US NTSB overemphasizes pilot's error, say Korean experts



By Kim Jae-won



The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) recent hearing into the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) in July has reignited debate over the cause of the accident.



Asiana pilots told investigators that it was "very stressful" to land without the glide-slope indicator which helps pilots determine whether their plane is flying too high or too low during landings.



Most U.S. media reported they were "nervous" about their ability to perform a visual approach while piloting the plane. They noted the pilots seemed not to have been properly trained to land an aircraft without automatic devices.



However, local aviation experts say that poor management of the airport has been underreported as a contributing cause of the accident which killed three Chinese schoolgirls.



Jeong Woon-shik, an aviation professor at Jungwon University in Goesan, North Chungcheong Province, said, "SFO was one of the only places where big planes, such as Boeing 777s, were forced to land without a glide-slope indicator because it was out of order at the time. This shows how poor the management of the airport is in operating its systems."



Jeong, a former pilot with 26 years experience flying both military and commercial jets, said there has not been one such case at Incheon International Airport since it opened in 2003.



According to the NTSB, Lee Kang-kuk, 46, the captain of the crashed Asiana jet, told investigators that he had difficulty with his visual approach because some landing-aid systems at the airport were out of service.



Lee said he was comfortable landing with automation, but was forced to attempt a manual landing because the glide-slope indicator at the airport was down due to construction work. The document shows that Lee said, "It was very difficult to perform a visual approach with a heavy airplane."



Flying capability vs. malfunction



Most U.S. media took the quotes from Asiana pilots as proof they were not confident in their ability to land the aircraft.



"The investigation into the crash-landing of an Asiana Airlines flight at San Francisco's airport last summer has highlighted problems with cockpit culture and the trainee pilot's lack of confidence in his ability to safely land the Boeing 777," said the Associated Press in a report Friday.



USA Today also reported Wednesday that, "Despite three deaths, the Boeing 777-200ER performed better than expected in the crash," quoting Bruce Wallace, an evacuation systems engineer at Boeing, who testified to this at the hearing.



However, the American daily missed quotes from an official from the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) who raised questions about the proper function of the auto-throttle on the plane made by Boeing.



Eugene Francis Arnold, a flight test pilot with the FAA, told the NTSB that he felt that "even though the system had been certified previously and had met the requirements of FARs (Federal Aviation Regulations), it was a less than desirable feature and it could be improved on."



Asiana pilots believed the plane's auto-throttle was "armed" and functioning, only to find out just seconds before the crash that it had been deactivated and was in "idle" mode.



Ha Jong-sun, an attorney representing Korean passengers on the flight, told reporters in Seoul that the U.S. aviation authorities' findings shed new light on problems with the way Boeing made planes, and more importantly how it did not rectify obvious shortcomings in safety.



"Under U.S. Product Liability law, manufacturers cannot be excused even if they met basic safety requirements set by the law if they are aware of problems with the product they make," said the lawyer from Barun Law.



He said while Boeing did put warnings in its flight manuals in regard to the auto-throttle being turned off when the plane enters a certain flight mode, it did not retrofit a so-called wakeup system incorporated into its latest B787 jets.



The wakeup system activates the auto-throttle automatically to prevent dangerous loss of air speed, even if it is in idle mode.



The plane, carrying 307 people, struck a seawall and crashed into the runway, leaving three people dead and more than 180 others injured.



Five months into the probe of the cause of the incident, the NTSB is now in the fact-gathering stage, officials at the Washington-headquartered agency said. It plans to complete the investigation by July of next year.





