UPDATED July 8, 2012

Pilot of crashed Asiana plane was ‘in training’ to fly Boeing 777

The pilot of the Asiana plane that crashed at San Francisco International Airport was still in training for the Boeing 777 when he attempted to land the aircraft under supervision on Saturday, the South Korean airline said.

Lee Kang-kuk was the second most junior pilot of four on board the Asiana Airlines plane. He had 43 hours of experience flying the long-range jet, the airline said on Monday.

The plane’s crew tried to abort the descent less than two seconds before it hit a seawall on the landing approach to the airport, bounced along the tarmac and burst into flames.

The Asiana flight from Seoul to San Francisco, with 16 crew and 291 passengers, included several large groups of Chinese students. Two teenage Chinese girls on their way to summer camp in the United States were killed and more than 180 injured in the crash, the first fatal accident involving the Boeing 777 since it entered service in 1995.

Lee Kang-kuk had been flying since 1994 and is a “very experienced pilot” with other types of planes, including Boeing 747s, 737s and A320s, said spokeswoman Lee Hyo-min.

But “he was in training for B777,” she said, adding that he had 9,793 hours of flight time. She said he had traveled to San Francisco International previously, “but with B777, not much.”

It was Lee Kang-kuk’s first attempt to land a 777 at San Francisco airport, although he had flown there 29 times previously on other types of aircraft, said South Korean transport ministry official Choi Seung-youn.

She identified the co-pilot as Lee Jung-min, who has logged more than 12,000 flight hours. “He had lots of experience with the B777,” the spokeswoman said.Asiana confirmed Lee Kang-kuk, in his mid 40s, was in the pilot seat during the landing. It was not clear whether Lee Jung-min, the senior pilot, who had clocked up 3,220 hours on a Boeing 777, had tried to take over to abort the landing.

“It’s a training that is common in the global aviation industry. All responsibilities lie with the instructor captain,” Yoon Young-doo, the president and CEO of the airline, told a news conference on Monday at the company headquarters.

The plane crashed after the crew tried to abort the landing with less than two seconds to go, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said on Sunday.

Information collected from the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder indicated there were no signs of problems until seven seconds before impact, when the crew tried to accelerate, NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman told reporters at San Francisco airport.

A stall warning, in which the cockpit controls begin to shake, activated four seconds before impact, and the crew tried to abort the landing and initiate what is known as a “go around” maneuver 1.5 seconds before crashing, Hersman said.

“Air speed was significantly below the target air speed” of 137 knots, she said. The throttle was set at idle as the plane approached the airport and the engines appeared to respond normally when the crew tried to gain speed in the seconds before the crash, she said.

Rescuers may have caused second death

In a tragic twist, the San Francisco Fire Department said one of the Chinese teenagers may have been run over by an emergency vehicle as first responders reached the scene.

“One of the deceased did have injuries consistent with those of having been run over by a vehicle,” fire department spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge said.

The two, Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, were classmates and friends from the Jiangshan Middle School in Quzhou, in the prosperous eastern coastal province of Zhejiang.

They were among a group of 30 students and five teachers from the school on their way to attend a summer camp in the United States, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Ye, 16, had an easy smile, was an active member of the student council and had a passion for biology, the Beijing News reported.

“Responsible, attentive, pretty, intelligent,” were the words written about her on a recent school report, it added.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-san-francisco-plane-crash-20130706,0,284092.story

Two Dead in San Francisco Plane Crash

By
• ANDY PASZTOR

and

• VAUHINI VARA

A Boeing BA +0.60% 777 arriving from Seoul crashed and erupted into flames while landing at San Francisco International Airport, killing two people and critically injuring dozens.

Officials said Asiana Airlines 020560.SE -5.76% Flight 214 with 307 people on board, including 16 crew members, crashed just before noon local time. Witnesses said they saw puffs of smoke, apparently from the main wheels or tail hitting the ground, before the plane was engulfed in flames; some parts of the jet were later found in the San Francisco Bay, which circles the beginning of the runway. Passengers were seen jumping down emergency inflatable slides to the tarmac.

San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White at a news briefing Saturday evening said 182 of the passengers were sent to Bay Area hospitals. The remaining passengers who weren’t injured were being reunited with friends and family, officials said.

South Korean government officials said the two people killed were female Chinese nationals.

Passenger Eugene Anthony Rah said he was still reliving the day’s harrowing experience, “like a slide show that keeps playing.”

Mr. Rah, a hip-hop concert producer who was on his 173rd flight from Seoul to San Francisco on Asiana Airlines, said he knew as he looked out the window on the approach to the runway that something was wrong.

“The altitude was too low” over San Francisco Bay, he said, and then he heard an unusual engine noise, like revving. “I thought (the pilot) was trying to get more power,” to gain elevation

After the plane slammed into the ground, Mr. Rah said it seemed to careen out of control, as it skidded sideways. “I thought that was it. I was going to die. To be honest, I’m still surprised I’m alive. When the plane hit so hard, I thought it would flip over or blow up. …There was smoke but no fire yet,” he said.

The plane skidded on its belly and then stopped. At that point, “the screaming stopped and there was silence in the plane. Total silence,” he said.

Minutes later, he said the captain was screaming on the loudspeaker for everyone to get off the plane, but before exiting he saw several acts of heroism. Mr. Rah saw a flight attendant carrying injured passengers down the aisle.

“She was a hero,” he said. “This tiny, little girl was carrying people piggyback, running everywhere, with tears running down her face. She was crying, but she was still so calm and helping people.”

Mr. Rah said the flight attendants got everyone off the plane as the smoke billowed inside. He slid down the slide and, maybe 10 to 15 minutes after the crash, flames spread through the passenger compartment.

“It is incredible and very lucky that we have so many survivors,” San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee said at a Saturday evening news briefing.

he passengers included 141 Chinese nationals, 77 Korean nationals and 61 U.S. citizens, among others, Mr. Lee said. Asiana said the flight originated from Kansai International Airport in Osaka, Japan, stopped in Seoul and then carried on to San Francisco.

More than 50 patients were taken to San Francisco General Hospital. Chris Barton, chief of the hospital’s emergency department, said at a news conference that several of the crash patients suffered spinal and head injuries, including possible concussions and bleeding that resulted from blunt force to the head. He said the equivalent of a downward fall that the passengers faced during the crash might have caused spinal fractures.

Six passengers remained in critical condition on Saturday evening, said hospital spokeswoman Rachael Kagan, but she added that 11 other Bay Area hospitals received crash victims.

Safety experts said it was premature to speculate whether pilot error or a flight-control problem was at fault. The weather was excellent, with light winds and good visibility. The 777’s pilots were following a routine visual approach and didn’t radio any problems or declare an emergency before impact, according to preliminary reports.

Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board and South Korea’s transport ministry were sending teams to the site for a full investigation.

According to people familiar with the sequence of events, barely seconds before impact some controllers in the tower worried the crew’s visual approach appeared to be too low; they saw what they interpreted as a last-minute bid by the pilots to raise the nose and gain altitude, though investigators haven’t confirmed that.

Early reports by eyewitnesses, government officials and industry safety experts, however, indicated the plane touched down several hundred feet before the beginning of the runway.

Commercial pilots who saw the crash from the airport or nearby hotels said the plane appeared to land unusually hard and short, then spun around the strip and erupted in flames. One of the major issues investigators are likely to examine relates to an instrument-landing system that wasn’t operational at the time, and had been out of commission on that strip for weeks due to runway improvement work.

The crew of the Asiana jet didn’t need the system to make such a visual approach and according to safety experts, a separate set of lights was functioning to warn pilots about approaches that were too high or too low to touch down safely.

Government and industry safety experts increasingly believed parts of the plane initially hit the protective sea wall in front of the strip. In any case, investigators will focus on flight commands by the pilots and the operation of automated flight-control systems.

Benjamin Levy, a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Bootstrap Labs, walked away from the crash with only cuts and bruises.

Mr. Levy, who sat next to the window in an exit row, saw no flames as the plane landed, he said. “There was some smoke, not too much. The fire started afterward,” said the San Francisco resident.

Mr. Levy said “there was no indication” of any problems before the plane started falling. “We just hit the runway and went into a crash,” Mr. Levy said. However, before he realized the plane was crashing, he wondered why it was flying so close to the water.

“We almost landed in the water just before hitting really hard,” he said. “And then we are going back up. I thought maybe we are going to start taking off again. But we didn’t.”

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr said Saturday evening that the rescue operation involved shooting foam and water into the holes in the plane and tossing tools inside from below, like knives that crew members used to cut passengers out of their seats.

David Eun, a Samsung Electronics 005930.SE -3.24% executive who was on the plane and able to walk away from the scene, tweeted some of the first information about the crash.

“I just crash landed at SFO. Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine. I’m OK. Surreal…” read the first tweet from Mr. Eun, who also posted pictures of the smoking wreckage.

Another tweet from him described the scene: “Fire and rescue people all over the place. They’re evacuating the injured. Haven’t felt this way since 9/11. Trying to help people stay calm. Deep breaths…”

020560.SE -5.76% At a hastily arranged news conference in Seoul midafternoon Sunday, Asiana President Yoon Young-doo and a group of executives bowed in apology. Mr. Yoon called the accident “regretful.”

The airline doesn’t believe the accident was caused by an engine or mechanical problem, Mr. Yoon said, but added that all facts related to the investigation would be announced by the NTSB.

Mr. Yoon also said the pilots on the flight were veterans with around 10,000 hours of flying time each.

Boeing Co. said in a statement that it “extends its deepest condolences to the families and friends of those who perished” in the accident, and “wishes for the recovery of those injured.” The company said it will provide technical assistance to the NTSB’s investigation.

Law-enforcement and counterterrorism agencies so far have found no sign that terrorism was involved, officials said. The White House said President Barack Obama was being kept informed about developments.

It is the first time one of Boeing’s widely used 777 jets has been involved in a fatal crash. The only other major accident involving the Boeing model occurred in January 2008. Ice accumulation blocked fuel flow to both engines of a British Airways IAG.MC +1.18% 777 that crash landed on approach to London’s Heathrow International Airport. No one was injured in that accident, but it prompted major changes in operating procedures and a redesign of fuel systems aboard the 777.

Nearly 1,100 Boeing 777s have been delivered since May 1995 and have served as the backbone of the plane maker’s long-range products.

Asiana Airlines Inc., South Korea’s second-largest airline by revenue and passengers after Korean Air Lines Co., 003490.SE -0.34% has had two prior fatal accidents since its founding in 1988. The most recent was the crash of a Boeing 747 cargo plane crashed near Jeju Island, south of the South Korean mainland, in 2011. A pilot and co-pilot were killed.

Asiana’s earlier fatal accident happened in 1993, when one of its Boeing 737 aircraft crashed into a mountain as it approached an airport in Haenam, South Korea. Sixty-six people died and 44 were injured.

California Gov. Jerry Brown and his wife issued a statement Saturday evening expressing sympathy for the crash victims.

“Anne and I extend our deepest concerns and sympathy to the passengers who were aboard Asiana Flight 214 and to their families,” he said. “We are grateful for the courage and swift response of the first responders whose actions surely prevented an even greater tragedy.”

020560.SE -5.76% San Francisco-Seoul is the third busiest international route out of the SFO airport, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation statistics released in October last year. That route carried 646,891 passengers in 2011. That is behind the SFO-London Heathrow and SFO-Hong Kong routes.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324853704578589931621168780.html

Ye Mengyuan, Wang Linjia Identified As SFO Plane Crash Victims

By GILLIAN WONG

The two Chinese teenagers who died in an Asiana Airlines plane crash in San Francisco were student leaders who excelled in their studies and in the arts – one was a calligrapher and the other a pianist.

Wang Linjia, 16, and Ye Mengyuan, 17, were students at Jiangshan Middle School in eastern China who were traveling on a summer camp program organized by the school to visit universities in California, state media reported Monday.

The group included 29 students and four teachers from four schools in the city of Jiangshan. They were to visit Silicon Valley, Stanford University and University of California’s campuses in Los Angeles and Berkeley as part of an English-language program, according to the Youth Times, an official newspaper in Zhejiang province.

Wang was class representative for three years and teachers and schoolmates described her as excelling in physics and being good at calligraphy and drawing, according to the paper.

The newspaper said a reporter visited the girl’s family at a hotel and that Wang’s mother was sitting on a bed, crying silently while her father was sitting in a chair with a blank expression.

Wang’s next-door neighbor, a woman surnamed Xia, described Wang as being quiet, courteous and diligent.

“She was very keen to learn, every time she came home she would be studying, very rarely did she go out and play,” Xia was quoted as saying. She said Wang’s father proudly displayed her calligraphy and art pieces on the walls of his office.

The other victim, Ye, also was a top student who excelled in literature and was talented with the piano, singing, and gymnastics. The Youth Times said Ye had recently won a national gymnastics competition and routinely received honors at the school’s annual speech contests.

The two girls were classmates from four years ago and became close friends, the paper said.

The girls posted their last messages on their microblog accounts on Thursday and Friday. “Perhaps time can dilute the coffee in the cup, and can polish the outlines of memory,” Wang said on Friday.

Her final message was simply the word “go.”

Of the 291 passengers onboard, 141 were Chinese. At least 70 Chinese students and teachers were on the plane heading to summer camps, according to education authorities in China.

The flight slammed into the runway while landing at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday and caught fire, forcing many to escape by sliding down the emergency inflatable slides as flames tore through the plane. Officials said 182 people were taken to area hospitals.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/07/ye-mengyuan-wang-linjia-sfo-plane-crash_n_3557013.html