19 ms·

Explanation of the Asiana SF crash by a former UAL captain

142 points by rikelmens 13y ago

HarryHirsch 13y ago
You encounter a lot of this behaviour in students when they show up in a research lab for the first time, having taken only lab classes and lectures before, and it isn't at all confined to East Asians. It's always a shock to see that your experiments don't turn out as intended and to recognize that all the class exercises have some bearing in real life, so to speak. Some people never make the transition to independent work, and those are handed their ass fairly quickly, at least in a working lab. If what the fellow writes in this article is true, KAL and friends have some work to do.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  makes sense, both the head and copilot on this flight were relatively inexperienced on the 777. I wonder if the Airline had laid off their veteran (and hence high earning) pilots earlier (which would have exacerbated such a situation with inexperienced pilots); it's certainly not unheard of in the industry. Lastly, apparently the Asiana Air CEO has been quoted as saying that all responsibility lies with the pilots and that he and/or the company are not responsible. Great to know that your boss has your back >_>
  - kryptiskt 13y ago
    > Lastly, apparently the Asiana Air CEO has been quoted as saying that all responsibility lies with the pilots and that he and/or the company are not responsible. Great to know that your boss has your back So who is responsible for hiring good pilots?
    - jrs99 13y ago
      It's like blaming the designers for the Pontiac Aztek.
    - badclient 13y ago
      So who is responsible for hiring a good CEO? So who is responsible for hiring a good board? So who is responsible for getting good owners? So where does the buck stop?
  - yread 13y ago
    > both the head and copilot on this flight were relatively inexperienced on the 777 The training pilot had 3220 hours on the 777, that's pretty experienced I would say. It's probably more time than I've spent walking. It was his first flight as a training captain, though
    - stcredzero 13y ago
      Read the quoted bit about hour inflation in the comment from the instructor. On actual flights, the actual stick time can be on the order of T/200 or so.
SilasX 13y ago
To save you from looking up the more obscure acronyms like I did (summaries where given are my own words): RTO: Rejected take-off, when you have to abort a take-off (though it seems in the context of the post, the exercise described involved an edge case when you should go ahead with the take-off) AGL: Above ground level CAVOK: Ceiling and Visibility are OK: no clouds < 5000 ft AGL, with >10 km visibility VOR approach: VHF omnidirectional radio range: navigating based on a radio signal, considered "non-precision" IAF: Initial approach fix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_approach_fix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_approach_fix LNAV/VNAV: lateral/vertical navigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNAV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNAV FAF: Final approach fix UNSAT: unsatisfactory rating (paperwork) FCOM: Flight crew operating manual CRM/CLR: Cockpit resource management, a set of NASA-originating practices to limit and contain human error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Resource_Management http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Resource_Management
- raverbashing 13y ago
  Yes RTO is basically when you abort the takeoff by not taking-off, that is, hitting the brakes before the aircraft leaves the ground The other option is taking off and returning to the airport, when a problem happens later
  - yuvadam 13y ago
    Hitting the brakes before the aircraft reaches V1, specifically, which is the takeoff decision speed [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_speeds#V1_definitions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_speeds#V1_definitions
- rdl 13y ago
  I was unclear on his example -- their manual says to ignore "aft cargo door" cautions during takeoff? Are those known to be false-positives, or just not that important? I thought the cargo doors were structural parts of the aircraft, and thus having them open would cause both structural and aerodynamic problems. Maybe they just continue takeoff and land again?
tomgirl1 13y ago
What NTSB has now said is that Auto-throttle has not 2 but 5 modes. Im not a pilot so all I knew of was 2. That may be a combination of different auto-pilot modes combined with auto-throttle modes. But what seems clear is that the moment that the pilot turned off auto-pilot, the flight was doomed to crash as the auto-throttle was not in the right mode for landing. As in, a mode that would actually use thrust vs elevators to maintain airspeed. NTSB also revealed that course corrections were being done not at the latest moment of 500 feet, but at 4000 feet 2.5 minutes before landing the plane was off course, in which case supervision, and correction would have been appropriate in a training scenario. I hate to draw conclusions like this, but in today's modern aircraft pilots only fly about 20-30 mins of a flight, takeoff and landing at most with autopilot managing most of the rest under normal conditions. The inability to hand fly an airliner, is a disqualifier to be a professional pilot. NTSB revealed that several modes on autopilot and autothrottle were being cycled in the last 2.5 minutes of the Asiana descent perhaps indicating a reluctance to hand-fly the plane and an over-reliance on automation. Any commercial pilot that cant hand-fly a 777 on a perfectly clear day at SFO should never see a commercial cockpit again.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  What I find odd is that with such an increase in the use of simulators most pilots should find flying an airplane by hand to be second nature.
  - cstross 13y ago
    (a) Real flight simulators are expensive (cost is an order of magnitude less than a real airliner, but still in the millions, and they require skilled operators to put the pilots through their paces), (b) As I understand it, commercial pilots get paid on the basis of a rather paltry salary, topped up to a much higher rate per flying hour. So there's a strong wage incentive for them to jump in the cockpit of a real plane as fast as possible and get their experience that way rather than spending lots of time training in the simulators. (c) Modern airliners spend a lot, or even most, of their time on autopilot. Which is not "the plane flies itself" -- it's more like a very complicated cruise control system in a car: you still need to observe and monitor what's going on around you and periodically change some settings governing the vehicle's behaviour. (Just as cruise control won't save you from a bend in the road or an idiot on the other side of the highway crossing the central divider, autopilots need constant supervision.) But this is not "hand flying". Hand flying mostly comes down to take-off, landing, and brown-pants moments, which is a small fraction of the time a long-haul jet spends in operation. And most commercial airlines are going to take a dim view of pilots who spill the drinks in business class by playing at being a stick-and-rudder hero.
arjn 13y ago
I'm curious about what the other pilot was doing. According to news articles, the second pilot was more experienced and qualified for that aircraft. Shouldn't he/she have been monitoring the approach ?
- hyperbovine 13y ago
  He/she was the far junior of the two pilots and was reluctant to challenge authority. Or so the story goes.
  - more_original 13y ago
    But we don't actually know for sure that this is what happened, right? At this point it seems to be just speculation that is being repeated as hearsay.
ghshephard 13y ago
An interesting thought experiment is speculate as to when the state of the art in automated flight control and supervision (AFC&S) advances to the point at which human intervention in the flight process causes more harm than good. I'm guessing it will be about the same time that human surgeons are significantly less effective than fully automated systems. 30 years? 50 years? It's probably already reached the case that for the non-corner case scenario (cross winds, flight emergency, exceptions) - that a fully automated system probably meets the performance of a human pilot, and the human pilot's major contribution is the ability to exercise executive judgement in the event of exception cases.
- alex_doom 13y ago
  Well from this post earlier today about a drone landing itself on a aircraft carrier, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6023979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6023979. I would say that automated flight will come sooner than later.
  - Piskvorrr 13y ago
    Commercial aviation has been using autoland for decades; automatic control in favorable conditions is rarely the problem, it's the edge conditions (a.k.a. "oh shit moments") where humans still outperform the automation.
- rhizome 13y ago
  I think it depends on when the projected arrival of Automatic Acronym Generation (AAG), which of course relies on the Syntax Reduction and Simplification Protocol (S-RASP), on which there has been little progress of late.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  It'll be interesting to see which runs out: hands-on pilot skills, or cheap petroleum to fuel commercial aviation. Given the pretty resounding lack of positive news from biofuel replacement projects (where is that MASBI report that's due out this year). Ah, here we go: http://www.masbi.org/content/assets/MASBI_Report.pdf http://www.masbi.org/content/assets/MASBI_Report.pdf US commercial and military aviation consumes 20 billion gallons of jet fuel annually. Best biofuel generation from crop seeds (canola) runs 80-120 gallons/acre/year. Let's call it 100 gallons even. Replacing that fuel would require 200 million acres of land. The US has 409 acres of arable land. Would you prefer to eat as much as you are now, and stick to ground (or airship) transport, or go on a 50% calorie reduction but retain the ability to fly at speeds over 130 MPH?
ronilan 13y ago
> "The X are very very bright and smart so I was puzzled by their inability to fly an airplane well" Turns out to be true for most X as long as: 1. The speaker does not belong to group X 2. Speaker has one data point to support said inability. Humans error. Humans that program machines error. Machines error. Buckle your seatbelt.
- javert 13y ago
  > Speaker has one data point If we trust him, the OP is a flight instructor with many years of experience training X. So, your dismissal is completely invalid. > The speaker does not belong to group X Clearly, your are subtly accusing the instructor of at least some kind of racial prejudice; otherwise, this point would be completely irrelevant. And that accusation doesn't seem warranted.
  - linohh 13y ago
    I was thinking about prejudice as well here, however this is not a racial culture thing but a corporate culture thing. If an airline improves training and quality assurance pro forma due to a formal threat of being shut down, something is very, very broken. I'm not sure if I'd ever board a KE or OZ airplane again. If the accusations here are true, both should be shut down immediately.
    - comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
      The fact that the instructor may perhaps (or perhaps not) be mistakenly attributing to Korean ethnic-culture certain worrying aspects is completely unimportant. The real cultural problem is that an instructor perceives pressure to pass students he believes should fail. That simple perception, regardless of underlying cause, is a problem that sabotages efforts to improve.
- superuser2 13y ago
  The speaker is consistent with the chapter on plane crashes in Malcom Gladwell's Outliers, which is a nice treatment of the science around this issue and the movement which led to hiring expat trainers in the first place. As the post's author mentions, inflexible thinking and failure to challenge authority was a fairly common theme in airline crashes of "high power-distance" cultures like Korea (and not low power-distance cultures like the US) for a good while, to the point that aviation authorities felt a need to do something about it.
Aloha 13y ago
I'm going to ask a dumb question. I have a commercial drivers license, I've driven semi tractors, large straight trucks, and a wide variety of passenger vehicles. Is it safe to presume that flying one type of widebody airliner is the same as flying any other kind of widebody airliner? I can drive a Pete, Freightliner or International and they all largely drive in the same broad generalities. Just as I can drive any full size car, and they all drive the same. Would two similar classes or aircraft be the same?
- raverbashing 13y ago
  In short: No Bigger aircraft (any commercial flights aircraft basically) have a different training and type rating from each other. This means even flying a 777 is different from flying a 737 (and even between 737 versions there are some differences to merit a retraining of crew) So, no, even if you fly the 767 or the A330 you can't fly the 777 without going on training again (they're all aircraft though, so most of the principles apply)
- ryanobjc 13y ago
  Absolutely not. There are similarities, but also major differences. For example, Boeing vs Airbus do many things differently. And within a specific mfgr, there are differences in cockpit layout. Even within the same model but different releases, eg: 747-400,500,600,700 all have slightly differences.
- repiret 13y ago
  (In the US) for airplanes with a maximum gross weight over 12,500 lbs, you require a "type rating" on your license to fly the plane. The type rating is for a specific make and model (type) of airplane. So if you have an Airline Transport pilot certificate with a 777 type rating, you cannot legally fly a 757 (unless you have a 757 type rating) This distinction shows up not just in the law. I have many hours flying a Cessna 172, but when I recently bought a 182, some insurance quotes required as much as 10 hours of instruction, even though I could legally fly the 182 without any at all. (Disclaimer: I haven't actually flown large airplanes or driven tractor trailers - someone more experienced is welcome correct what comes below) Tractor trucks are all pretty similar. Hydraulic power steering, air breaks, unsynchronized transmissions, one engine, 18 wheels. They have similar stopping distance, similar handling around turns, and nearly identical controls. Large planes on the other hand can have very different handling characteristics and controls. Different approach speeds, different after-takeoff checklists, different emergency procedures. Different navigation and autopilot systems. Fly-by-wire systems even change the basic relationship between control inputs and their effect on the plane.
marze 13y ago
I find air disasters a strangely compelling topic, so I've read all 82 pages of comments on that site. Lots of very experienced pilots post wide range of views. Here is a list of the likely factors that contributed to the crash, based on my reading of the comments at pprune.com: poor piloting skills, specifically not monitoring speed during landing, a very basic skill recent switchover of flight pilot from Airbus to Boeing (Boeing planes have throttles that physically move when the thottle setting is changed by automatic systems, Airbus doesn't) misunderstanding of details of automatic thrust control inexperience of pilot conducting the training (new to being trainer, 1st flight apparently) glide slope system on the runway was inoperable, otherwise would have possibly been used and the crash wouldn't have occurred possible crew social status issues, a known flight-deck issue in some cultures, where those of lower status are hesitant to correct those of high status, but it doesn't seem likely a big factor here FLCH 'trap', where if you use a certain type of autopilot setting, you might expect the thrust to keep the speed at or above a certain level with automatic throttle adjustments, but it doesn't happen To summarize, it appears the two pilots at the control thought the jet was in a mode where it automatic thrust control would maintain an approach speed, but when they increased angle of attack just before landing (basically gliding decent up until then), the speed fell off and the throttles did not move automatically, and they failed to note the falling speed until it was too late to avoid crashing. (once you command full throttle from idle, it takes five seconds for the engines to spin back up.) If they had actually had the plane in the mode they thought it was in, they would have had a perfect landing of the most routine kind.
- Tossrock 13y ago
  I found this site morbidly interesting many years ago: http://planecrashinfo.com/lastwords.htm http://planecrashinfo.com/lastwords.htm
- jsnk 13y ago
  There are dozens of compelling hypotheses as to why this happened. But op chose to submit this and people are up voting it and following the narrative that it is something about pilots being Korean and their training. I find it unsettling that the crowd of people whom I have thought to be more intelligent than the masses isn't all that better than the majority.
kaptain 13y ago
One interesting aspect that the poster brought up was attributing some of the deficiencies to culture. Cultures which emphasize rote memorization in their education are usually maligned by western cultures because they result in individuals who lack the ability to improvise and adapt. Does anyone have any examples that go the other way (i.e. cultural aspects of western education that result in an individual being poorly suited for an occupation...even to the point of causing fatalities like being an airplane pilot)?
- HNLogInShit 13y ago
  Another thing I hope people note is this: "The other thing that I think plays an important role is the fact that there is virtually NO civil aircraft flying in Korea. Its actually illegal to own a Cessna-152 and just go learn to fly." This is rapidly becoming true in the U.S. as well, but not for legal reasons. For corruption reasons. General-aviation airports are being destroyed at an alarming rate, as local interests seize the land for short-term profit and destroy our national air transportation system. We've all read about it: People move next door to an airport and then start bitching about it. Local politicians are only too happy to pander to them and the deep-pocketed developers who want to move in for the land-grab. Meanwhile, most people have no problem with the airport but no particular reason to fight for it. Right now there's a perfect example of this crime being played out in Santa Monica, CA. Their airport has been there since before WW II, but the people who moved next door to it want to goose their property values once at the expense of an irreplaceable airport. Local politicians are running a sham "airport council" and fraudulent accounting to try to justify stealing the airport from the town, the region, and the nation. Meig's Field in Chicago, destroyed by mayor Daley in the middle of the night in 2003, is another despicable example. This kind of theft will destroy aviation in the U.S. You have to stand up for your local airport. One of the great things about our country is that anyone can learn to fly. You, your friends, your kids. This doesn't exist in Europe (largely thanks to user fees of the kind the Obama administration inexplicably keeps pushing against Congress's wishes). Aviation-technology advances like electric planes and the Terrafugia ("flying car") will also cease if there aren't enough airports left to make their development economically viable.
- rdl 13y ago
brettnak 13y ago
Since a lot of this has been coming up I thought many people might like to know the basics of how the auto-thrust system is used. Some of this information could be slightly inaccurate so if a real pilot wants to correct anything here, that would be great. The auto-pilot setting for autothrust (A/T) has a lot of modes. You don’t specifically set the mode so much as a combination of settings can affect the mode that it’s in. The modes are the following (this is fairly generic and probably not exactly how the 777 system works): A/T by itself will simply hold a specified airspeed by adjusting the Thrust Levers. A/T + FL/CH + V/S + Alititude Hold: (Auto-Thrust + Flight Level Change + Vertical Speed + Altitude Hold) climb or descend to the set altitude by the set vertical speed at the specified airspeed. The thrust levers are maniplated by the system. Generally once the altitude is attained, V/S and FL/CH will turn off. A/T + “V/S”: The same as the above but with no set altitude. A/T + Thrust Hold: I looked at the 777 main control panel and I couldn’t find the setting for Thrust Hold, however it seems to be referred to in various things on the internet and I just don’t know what to look for. This setting is normally used for takeoff (maybe landing?) where the pilot sets an airspeed and a thrust (via the thrust levers) and the airspeed is regulated by pitching the aircraft up or down. A/T + Thrust Hold + FL/CH + Altitude Hold: This setting is similar to the one above, but without setting a vertical speed. The indicated airspeed is controlled via pitching the aircraft up or down until the specified altitude is reached. I believe once the altitude is reached FL/CH mode is switched off as well as Thrust Hold. This is my best guess as to what the 5 modes the NTSB says the 777 has. If any pilots could correct anything I’m missing or that is simply wrong, that would be great. Switching between modes is really not intuitive because you’re fiddling with settings and it’s hard to know what button press is actually going to tell the system to do something. If you’re interested in how confusing it can actually be, I’d recommend installing the x-plane trial and trying to mess with these settings. If you want to give it a go, the beginner’s tutorial for x-plane & the 777 has you do a visual landing on 28L @ KSFO http://wiki.x-plane.com/777_beginners_tutorial#Landing_the_777_at_KSFO http://wiki.x-plane.com/777_beginners_tutorial#Landing_the_7...
joshuak 13y ago
This just made me instantly search for the Malcolm Gladwell Korean air story, which of course I'm not the first to think of. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/07/malcolm-gladwells-cockpit-culture-theory-everywhere-after-asiana-crash/67058/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/07/malcolm-glad...
lawnchair_larry 13y ago
For anyone as confused as me, the post that this linked to was deleted from the conversation.
- Piskvorrr 13y ago
  Still mirrored in various web caches, such as Google's: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:R5Q2LM3XCXkJ:www.pprune.org/rumours-news/518568-asiana-flight-crash-san-francisco-63.html+http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/518568-asiana-flight-crash-san-francisco-63.html%23post7931852&client=opera&hl=cs&gl=cz&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:R5Q2LM3...
  - pvdm 13y ago
    Now also deleted.
- cpncrunch 13y ago
  any idea why it was deleted?
nikcub 13y ago
Original forum post was deleted. A mirror: Low-down on Korean pilots, (From a friend). 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 of the phenomenal growth by all Asian air carriers. By the way, after about six months at Asiana, I was moved over to KAL and found them to be identical. The only difference was the color of the uniforms and airplanes. I worked in Korea for 5 long years and although I found most of the people to be very pleasant, it is a minefield of a work environment ... for them and for us expats. One of the first things I learned was that the pilots kept a web-site and reported on every training session. I dont think this was officially sanctioned by the company, but after one or two simulator periods, a database was building on me (and everyone else) that told them exactly how I ran the sessions, what to expect on checks, and what to look out for. For example; I used to open an aft cargo door at 100 knots to get them to initiate an RTO and I would brief them on it during the briefing. This was on the B-737 NG and many of the captains were coming off the 777 or B744 and they were used to the Master Caution System being inhibited at 80 kts. Well, for the first few days after I started that, EVERYONE rejected the takeoff. Then, all of a sudden they all got it; and continued the takeoff (in accordance with their manuals). The word had gotten out. I figured it was an overall PLUS for the training program. We expat instructors were forced upon them after the amount of fatal accidents (most of the them totally avoidable) over a decade began to be noticed by the outside world. They were basically given an ultimatum by the FAA, Transport Canada, and the EU to totally rebuild and rethink their training program or face being banned from the skies all over the world. They hired Boeing and Airbus to staff the training centers. KAL has one center and Asiana has another. When I was there (2003-2008) we had about 60 expats conducting training KAL and about 40 at Asiana. Most instructors were from the USA, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand with a few stuffed in from Europe and Asia. Boeing also operated training centers in Singapore and China so they did hire some instructors from there. This solution has only been partially successful but still faces ingrained resistance from the Koreans. I lost track of the number of highly qualified instructors I worked with who were fired because they tried to enforce normal standards of performance. By normal standards, I would include being able to master basic tasks like successfully shoot a visual approach with 10 kt crosswind and the weather CAVOK. I am not kidding when I tell you that requiring them to shoot a visual approach struck fear in their hearts ... with good reason. Like this Asiana crew, it didnt compute that you needed to be a 1000 AGL at 3 miles and your sink rate should be 600-800 Ft/Min. But, after 5 years, they finally nailed me. I still had to sign my name to their training and sometimes if I just couldnt pass someone on a check, I had no choice but to fail them. I usually busted about 3-5 crews a year and the resistance against me built. I finally failed an extremely incompetent crew and it turned out he was the a high-ranking captain who was the Chief Line Check pilot on the fleet I was teaching on. I found out on my next monthly trip home that KAL was not going to renew my Visa. The crew I failed was given another check and continued a fly while talking about how unfair Captain so-and-so was. Any of you Boeing glass-cockpit guys will know what I mean when I describe these events. I gave them a VOR approach with an 15 mile arc from the IAF. By the way, KAL dictated the profiles for all sessions and we just administered them. He requested two turns in holding at the IAF to get set up for the approach. When he finally got his nerve up, he requested Radar Vectors to final. He could have just said he was ready for the approach and I would have cleared him to the IAF and then Cleared for the approach and he could have selected Exit Hold and been on his way. He was already in LNAV/VNAV PATH. So, I gave him vectors to final with a 30 degree intercept. Of course, he failed to Extend the FAF and he couldnt understand why it would not intercept the LNAV magenta line when he punched LNAV and VNAV. He made three approaches and missed approaches before he figured out that his active waypoint was Hold at XYZ. Every time he punched LNAV, it would try to go back to the IAF ... just like it was supposed to do. Since it was a check, I was not allowed (by their own rules) to offer him any help. That was just one of about half dozen major errors I documented in his UNSAT paperwork. He also failed to put in ANY aileron on takeoff with a 30-knot direct crosswind (again, the weather was dictated by KAL). This Asiana SFO accident makes me sick and while I am surprised there are not more, I expect that there will be many more of the same type accidents in the future unless some drastic steps are taken. They are already required to hire a certain percentage of expats to try to ingrain more flying expertise in them, but more likely, they will eventually be fired too. One of the best trainees I ever had was a Korean/American (he grew up and went to school in the USA) who flew C-141s in the USAF. When he got out, he moved back to Korea and got hired by KAL. I met him when I gave him some training and a check on the B-737 and of course, he breezed through the training. I give him annual PCs for a few years and he was always a good pilot. Then, he got involved with trying to start a pilots union and when they tired to enforce some sort of duty rigs on international flights, he was fired after being arrested and JAILED! The Koreans are very very bright and smart so I was puzzled by their inability to fly an airplane well. They would show up on Day 1 of training (an hour before the scheduled briefing time, in a 3-piece suit, and shined shoes) with the entire contents of the FCOM and Flight Manual totally memorized. But, putting that information to actual use was many times impossible. Crosswind landings are also an unsolvable puzzle for most of them. I never did figure it out completely, but I think I did uncover a few clues. Here is my best guess. First off, their educational system emphasizes ROTE memorization from the first day of school as little kids. As you know, that is the lowest form of learning and they act like robots. They are also taught to NEVER challenge authority and in spite of the flight training heavily emphasizing CRM/CLR, it still exists either on the surface or very subtly. You just cant change 3000 years of culture. The other thing that I think plays an important role is the fact that there is virtually NO civil aircraft flying in Korea. Its actually illegal to own a Cessna-152 and just go learn to fly. Ultra-lights and Powered Hang Gliders are Ok. I guess they dont trust the people to not start WW III by flying 35 miles north of Inchon into North Korea. But, they dont get the kids who grew up flying (and thinking for themselves) and hanging around airports. They do recruit some kids from college and send then to the US or Australia and get them their tickets. Generally, I had better experience with them than with the ex-Military pilots. This was a surprise to me as I spent years as a Naval Aviator flying fighters after getting my private in light airplanes. I would get experienced F-4, F-5, F-15, and F-16 pilots who were actually terrible pilots if they had to hand fly the airplane. What a shock! Finally, I'll get off my box and talk about the total flight hours they claim. I do accept that there are a few talented and free-thinking pilots that I met and trained in Korea. Some are still in contact and I consider them friends. They were a joy! But, they were few and far between and certainly not the norm. Actually, this is a worldwide problem involving automation and the auto-flight concept. Take one of these new first officers that got his ratings in the US or Australia and came to KAL or Asiana with 225 flight hours. After takeoff, in accordance with their SOP, he calls for the autopilot to be engaged after takeoff. How much actual flight time is that? Hardly one minute. Then he might fly for hours on the autopilot and finally disengage it (MAYBE?) below 800 ft after the gear was down, flaps extended and on airspeed (autothrottle). Then he might bring it in to land. Again, how much real flight time or real experience did he get. Minutes! Of course, on the 777 or 747, its the same only they get more inflated logbooks. So, when I hear that a 10,000 hour Korean captain was vectored in for a 17-mile final and cleared for a visual approach in CAVOK weather, it raises the hair on the back of my neck.
jontro 13y ago
Looks like the pilots were blinded: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6025618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6025618
maxcan 13y ago
This post was on /r/flying and was thoroughly debunked to be a hoax.
- SilasX 13y ago
  Thanks for not posting the link. Here was the best I could find: http://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1hz2hc/former_ual_pilot_talks_about_korean_flight/ http://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1hz2hc/former_ual_pi... Also this: http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1hyd5b/an_interesting_spin_on_asian_flight_training/ http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1hyd5b/an_interest...
lsh123 13y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3kREPMzMLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3kREPMzMLk

142 points by rikelmens 13y ago

You encounter a lot of this behaviour in students when they show up in a research lab for the first time, having taken only lab classes and lectures before, and it isn't at all confined to East Asians. It's always a shock to see that your experiments don't turn out as intended and to recognize that all the class exercises have some bearing in real life, so to speak. Some people never make the transition to independent work, and those are handed their ass fairly quickly, at least in a working lab. If what the fellow writes in this article is true, KAL and friends have some work to do.

hkmurakami 13y ago
makes sense, both the head and copilot on this flight were relatively inexperienced on the 777. I wonder if the Airline had laid off their veteran (and hence high earning) pilots earlier (which would have exacerbated such a situation with inexperienced pilots); it's certainly not unheard of in the industry. Lastly, apparently the Asiana Air CEO has been quoted as saying that all responsibility lies with the pilots and that he and/or the company are not responsible. Great to know that your boss has your back >_>
- kryptiskt 13y ago
  > Lastly, apparently the Asiana Air CEO has been quoted as saying that all responsibility lies with the pilots and that he and/or the company are not responsible. Great to know that your boss has your back So who is responsible for hiring good pilots?
  - jrs99 13y ago
    It's like blaming the designers for the Pontiac Aztek.
  - badclient 13y ago
    So who is responsible for hiring a good CEO? So who is responsible for hiring a good board? So who is responsible for getting good owners? So where does the buck stop?
- yread 13y ago
  > both the head and copilot on this flight were relatively inexperienced on the 777 The training pilot had 3220 hours on the 777, that's pretty experienced I would say. It's probably more time than I've spent walking. It was his first flight as a training captain, though
  - stcredzero 13y ago
    Read the quoted bit about hour inflation in the comment from the instructor. On actual flights, the actual stick time can be on the order of T/200 or so.

SilasX 13y ago

To save you from looking up the more obscure acronyms like I did (summaries where given are my own words): RTO: Rejected take-off, when you have to abort a take-off (though it seems in the context of the post, the exercise described involved an edge case when you should go ahead with the take-off) AGL: Above ground level CAVOK: Ceiling and Visibility are OK: no clouds < 5000 ft AGL, with >10 km visibility VOR approach: VHF omnidirectional radio range: navigating based on a radio signal, considered "non-precision" IAF: Initial approach fix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_approach_fix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_approach_fix LNAV/VNAV: lateral/vertical navigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNAV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNAV FAF: Final approach fix UNSAT: unsatisfactory rating (paperwork) FCOM: Flight crew operating manual CRM/CLR: Cockpit resource management, a set of NASA-originating practices to limit and contain human error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Resource_Management http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Resource_Management

raverbashing 13y ago
Yes RTO is basically when you abort the takeoff by not taking-off, that is, hitting the brakes before the aircraft leaves the ground The other option is taking off and returning to the airport, when a problem happens later
- yuvadam 13y ago
  Hitting the brakes before the aircraft reaches V1, specifically, which is the takeoff decision speed [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_speeds#V1_definitions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_speeds#V1_definitions
rdl 13y ago
I was unclear on his example -- their manual says to ignore "aft cargo door" cautions during takeoff? Are those known to be false-positives, or just not that important? I thought the cargo doors were structural parts of the aircraft, and thus having them open would cause both structural and aerodynamic problems. Maybe they just continue takeoff and land again?

tomgirl1 13y ago

What NTSB has now said is that Auto-throttle has not 2 but 5 modes. Im not a pilot so all I knew of was 2. That may be a combination of different auto-pilot modes combined with auto-throttle modes. But what seems clear is that the moment that the pilot turned off auto-pilot, the flight was doomed to crash as the auto-throttle was not in the right mode for landing. As in, a mode that would actually use thrust vs elevators to maintain airspeed. NTSB also revealed that course corrections were being done not at the latest moment of 500 feet, but at 4000 feet 2.5 minutes before landing the plane was off course, in which case supervision, and correction would have been appropriate in a training scenario. I hate to draw conclusions like this, but in today's modern aircraft pilots only fly about 20-30 mins of a flight, takeoff and landing at most with autopilot managing most of the rest under normal conditions. The inability to hand fly an airliner, is a disqualifier to be a professional pilot. NTSB revealed that several modes on autopilot and autothrottle were being cycled in the last 2.5 minutes of the Asiana descent perhaps indicating a reluctance to hand-fly the plane and an over-reliance on automation. Any commercial pilot that cant hand-fly a 777 on a perfectly clear day at SFO should never see a commercial cockpit again.

InclinedPlane 13y ago
What I find odd is that with such an increase in the use of simulators most pilots should find flying an airplane by hand to be second nature.
- cstross 13y ago
  (a) Real flight simulators are expensive (cost is an order of magnitude less than a real airliner, but still in the millions, and they require skilled operators to put the pilots through their paces), (b) As I understand it, commercial pilots get paid on the basis of a rather paltry salary, topped up to a much higher rate per flying hour. So there's a strong wage incentive for them to jump in the cockpit of a real plane as fast as possible and get their experience that way rather than spending lots of time training in the simulators. (c) Modern airliners spend a lot, or even most, of their time on autopilot. Which is not "the plane flies itself" -- it's more like a very complicated cruise control system in a car: you still need to observe and monitor what's going on around you and periodically change some settings governing the vehicle's behaviour. (Just as cruise control won't save you from a bend in the road or an idiot on the other side of the highway crossing the central divider, autopilots need constant supervision.) But this is not "hand flying". Hand flying mostly comes down to take-off, landing, and brown-pants moments, which is a small fraction of the time a long-haul jet spends in operation. And most commercial airlines are going to take a dim view of pilots who spill the drinks in business class by playing at being a stick-and-rudder hero.

arjn 13y ago

I'm curious about what the other pilot was doing. According to news articles, the second pilot was more experienced and qualified for that aircraft. Shouldn't he/she have been monitoring the approach ?

hyperbovine 13y ago
He/she was the far junior of the two pilots and was reluctant to challenge authority. Or so the story goes.
- more_original 13y ago
  But we don't actually know for sure that this is what happened, right? At this point it seems to be just speculation that is being repeated as hearsay.

ghshephard 13y ago

An interesting thought experiment is speculate as to when the state of the art in automated flight control and supervision (AFC&S) advances to the point at which human intervention in the flight process causes more harm than good. I'm guessing it will be about the same time that human surgeons are significantly less effective than fully automated systems. 30 years? 50 years? It's probably already reached the case that for the non-corner case scenario (cross winds, flight emergency, exceptions) - that a fully automated system probably meets the performance of a human pilot, and the human pilot's major contribution is the ability to exercise executive judgement in the event of exception cases.

alex_doom 13y ago
Well from this post earlier today about a drone landing itself on a aircraft carrier, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6023979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6023979. I would say that automated flight will come sooner than later.
- Piskvorrr 13y ago
  Commercial aviation has been using autoland for decades; automatic control in favorable conditions is rarely the problem, it's the edge conditions (a.k.a. "oh shit moments") where humans still outperform the automation.
rhizome 13y ago
I think it depends on when the projected arrival of Automatic Acronym Generation (AAG), which of course relies on the Syntax Reduction and Simplification Protocol (S-RASP), on which there has been little progress of late.
dredmorbius 13y ago
It'll be interesting to see which runs out: hands-on pilot skills, or cheap petroleum to fuel commercial aviation. Given the pretty resounding lack of positive news from biofuel replacement projects (where is that MASBI report that's due out this year). Ah, here we go: http://www.masbi.org/content/assets/MASBI_Report.pdf http://www.masbi.org/content/assets/MASBI_Report.pdf US commercial and military aviation consumes 20 billion gallons of jet fuel annually. Best biofuel generation from crop seeds (canola) runs 80-120 gallons/acre/year. Let's call it 100 gallons even. Replacing that fuel would require 200 million acres of land. The US has 409 acres of arable land. Would you prefer to eat as much as you are now, and stick to ground (or airship) transport, or go on a 50% calorie reduction but retain the ability to fly at speeds over 130 MPH?

ronilan 13y ago

> "The X are very very bright and smart so I was puzzled by their inability to fly an airplane well" Turns out to be true for most X as long as: 1. The speaker does not belong to group X 2. Speaker has one data point to support said inability. Humans error. Humans that program machines error. Machines error. Buckle your seatbelt.

javert 13y ago
> Speaker has one data point If we trust him, the OP is a flight instructor with many years of experience training X. So, your dismissal is completely invalid. > The speaker does not belong to group X Clearly, your are subtly accusing the instructor of at least some kind of racial prejudice; otherwise, this point would be completely irrelevant. And that accusation doesn't seem warranted.
- linohh 13y ago
  I was thinking about prejudice as well here, however this is not a racial culture thing but a corporate culture thing. If an airline improves training and quality assurance pro forma due to a formal threat of being shut down, something is very, very broken. I'm not sure if I'd ever board a KE or OZ airplane again. If the accusations here are true, both should be shut down immediately.
  - comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
    The fact that the instructor may perhaps (or perhaps not) be mistakenly attributing to Korean ethnic-culture certain worrying aspects is completely unimportant. The real cultural problem is that an instructor perceives pressure to pass students he believes should fail. That simple perception, regardless of underlying cause, is a problem that sabotages efforts to improve.
superuser2 13y ago
The speaker is consistent with the chapter on plane crashes in Malcom Gladwell's Outliers, which is a nice treatment of the science around this issue and the movement which led to hiring expat trainers in the first place. As the post's author mentions, inflexible thinking and failure to challenge authority was a fairly common theme in airline crashes of "high power-distance" cultures like Korea (and not low power-distance cultures like the US) for a good while, to the point that aviation authorities felt a need to do something about it.

Aloha 13y ago

I'm going to ask a dumb question. I have a commercial drivers license, I've driven semi tractors, large straight trucks, and a wide variety of passenger vehicles. Is it safe to presume that flying one type of widebody airliner is the same as flying any other kind of widebody airliner? I can drive a Pete, Freightliner or International and they all largely drive in the same broad generalities. Just as I can drive any full size car, and they all drive the same. Would two similar classes or aircraft be the same?

raverbashing 13y ago
In short: No Bigger aircraft (any commercial flights aircraft basically) have a different training and type rating from each other. This means even flying a 777 is different from flying a 737 (and even between 737 versions there are some differences to merit a retraining of crew) So, no, even if you fly the 767 or the A330 you can't fly the 777 without going on training again (they're all aircraft though, so most of the principles apply)
ryanobjc 13y ago
Absolutely not. There are similarities, but also major differences. For example, Boeing vs Airbus do many things differently. And within a specific mfgr, there are differences in cockpit layout. Even within the same model but different releases, eg: 747-400,500,600,700 all have slightly differences.
repiret 13y ago
(In the US) for airplanes with a maximum gross weight over 12,500 lbs, you require a "type rating" on your license to fly the plane. The type rating is for a specific make and model (type) of airplane. So if you have an Airline Transport pilot certificate with a 777 type rating, you cannot legally fly a 757 (unless you have a 757 type rating) This distinction shows up not just in the law. I have many hours flying a Cessna 172, but when I recently bought a 182, some insurance quotes required as much as 10 hours of instruction, even though I could legally fly the 182 without any at all. (Disclaimer: I haven't actually flown large airplanes or driven tractor trailers - someone more experienced is welcome correct what comes below) Tractor trucks are all pretty similar. Hydraulic power steering, air breaks, unsynchronized transmissions, one engine, 18 wheels. They have similar stopping distance, similar handling around turns, and nearly identical controls. Large planes on the other hand can have very different handling characteristics and controls. Different approach speeds, different after-takeoff checklists, different emergency procedures. Different navigation and autopilot systems. Fly-by-wire systems even change the basic relationship between control inputs and their effect on the plane.

marze 13y ago

I find air disasters a strangely compelling topic, so I've read all 82 pages of comments on that site. Lots of very experienced pilots post wide range of views. Here is a list of the likely factors that contributed to the crash, based on my reading of the comments at pprune.com: poor piloting skills, specifically not monitoring speed during landing, a very basic skill recent switchover of flight pilot from Airbus to Boeing (Boeing planes have throttles that physically move when the thottle setting is changed by automatic systems, Airbus doesn't) misunderstanding of details of automatic thrust control inexperience of pilot conducting the training (new to being trainer, 1st flight apparently) glide slope system on the runway was inoperable, otherwise would have possibly been used and the crash wouldn't have occurred possible crew social status issues, a known flight-deck issue in some cultures, where those of lower status are hesitant to correct those of high status, but it doesn't seem likely a big factor here FLCH 'trap', where if you use a certain type of autopilot setting, you might expect the thrust to keep the speed at or above a certain level with automatic throttle adjustments, but it doesn't happen To summarize, it appears the two pilots at the control thought the jet was in a mode where it automatic thrust control would maintain an approach speed, but when they increased angle of attack just before landing (basically gliding decent up until then), the speed fell off and the throttles did not move automatically, and they failed to note the falling speed until it was too late to avoid crashing. (once you command full throttle from idle, it takes five seconds for the engines to spin back up.) If they had actually had the plane in the mode they thought it was in, they would have had a perfect landing of the most routine kind.

Tossrock 13y ago
I found this site morbidly interesting many years ago: http://planecrashinfo.com/lastwords.htm http://planecrashinfo.com/lastwords.htm
jsnk 13y ago
There are dozens of compelling hypotheses as to why this happened. But op chose to submit this and people are up voting it and following the narrative that it is something about pilots being Korean and their training. I find it unsettling that the crowd of people whom I have thought to be more intelligent than the masses isn't all that better than the majority.

kaptain 13y ago

One interesting aspect that the poster brought up was attributing some of the deficiencies to culture. Cultures which emphasize rote memorization in their education are usually maligned by western cultures because they result in individuals who lack the ability to improvise and adapt. Does anyone have any examples that go the other way (i.e. cultural aspects of western education that result in an individual being poorly suited for an occupation...even to the point of causing fatalities like being an airplane pilot)?

HNLogInShit 13y ago
Another thing I hope people note is this: "The other thing that I think plays an important role is the fact that there is virtually NO civil aircraft flying in Korea. Its actually illegal to own a Cessna-152 and just go learn to fly." This is rapidly becoming true in the U.S. as well, but not for legal reasons. For corruption reasons. General-aviation airports are being destroyed at an alarming rate, as local interests seize the land for short-term profit and destroy our national air transportation system. We've all read about it: People move next door to an airport and then start bitching about it. Local politicians are only too happy to pander to them and the deep-pocketed developers who want to move in for the land-grab. Meanwhile, most people have no problem with the airport but no particular reason to fight for it. Right now there's a perfect example of this crime being played out in Santa Monica, CA. Their airport has been there since before WW II, but the people who moved next door to it want to goose their property values once at the expense of an irreplaceable airport. Local politicians are running a sham "airport council" and fraudulent accounting to try to justify stealing the airport from the town, the region, and the nation. Meig's Field in Chicago, destroyed by mayor Daley in the middle of the night in 2003, is another despicable example. This kind of theft will destroy aviation in the U.S. You have to stand up for your local airport. One of the great things about our country is that anyone can learn to fly. You, your friends, your kids. This doesn't exist in Europe (largely thanks to user fees of the kind the Obama administration inexplicably keeps pushing against Congress's wishes). Aviation-technology advances like electric planes and the Terrafugia ("flying car") will also cease if there aren't enough airports left to make their development economically viable.
rdl 13y ago

brettnak 13y ago

Since a lot of this has been coming up I thought many people might like to know the basics of how the auto-thrust system is used. Some of this information could be slightly inaccurate so if a real pilot wants to correct anything here, that would be great. The auto-pilot setting for autothrust (A/T) has a lot of modes. You don’t specifically set the mode so much as a combination of settings can affect the mode that it’s in. The modes are the following (this is fairly generic and probably not exactly how the 777 system works): A/T by itself will simply hold a specified airspeed by adjusting the Thrust Levers. A/T + FL/CH + V/S + Alititude Hold: (Auto-Thrust + Flight Level Change + Vertical Speed + Altitude Hold) climb or descend to the set altitude by the set vertical speed at the specified airspeed. The thrust levers are maniplated by the system. Generally once the altitude is attained, V/S and FL/CH will turn off. A/T + “V/S”: The same as the above but with no set altitude. A/T + Thrust Hold: I looked at the 777 main control panel and I couldn’t find the setting for Thrust Hold, however it seems to be referred to in various things on the internet and I just don’t know what to look for. This setting is normally used for takeoff (maybe landing?) where the pilot sets an airspeed and a thrust (via the thrust levers) and the airspeed is regulated by pitching the aircraft up or down. A/T + Thrust Hold + FL/CH + Altitude Hold: This setting is similar to the one above, but without setting a vertical speed. The indicated airspeed is controlled via pitching the aircraft up or down until the specified altitude is reached. I believe once the altitude is reached FL/CH mode is switched off as well as Thrust Hold. This is my best guess as to what the 5 modes the NTSB says the 777 has. If any pilots could correct anything I’m missing or that is simply wrong, that would be great. Switching between modes is really not intuitive because you’re fiddling with settings and it’s hard to know what button press is actually going to tell the system to do something. If you’re interested in how confusing it can actually be, I’d recommend installing the x-plane trial and trying to mess with these settings. If you want to give it a go, the beginner’s tutorial for x-plane & the 777 has you do a visual landing on 28L @ KSFO http://wiki.x-plane.com/777_beginners_tutorial#Landing_the_777_at_KSFO http://wiki.x-plane.com/777_beginners_tutorial#Landing_the_7...

joshuak 13y ago

This just made me instantly search for the Malcolm Gladwell Korean air story, which of course I'm not the first to think of. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/07/malcolm-gladwells-cockpit-culture-theory-everywhere-after-asiana-crash/67058/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/07/malcolm-glad...

lawnchair_larry 13y ago

For anyone as confused as me, the post that this linked to was deleted from the conversation.

Piskvorrr 13y ago
Still mirrored in various web caches, such as Google's: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:R5Q2LM3XCXkJ:www.pprune.org/rumours-news/518568-asiana-flight-crash-san-francisco-63.html+http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/518568-asiana-flight-crash-san-francisco-63.html%23post7931852&client=opera&hl=cs&gl=cz&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:R5Q2LM3...
- pvdm 13y ago
  Now also deleted.
cpncrunch 13y ago
any idea why it was deleted?

nikcub 13y ago

Original forum post was deleted. A mirror: Low-down on Korean pilots, (From a friend). 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 of the phenomenal growth by all Asian air carriers. By the way, after about six months at Asiana, I was moved over to KAL and found them to be identical. The only difference was the color of the uniforms and airplanes. I worked in Korea for 5 long years and although I found most of the people to be very pleasant, it is a minefield of a work environment ... for them and for us expats. One of the first things I learned was that the pilots kept a web-site and reported on every training session. I dont think this was officially sanctioned by the company, but after one or two simulator periods, a database was building on me (and everyone else) that told them exactly how I ran the sessions, what to expect on checks, and what to look out for. For example; I used to open an aft cargo door at 100 knots to get them to initiate an RTO and I would brief them on it during the briefing. This was on the B-737 NG and many of the captains were coming off the 777 or B744 and they were used to the Master Caution System being inhibited at 80 kts. Well, for the first few days after I started that, EVERYONE rejected the takeoff. Then, all of a sudden they all got it; and continued the takeoff (in accordance with their manuals). The word had gotten out. I figured it was an overall PLUS for the training program. We expat instructors were forced upon them after the amount of fatal accidents (most of the them totally avoidable) over a decade began to be noticed by the outside world. They were basically given an ultimatum by the FAA, Transport Canada, and the EU to totally rebuild and rethink their training program or face being banned from the skies all over the world. They hired Boeing and Airbus to staff the training centers. KAL has one center and Asiana has another. When I was there (2003-2008) we had about 60 expats conducting training KAL and about 40 at Asiana. Most instructors were from the USA, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand with a few stuffed in from Europe and Asia. Boeing also operated training centers in Singapore and China so they did hire some instructors from there. This solution has only been partially successful but still faces ingrained resistance from the Koreans. I lost track of the number of highly qualified instructors I worked with who were fired because they tried to enforce normal standards of performance. By normal standards, I would include being able to master basic tasks like successfully shoot a visual approach with 10 kt crosswind and the weather CAVOK. I am not kidding when I tell you that requiring them to shoot a visual approach struck fear in their hearts ... with good reason. Like this Asiana crew, it didnt compute that you needed to be a 1000 AGL at 3 miles and your sink rate should be 600-800 Ft/Min. But, after 5 years, they finally nailed me. I still had to sign my name to their training and sometimes if I just couldnt pass someone on a check, I had no choice but to fail them. I usually busted about 3-5 crews a year and the resistance against me built. I finally failed an extremely incompetent crew and it turned out he was the a high-ranking captain who was the Chief Line Check pilot on the fleet I was teaching on. I found out on my next monthly trip home that KAL was not going to renew my Visa. The crew I failed was given another check and continued a fly while talking about how unfair Captain so-and-so was. Any of you Boeing glass-cockpit guys will know what I mean when I describe these events. I gave them a VOR approach with an 15 mile arc from the IAF. By the way, KAL dictated the profiles for all sessions and we just administered them. He requested two turns in holding at the IAF to get set up for the approach. When he finally got his nerve up, he requested Radar Vectors to final. He could have just said he was ready for the approach and I would have cleared him to the IAF and then Cleared for the approach and he could have selected Exit Hold and been on his way. He was already in LNAV/VNAV PATH. So, I gave him vectors to final with a 30 degree intercept. Of course, he failed to Extend the FAF and he couldnt understand why it would not intercept the LNAV magenta line when he punched LNAV and VNAV. He made three approaches and missed approaches before he figured out that his active waypoint was Hold at XYZ. Every time he punched LNAV, it would try to go back to the IAF ... just like it was supposed to do. Since it was a check, I was not allowed (by their own rules) to offer him any help. That was just one of about half dozen major errors I documented in his UNSAT paperwork. He also failed to put in ANY aileron on takeoff with a 30-knot direct crosswind (again, the weather was dictated by KAL). This Asiana SFO accident makes me sick and while I am surprised there are not more, I expect that there will be many more of the same type accidents in the future unless some drastic steps are taken. They are already required to hire a certain percentage of expats to try to ingrain more flying expertise in them, but more likely, they will eventually be fired too. One of the best trainees I ever had was a Korean/American (he grew up and went to school in the USA) who flew C-141s in the USAF. When he got out, he moved back to Korea and got hired by KAL. I met him when I gave him some training and a check on the B-737 and of course, he breezed through the training. I give him annual PCs for a few years and he was always a good pilot. Then, he got involved with trying to start a pilots union and when they tired to enforce some sort of duty rigs on international flights, he was fired after being arrested and JAILED! The Koreans are very very bright and smart so I was puzzled by their inability to fly an airplane well. They would show up on Day 1 of training (an hour before the scheduled briefing time, in a 3-piece suit, and shined shoes) with the entire contents of the FCOM and Flight Manual totally memorized. But, putting that information to actual use was many times impossible. Crosswind landings are also an unsolvable puzzle for most of them. I never did figure it out completely, but I think I did uncover a few clues. Here is my best guess. First off, their educational system emphasizes ROTE memorization from the first day of school as little kids. As you know, that is the lowest form of learning and they act like robots. They are also taught to NEVER challenge authority and in spite of the flight training heavily emphasizing CRM/CLR, it still exists either on the surface or very subtly. You just cant change 3000 years of culture. The other thing that I think plays an important role is the fact that there is virtually NO civil aircraft flying in Korea. Its actually illegal to own a Cessna-152 and just go learn to fly. Ultra-lights and Powered Hang Gliders are Ok. I guess they dont trust the people to not start WW III by flying 35 miles north of Inchon into North Korea. But, they dont get the kids who grew up flying (and thinking for themselves) and hanging around airports. They do recruit some kids from college and send then to the US or Australia and get them their tickets. Generally, I had better experience with them than with the ex-Military pilots. This was a surprise to me as I spent years as a Naval Aviator flying fighters after getting my private in light airplanes. I would get experienced F-4, F-5, F-15, and F-16 pilots who were actually terrible pilots if they had to hand fly the airplane. What a shock! Finally, I'll get off my box and talk about the total flight hours they claim. I do accept that there are a few talented and free-thinking pilots that I met and trained in Korea. Some are still in contact and I consider them friends. They were a joy! But, they were few and far between and certainly not the norm. Actually, this is a worldwide problem involving automation and the auto-flight concept. Take one of these new first officers that got his ratings in the US or Australia and came to KAL or Asiana with 225 flight hours. After takeoff, in accordance with their SOP, he calls for the autopilot to be engaged after takeoff. How much actual flight time is that? Hardly one minute. Then he might fly for hours on the autopilot and finally disengage it (MAYBE?) below 800 ft after the gear was down, flaps extended and on airspeed (autothrottle). Then he might bring it in to land. Again, how much real flight time or real experience did he get. Minutes! Of course, on the 777 or 747, its the same only they get more inflated logbooks. So, when I hear that a 10,000 hour Korean captain was vectored in for a 17-mile final and cleared for a visual approach in CAVOK weather, it raises the hair on the back of my neck.

jontro 13y ago

Looks like the pilots were blinded: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6025618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6025618

maxcan 13y ago

This post was on /r/flying and was thoroughly debunked to be a hoax.

SilasX 13y ago
Thanks for not posting the link. Here was the best I could find: http://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1hz2hc/former_ual_pilot_talks_about_korean_flight/ http://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1hz2hc/former_ual_pi... Also this: http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1hyd5b/an_interesting_spin_on_asian_flight_training/ http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1hyd5b/an_interest...

lsh123 13y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3kREPMzMLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3kREPMzMLk