what caused the flash, and is continuing to investigate. At Wednesday's NTSB briefing, NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman released information from the board's investigation. She detailed who was on the crew, the communications between air traffic control and the Asiana pilots, and the plane's evacuation. Evacuation delayed...

A potentially telling revelation in the wake of the Asiana Airlines crash landing at the San Francisco airport: Asiana pilots have little training on manual flying and visual approaches, according to three pilots Bloomberg spoke to who have either flown for Asiana or helped train Korean crews. One of the three recalls preparing to land an Asiana jet at LAX and asking his Korean co-pilot to make a visual approach. The co-pilot couldn't do it, forcing the American captain to take over in order to avoid an accident. The co-pilot's explanation to him afterward: "I don't need to know this....

Asiana 214 – A Failure of Standardized Procedures? By Bruce Croft – www.twozerowest.com In her final on-site briefing NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman added what are in my view two final but highly significant pieces of factual information contributing to the investigation into the cause of the crash of Asiana 214. We learned that there was conversation about being above, then on, and then below the glidepath for the approach – in that order, and we also learned that there was no mention of the aircraft’s speed until a little less than nine seconds prior to impact.  What these facts taken...

Co-anchor Tori Campbell told viewers during the noon newscast Friday,"KTVU has just learned the names of the four pilots who were on board" the flight that crashed at San Francisco International Airport a week ago. She proceeded to read from a teleprompter the names that may have originated as a racially insensitive joke online — "Sum Ting Wong," "Wi Tu Lo," "Ho Lee Fuk," and "Bang Ding Ow"— while a TV graphic displayed the names next to a photo of the charred cabin.

SEOUL, South Korea Asiana Airlines said Sunday its reputation was damaged by a report on a San Francisco TV station that used bogus and racially offensive names for four pilots on its plane that crashed earlier this month and is considering legal action.

You’ve probably heard about the airline crash reporting fiasco. Last Friday during a live midday newscast, KTVU TV in San Francisco reported as fact that the names of the pilots on board the Asiana airlines flight that recently crashed in that city were “Sum Ting Wong,” “Wi Tu Lo,” Ho Lee Fuk,” and “Bang Ding Ow.” Shortly thereafter it was determined that the information, which the television station allegedly acquired from the National Transportation Safety Board (“NTSB”), was not factual, but instead a racially insensitive joke. Within less than thirty-six hours after the incident not only had KTVU’s management apologized...

The National Transportation Safety Board apologized Friday after an intern mistakenly confirmed to a local television station racially offensive fake names for the pilots of an Asiana flight that crashed in San Francisco. “The National Transportation Safety Board apologizes for inaccurate and offensive names that were mistakenly confirmed as those of the pilots of Asiana flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco International Airport on July 6,” the NTSB said in a statement. “Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names...

Bay Area news station KTVU just reported that the pilots of Asiana's disastrous flight 214 were the crack team of "Sum Ting Wong," "Wi Tu Lo," "Ho Lee Fuk," and "Bang Ding Ow." Despite the names obviously being just a bunch of racist jokes, KTVU, which has since apologized for the report, claims in a statement given to Gawker—and read on the air—that an NTSB official confirmed the names to them earlier today. EARLIER IN THE NEWSCAST WE GAVE SOME NAMES OF PILOTS INVOLVED IN THE ASIANA AIRLINES CRASH. THESE NAMES WERE NOT ACCURATE DESPITE AN N-T-S-B OFFICIAL IN WASHINGTON...

TV station KTVU was apparently on the bad end of a prank earlier today, when it supposedly reported the names of the pilots on Asiana flight 214:

I don't care who you are, that's funny! Larry The Cable Guy.

After I retired from UAL as a Standards Captain on the -400, I got a job as a simulator instructor working for Alteon (a Boeing subsidiary) at Asiana. When I first got there, I was shocked and surprised by the lack of basic piloting skills shown by most of the pilots. It is not a normal situation with normal progression from new hire, right seat, left seat taking a decade or two. One big difference is that ex-Military pilots are given super-seniority and progress to the left seat much faster. Compared to the US, they also upgrade fairly rapidly because...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Flight attendants from the Asiana Airlines flight that crashed over the weekend are expected to speak about the ordeal. A news conference has been scheduled at San Francisco International Airport for Wednesday afternoon. At least one crew member already has spoken to reporters.

U.S. authorities couldn’t perform drug or alcohol tests on the four pilots who were aboard Asiana Flight 214 when it crashed at San Francisco International Airport — a lapse that will complicate efforts to figure out why they were seemingly unaware that the plane was coming in too slowly and too low. Those were the latest revelations Tuesday from National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Debbie Hersman, who said her agency and the Federal Aviation Administration couldn’t legally requirethe crew of the South Korea-based airline to submit to testing after the crash. That decision is left to the airline’s home country....

Old time freepers will know that I am a retired airline/military pilot of 40 years experience. Guys like us stay in touch and swap experiences. It is how we learned as youngsters and how we stayed alive into retirement. This revelation is nothing new to those of us who have been around the pattern a few times. Nothing new at all. Read it and make your own decision.

Reports indicate that passengers aboard crashed Asiana Flight 214 were trapped by their seatbelts while the Boeing 777 burned around them. If only someone had a knife to cut them free, even a small pocketknife… But nobody had any kind of knife, because knives aren’t allowed on flights that land or originate in the United States. So what happened? ... police officers on the ground threw utility knives up to crew members so they could cut the seat belts of those who remained trapped as rescue crews removed the injured. You read that correctly: passengers were trapped in the burning...

When seconds can mean the difference between life and death in escaping an aircraft accident, it was startling to see so many photographs from the crash of Asiana Flight 214 at San Francisco International Airport of people carrying out bags, including roll aboards that must have come out of the overhead luggage bins. At least one man interviewed in the New York Times indicated that he grabbed his bags and then his child. In that order. All I can say is that it was very fortunate that the fire was slow to spread.

The Asiana Airlines’ Boeing 777, which crash-landed in San Francisco Saturday claiming two lives and injuring over a hundred, was flown by one of the best qualified and most experienced pilots at Korea’s No. 2 carrier. A source familiar with the issue said Sunday that the 49-year-old, Lee Jeong-min, had more than 25 years experience flying both military fighters and large-sized commercial aircraft. “In the Air Force, Lee was selected to fly the F-4 because he was one of the best fighter pilots with the F-5 which all Korean fighter pilots start with. After serving in the military for 10...

I used the data for Asiana Flight 214 from FlightAware to create a series of graphs to help Freepers understand how the approach to landing deviated from the expected behavior. This data is collected from the FAA computer systems. The location data is either calculated by the FAA radar or reported by the aircraft transponder. The altitude is reported by the aircraft transponder. The ground speed and vertical descent rate is most likely reported by the aircraft's Mode S transponder, but it's possible these were computed by the radar system. This first graph is a plot of the latitude/longitude in...

A Boeing 777 passenger jetliner bound from Seoul, South Korea, crashed and caught fire while landing at San Francisco International Airport at about 11:30 Saturday. The plane, Asiana Flight 214, came to rest on the side of the runway. The airport remains closed to all traffic and emergency teams are on the scene.

The evacuation of Asiana flight 214 began badly. Even before the mangled jetliner began filling with smoke, two evacuation slides on the doors inflated inside the cabin instead of outside, pinning two flight attendants to the floor. Cabin manager Lee Yoon-hye, apparently the last person to leave the burning plane, said crew members deflated the slides with axes to rescue their colleagues, one of whom seemed to be choking beneath the weight of a slide. It was just one of the moments of drama described Sunday by Lee of a remarkable evacuation that saved 305 of the 307 people on...