12 ms·

Sequence of Events in the Cockpit on Asiana Flight 214

158 points by yurisagalov 13y ago

squirrel 13y ago
If you found this article interesting you might also want to read Normal Accidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents which details many similar accidents in planes, ships, nuclear power plants, and more. The author proposes a model for identifying complex, tightly coupled systems in which operators have little chance of avoiding error. The parallels to operational failure in complex, tightly coupled software are evident (at least they seem so to me).
ars_technician 13y ago
It brings up an interesting conundrum. The more that pilots use autopilot for approach, the less feel they have for what the controls should feel like at the correct airspeed. However, if we just outright ban auto-pilot for approach, there is more room for human error...
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  The solution is combination of more automation and more communication to the user (pilots).
  - ars_technician 13y ago
    Yeah, it seems like there should be a big red light on the air speed indicator that says it's under the pilot's control.
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      How much control do we take away though? I'm a private pilot, but also an automation fanatic. Software doesn't get tired, it doesn't have a bad night of sleep. If its well written, it has a much lower failure rate than humans. The ILS wasn't working, but the GPS was. All major and most minor airports have approach plates/terminal procedures. Calculate the desired glide path to touchdown on the runway. Display on a MFD (multi function display) plane, glide path, runway. Proper glide path? Green backlight. Outside of margin glidepath? Yellow backlight. Fall within dangerous limits near the ground? Red backlight, engage autopilot (to go to hold position indicated by approach plates), go to full power, and disable pilot input until above safe altitude (props if you notify control via ADS-B of go-around due to human error). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approach_plate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approach_plate "Approach plates are essential for an airplane to make a safe landing during instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), such as low ceilings or reduced visibility due to fog, rain, or blowing snow. They provide specific waypoints and altitudes necessary to line an aircraft up with a designated runway for landing, as well as important navigational information, such as radio frequencies of navigational aids and required course headings, and the prescribed minimum visibility requirements to execute the approach." http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/KSFO/procedures http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/KSFO/procedures Runway 28L approach plate: http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/KSFO/IAP/ILS+RWY+28L+(SA+CAT+II) http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/KSFO/IAP/ILS+RWY+28...
      - thrownaway2424 13y ago
        How much? I don't think the pilot should have the authority to fly the plane into the ground, at least not without cutting out several circuit breakers. In this case, it clearly appears that a computer could easily have looked at the altitude, attitude, air speed, and thrust and decided with enough time to recover that the meat module was malfunctioning, and could have initiated a go around. Also, it's pretty clear that the automation could have started yelling LOLWUT or whatever the industry jargon is for exceptionally inconsistent inputs, such as flight level change mode on final.
        ubernostrum 13y ago
        What happens when the automation malfunctions and wants to fly the plane into the ground? Plenty of aviation accidents boil down to conflicts between different automated systems, or between automated systems and pilot's senses, and there is no universal criterion for deciding which one should win.
        midas007 13y ago
        It's common sense: the human pilot is always responsible and therefore MUST ALWAYS have the final say. Period. There can be plenty of warnings, but automating too much machine behavior (Airbus methodology) has unintended consequences: - 0. Less control over the machine's behavior atrophies pilot's situational awareness. Boeing requires a deeper understanding of how the machine behaves and hence what's permissible. - 1. Reduces an experienced pilot's potential recovery options. In this case, three clowns stalled a perfectly working multimillion-dollar craft into the ground and killed a few people (it could have been significantly worse). I wouldn't let these jokers fly Flight Simulator, they're liabilities.
        ams6110 13y ago
        The aircraft was landing. It was supposed to (gently) fly into the ground. A lot of automatics are disabled below a certain altitude and/or when landing gear are extended because otherwise they would prevent landing. A landing is essentially stalling the aircraft just before the wheels touch.
  - tesseractive 13y ago
    According to the Wikipedia article on the crash, a feasibility study was added to FAA appropriations this year for a verbal warning for low speed. So this may be a practical way to improve communications if it pans out.
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      Excellent. With current sensor data (GPS, air speed, control surface positions, engine output), a physics engine, and map/synthetic radar data, it is possible to politely tell a crew that they're a) doing something wrong and b) how to correct it quickly.
- MBCook 13y ago
  I'm not a pilot, but the ability to set the throttle to idle (including all auto-controls) while the plane is in the air without warnings seems dangerous to me. It sounds like a better indication that there was no thrust may have helped the pilots recognize the error sooner.
  - imsofuture 13y ago
    It's not unbelievable using idle thrust in the air. It's inexcusable to not watch your air speed though.
    - MBCook 13y ago
      That's my thought. I can think of a few times where it might make sense, mostly to burn off speed or altitude; but if you're that low and already under the suggested approach speed it seems like it's almost certainly a mistake. I'm surprised they had to get so low before the stall warning system kicked in (given the speed and throttle position).
  - ak217 13y ago
    Flying at idle throttle is completely normal when descending from cruise to final approach. What's not normal is certain patterns of airspeed and altitude loss, and I agree, you could probably come up with better indicators for that.
- rrmm 13y ago
  This is basically why they created the flight director. http://www.flyingmag.com/wonder-flight-director http://www.flyingmag.com/wonder-flight-director With it you get the hands-on feeling of flying the plane with the precision of AP/ILS information.
mmaunder 13y ago
http://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1srp6a/cockpit_voice_recording_of_asiana_214_released/ http://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1srp6a/cockpit_voice...
- trimbo 13y ago
  "captain @, @ had too much herb medicine and his liver numbers are too high" and then "It's absurd it works at Air Busan, but not in my company" Note to self, never flying Air Busan.
marvin 13y ago
Is there anyone with airline pilot experience who could come with some detailed analysis of this? To me, I would hazard a guess that whomever was controlling the airplane was unaware on short final that the autothrottle had been deactivated. This is consistent with pulling back on the control column to maintain altitude, an action which will give in the desired result when the autothrottle is engaged, but must be accompanied by manually increasing throttle otherwise. This is an elementary piloting mistake, which I believe is impossible to do in the Airbus since the fly-by-wire system will prevent you from placing the aircraft in a stall condition. So this might be consistent with the information that the captain was transitioning from the Airbus to the Boeing. However, I would be surprised if the investigation doesn't provide additional details about the human factors among the flight crew. I guess the biggest question I'm left with after this is how professional pilots can make this kind of elementary piloting mistake: Not watching the airspeed on final approach, and not reacting immediately when the PAPI indicates that the aircraft is too low. I was left with the same kind of question after the Air France disaster; this plane was stalled straight into the ocean from cruising altitude. It's a big mystery to me how three pilots could overlook this condition for four minutes. Maybe this is just the kind of fluke accident that will happen sometimes when you have ten thousand airliners in the sky every day. But it seems like a good idea to investigate whether pilots rely too much on the computers and forget the basics. Regardless, let's not draw any conclusions until the investigation has had its say. It's okay to speculate, but I feel that it doesn't provide a lot of benefit to go into detailed scenarios when the complete picture is unknown.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  > I guess the biggest question I'm left with after this is how professional pilots can make this kind of elementary piloting mistake: Not watching the airspeed on final approach, and not reacting immediately when the PAPI indicates that the aircraft is too low. If you know you're prevented from making this mistake on an Airbus, depending on your attention and what you're thinking, you may not remember that the 777 doesn't have the same failsafes.
  - imsofuture 13y ago
    There's literally no excuse for not watching your airspeed when you land an airplane, of any make. It's one of the two 'oh-hey-my-life-really-directly-depends-on-this-number' factors. I really don't like the tone that so many post-accident discussions take regarding automation, Boeing v. Airbus, etc. -- when the plain facts of the incidents (specifically this, and Air France 447) boil down to one small, really important bit willful negligence.
gilgoomesh 13y ago
The insistence of aviation and naval industries to continue using knots for speeds is infuriating. I can forgive the fact that the article uses U.S. customary units instead of SI but the article gives distances in miles and altitudes in feet and needing to convert knots into feet per second or miles per hour as you read is awful.
- robbles 13y ago
  from Wikipedia: > The speeds of vessels relative to the fluids in which they travel (boat speeds and air speeds) are measured in knots. It's a little like the difference between mass and weight - the frame of reference is important for one and not the other.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- ubernostrum 13y ago
  The knot is now defined in terms of an SI unit (1 knot = 1 nautical mile/hour, 1 nautical mile = 1852 meters), and the nautical mile is accepted for use internationally by BIPM. Its continued use is due to the fact that the nautical mile is the average length of one minute of arc along a meridian, which allows easy correction, when measuring distances in nautical miles, for the distortions of representing the non-flat Earth on flat charts. Or, more simply: there are sometimes good reasons for using a unit other than "look how easy it is to move decimal points".
  - gaius 13y ago
    Yes it turns out practitioners in the field prefer a convention that makes their jobs easier and not one for the convenience of The Internets. Who'da thunk it? I can imagine someone saying programmers are stupid for insisting that k means 1024 instead of 1000 like, umm, SI units...
  - hudibras 13y ago
    Or to put it another way: a nautical mile is equal to one minute of latitude and 60 nautical miles equals one degree of latitude. I've seen many people become amazed when it's explained to them that a nautical mile is not just an archaic, arbitrary unit of measure, like a hogshead or furlong. Part Two of this explanation is to tell them that the metric system unit of distance, the meter, was also originally based on the earth's size. Ten million meters (or 10,000 km) is the distance from the equator to one of the poles.
babesh 13y ago
The pilot depended on automation to fly the plane. When put into a situation where it was not available, he crashed it showing insufficient piloting skill. That someone with this lack of skill was placed in this situation shows institutional failure.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Agreed. I can't fathom how a person who self-described as "very concerned" with doing a visual approach got into the cockpit of a 777. That's the sort of thing I'd expect from a fresh student pilot who spent too much time playing with the ILS in his flight simulator.
  - hnriot 13y ago
    maybe if he had been playing more with his flight sim this wouldn't have happened. it's such a basic mistake to make.
  - johnw 13y ago
    Alright, but how do you explain the instructor who had 3,200 hours on the 777 who was sitting beside the pilot not making any mention of a too low airspeed or incorrect landing configuration right up until it was to late? Makes me wonder if there was some ambiguity in the instrument display or procedures for neither pilot to make mention of any problems.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      The pilot expressed his concerns about performing a visual approach to his instructor before the flight. The instructor let him fly anyway instead of instantaneously grounding him and saying, "WTF? This is Piloting 101, go get your shit together." The instructor let this person fly when he was lacking such a basic skill, and that the instructor came from the same system that allowed this incompetent pilot to attain command of a large airliner. This to me indicates that the system is broken and there's no reason to think it couldn't produce an instructor who was also completely useless at performing a visual approach.
- 13y ago
damian2000 13y ago
The pilots attempted to go around at the last second, when it was already too late - if the pilots had not attempted to go around, i.e. not piled on the throttle at the last second - just wondering - would the crash have been as severe?
- imsofuture 13y ago
  It would have been worse^. Throttle response is far from instantaneous (jets spool relatively slowly), and any speed that they did manage to gain contributed greatly to lift and almost certainly lessened the force of the impact. Throttling up a plane for a go around is not at all analogous to stepping on the gas while crashing into a brick wall. ^ total speculation
- MBCook 13y ago
  They made the runway, it's how they were able to interview the pilots. If they hadn't done anything, I'd expect more of the plane would have hit the seawall instead of just the tail gear. It probably would have been much worse.
rckrd 13y ago
Forgive me if I'm a little behind, but is the official consensus that this was a human error? That the measurements were presented correctly to the crew and that a veteran pilot wouldn't have made these mistakes?
- ams6110 13y ago
  These were fairly veteran pilots. One was new on type, but he had a check captain sitting next to him.
  - dba7dba 13y ago
    The one who was in the left seat was a graduate of basic flight school based in Florida somewhere. Not sure where the right seat pilot learned basic flying but obviously he's experienced enough to be a training pilot. The one in the back jump seat was a graduate of ROK AF Academy and flew F5 and F16 before joining Asiana Air. He was youngest (least # of hours) of the 3 pilots in the cockpit?
    - greenyoda 13y ago
      The guy in the left seat was a very experienced pilot. From the article: "The Pilot Flying was in the left seat. He was a captain transitioning from the Airbus 320 to the Boeing 777. He had 9,700 hours flight time with less than 45 hours in the Boeing 777." That's almost as many hours as the instructor had (12,000 hours).
- lisper 13y ago
  I don't know if it's the consensus, but that's certainly how it looks to me (PPIASEL - private pilot instrument airplane single engine land). Complete and utter incompetence. The Koreans are actually notorious for this. http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/07/do-not-fly-asiana-or-kal.html http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/07/do-not-fly-asiana-or-kal....
  - dba7dba 13y ago
    wow, stereotype much?
ash 13y ago
"Due to the potentially disturbing nature of the surveillance video we are about to show, we will pause for a moment to let [people?] exit the room if they choose." (9:22) Is it the standard warning for these hearings?
- lukeholder 13y ago
  I assume family could be present?
JHof 13y ago
I've spent time conducting basic flight training for international students (including Korean) and am now an airline pilot. Though I don't have much experience with international operations, what I saw as an instructor is freshly minted pilots going back to their home countries and immediately being put into the right seat of an airliner. Many of these students were very poor pilots, however, as long as they have the money, the flight training machine that exists in states like Florida will keep training them, and international airlines will continue to hire the product. It's a matter of national pride for many countries to be able to employ their own citizens as pilots. Many will cease learning as soon as they leave flight school due to the poor training environments that exist in some places. Going from a small prop plane to an airliner is perfectly acceptable. It's been going on for a long time and can produce safe pilots, but those pilots need to understand basic stick and rudder flying and continue to hone their skills. Unfortunately, many get started using the automation and allow their flying skills to atrophy. This is true for long-time airline pilots as well. In the US, by the time a pilot has reached the cockpit of something like a 777, they've gained quite a bit of experience flying smaller prop planes and regional jets, which require a little more work on the part of the pilot. The visual approach assigned to Asiana Flight 214 is a non-issue to US airlines. It's a routine, every day occurrence that doesn't cause one to become "very concerned", however, many countries choose to focus their pilot training more on managing automation than flying the aircraft, and I think that cultural difference played a big part in this crash. Talk to a US airline pilot who has worked with a training department internationally. The stories you'll hear are pretty eye opening.
- js2 13y ago
  http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety
  - JHof 13y ago
    Good article. In the US and some other places around the world, you'll find pilots who are equally capable of flying automated Airbus type aircraft as they are 1960's style cockpits using old fashioned radio navigational aids. I take pride in my skills and ability to operate an aircraft safely. Unfortunately, what I know seems to be becoming a lost art, and the state of the piloting profession internationally will likely speed the process of automating pilots out of the cockpit. It's sad, and I've become pretty keen on learning a new skill in preparation for the demise of my job.

158 points by yurisagalov 13y ago

If you found this article interesting you might also want to read Normal Accidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents which details many similar accidents in planes, ships, nuclear power plants, and more. The author proposes a model for identifying complex, tightly coupled systems in which operators have little chance of avoiding error. The parallels to operational failure in complex, tightly coupled software are evident (at least they seem so to me).

ars_technician 13y ago

It brings up an interesting conundrum. The more that pilots use autopilot for approach, the less feel they have for what the controls should feel like at the correct airspeed. However, if we just outright ban auto-pilot for approach, there is more room for human error...

toomuchtodo 13y ago
The solution is combination of more automation and more communication to the user (pilots).
- ars_technician 13y ago
  Yeah, it seems like there should be a big red light on the air speed indicator that says it's under the pilot's control.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    How much control do we take away though? I'm a private pilot, but also an automation fanatic. Software doesn't get tired, it doesn't have a bad night of sleep. If its well written, it has a much lower failure rate than humans. The ILS wasn't working, but the GPS was. All major and most minor airports have approach plates/terminal procedures. Calculate the desired glide path to touchdown on the runway. Display on a MFD (multi function display) plane, glide path, runway. Proper glide path? Green backlight. Outside of margin glidepath? Yellow backlight. Fall within dangerous limits near the ground? Red backlight, engage autopilot (to go to hold position indicated by approach plates), go to full power, and disable pilot input until above safe altitude (props if you notify control via ADS-B of go-around due to human error). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approach_plate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approach_plate "Approach plates are essential for an airplane to make a safe landing during instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), such as low ceilings or reduced visibility due to fog, rain, or blowing snow. They provide specific waypoints and altitudes necessary to line an aircraft up with a designated runway for landing, as well as important navigational information, such as radio frequencies of navigational aids and required course headings, and the prescribed minimum visibility requirements to execute the approach." http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/KSFO/procedures http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/KSFO/procedures Runway 28L approach plate: http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/KSFO/IAP/ILS+RWY+28L+(SA+CAT+II) http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/KSFO/IAP/ILS+RWY+28...
    - thrownaway2424 13y ago
      How much? I don't think the pilot should have the authority to fly the plane into the ground, at least not without cutting out several circuit breakers. In this case, it clearly appears that a computer could easily have looked at the altitude, attitude, air speed, and thrust and decided with enough time to recover that the meat module was malfunctioning, and could have initiated a go around. Also, it's pretty clear that the automation could have started yelling LOLWUT or whatever the industry jargon is for exceptionally inconsistent inputs, such as flight level change mode on final.
      - ubernostrum 13y ago
        What happens when the automation malfunctions and wants to fly the plane into the ground? Plenty of aviation accidents boil down to conflicts between different automated systems, or between automated systems and pilot's senses, and there is no universal criterion for deciding which one should win.
        midas007 13y ago
        It's common sense: the human pilot is always responsible and therefore MUST ALWAYS have the final say. Period. There can be plenty of warnings, but automating too much machine behavior (Airbus methodology) has unintended consequences: - 0. Less control over the machine's behavior atrophies pilot's situational awareness. Boeing requires a deeper understanding of how the machine behaves and hence what's permissible. - 1. Reduces an experienced pilot's potential recovery options. In this case, three clowns stalled a perfectly working multimillion-dollar craft into the ground and killed a few people (it could have been significantly worse). I wouldn't let these jokers fly Flight Simulator, they're liabilities.
      - ams6110 13y ago
        The aircraft was landing. It was supposed to (gently) fly into the ground. A lot of automatics are disabled below a certain altitude and/or when landing gear are extended because otherwise they would prevent landing. A landing is essentially stalling the aircraft just before the wheels touch.
- tesseractive 13y ago
  According to the Wikipedia article on the crash, a feasibility study was added to FAA appropriations this year for a verbal warning for low speed. So this may be a practical way to improve communications if it pans out.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    Excellent. With current sensor data (GPS, air speed, control surface positions, engine output), a physics engine, and map/synthetic radar data, it is possible to politely tell a crew that they're a) doing something wrong and b) how to correct it quickly.
MBCook 13y ago
I'm not a pilot, but the ability to set the throttle to idle (including all auto-controls) while the plane is in the air without warnings seems dangerous to me. It sounds like a better indication that there was no thrust may have helped the pilots recognize the error sooner.
- imsofuture 13y ago
  It's not unbelievable using idle thrust in the air. It's inexcusable to not watch your air speed though.
  - MBCook 13y ago
    That's my thought. I can think of a few times where it might make sense, mostly to burn off speed or altitude; but if you're that low and already under the suggested approach speed it seems like it's almost certainly a mistake. I'm surprised they had to get so low before the stall warning system kicked in (given the speed and throttle position).
- ak217 13y ago
  Flying at idle throttle is completely normal when descending from cruise to final approach. What's not normal is certain patterns of airspeed and altitude loss, and I agree, you could probably come up with better indicators for that.
rrmm 13y ago
This is basically why they created the flight director. http://www.flyingmag.com/wonder-flight-director http://www.flyingmag.com/wonder-flight-director With it you get the hands-on feeling of flying the plane with the precision of AP/ILS information.

mmaunder 13y ago

http://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1srp6a/cockpit_voice_recording_of_asiana_214_released/ http://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1srp6a/cockpit_voice...

trimbo 13y ago
"captain @, @ had too much herb medicine and his liver numbers are too high" and then "It's absurd it works at Air Busan, but not in my company" Note to self, never flying Air Busan.

marvin 13y ago

Is there anyone with airline pilot experience who could come with some detailed analysis of this? To me, I would hazard a guess that whomever was controlling the airplane was unaware on short final that the autothrottle had been deactivated. This is consistent with pulling back on the control column to maintain altitude, an action which will give in the desired result when the autothrottle is engaged, but must be accompanied by manually increasing throttle otherwise. This is an elementary piloting mistake, which I believe is impossible to do in the Airbus since the fly-by-wire system will prevent you from placing the aircraft in a stall condition. So this might be consistent with the information that the captain was transitioning from the Airbus to the Boeing. However, I would be surprised if the investigation doesn't provide additional details about the human factors among the flight crew. I guess the biggest question I'm left with after this is how professional pilots can make this kind of elementary piloting mistake: Not watching the airspeed on final approach, and not reacting immediately when the PAPI indicates that the aircraft is too low. I was left with the same kind of question after the Air France disaster; this plane was stalled straight into the ocean from cruising altitude. It's a big mystery to me how three pilots could overlook this condition for four minutes. Maybe this is just the kind of fluke accident that will happen sometimes when you have ten thousand airliners in the sky every day. But it seems like a good idea to investigate whether pilots rely too much on the computers and forget the basics. Regardless, let's not draw any conclusions until the investigation has had its say. It's okay to speculate, but I feel that it doesn't provide a lot of benefit to go into detailed scenarios when the complete picture is unknown.

toomuchtodo 13y ago
> I guess the biggest question I'm left with after this is how professional pilots can make this kind of elementary piloting mistake: Not watching the airspeed on final approach, and not reacting immediately when the PAPI indicates that the aircraft is too low. If you know you're prevented from making this mistake on an Airbus, depending on your attention and what you're thinking, you may not remember that the 777 doesn't have the same failsafes.
- imsofuture 13y ago
  There's literally no excuse for not watching your airspeed when you land an airplane, of any make. It's one of the two 'oh-hey-my-life-really-directly-depends-on-this-number' factors. I really don't like the tone that so many post-accident discussions take regarding automation, Boeing v. Airbus, etc. -- when the plain facts of the incidents (specifically this, and Air France 447) boil down to one small, really important bit willful negligence.

gilgoomesh 13y ago

The insistence of aviation and naval industries to continue using knots for speeds is infuriating. I can forgive the fact that the article uses U.S. customary units instead of SI but the article gives distances in miles and altitudes in feet and needing to convert knots into feet per second or miles per hour as you read is awful.

robbles 13y ago
from Wikipedia: > The speeds of vessels relative to the fluids in which they travel (boat speeds and air speeds) are measured in knots. It's a little like the difference between mass and weight - the frame of reference is important for one and not the other.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
ubernostrum 13y ago
The knot is now defined in terms of an SI unit (1 knot = 1 nautical mile/hour, 1 nautical mile = 1852 meters), and the nautical mile is accepted for use internationally by BIPM. Its continued use is due to the fact that the nautical mile is the average length of one minute of arc along a meridian, which allows easy correction, when measuring distances in nautical miles, for the distortions of representing the non-flat Earth on flat charts. Or, more simply: there are sometimes good reasons for using a unit other than "look how easy it is to move decimal points".
- gaius 13y ago
  Yes it turns out practitioners in the field prefer a convention that makes their jobs easier and not one for the convenience of The Internets. Who'da thunk it? I can imagine someone saying programmers are stupid for insisting that k means 1024 instead of 1000 like, umm, SI units...
- hudibras 13y ago
  Or to put it another way: a nautical mile is equal to one minute of latitude and 60 nautical miles equals one degree of latitude. I've seen many people become amazed when it's explained to them that a nautical mile is not just an archaic, arbitrary unit of measure, like a hogshead or furlong. Part Two of this explanation is to tell them that the metric system unit of distance, the meter, was also originally based on the earth's size. Ten million meters (or 10,000 km) is the distance from the equator to one of the poles.

babesh 13y ago

The pilot depended on automation to fly the plane. When put into a situation where it was not available, he crashed it showing insufficient piloting skill. That someone with this lack of skill was placed in this situation shows institutional failure.

mikeash 13y ago
Agreed. I can't fathom how a person who self-described as "very concerned" with doing a visual approach got into the cockpit of a 777. That's the sort of thing I'd expect from a fresh student pilot who spent too much time playing with the ILS in his flight simulator.
- hnriot 13y ago
  maybe if he had been playing more with his flight sim this wouldn't have happened. it's such a basic mistake to make.
- johnw 13y ago
  Alright, but how do you explain the instructor who had 3,200 hours on the 777 who was sitting beside the pilot not making any mention of a too low airspeed or incorrect landing configuration right up until it was to late? Makes me wonder if there was some ambiguity in the instrument display or procedures for neither pilot to make mention of any problems.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    The pilot expressed his concerns about performing a visual approach to his instructor before the flight. The instructor let him fly anyway instead of instantaneously grounding him and saying, "WTF? This is Piloting 101, go get your shit together." The instructor let this person fly when he was lacking such a basic skill, and that the instructor came from the same system that allowed this incompetent pilot to attain command of a large airliner. This to me indicates that the system is broken and there's no reason to think it couldn't produce an instructor who was also completely useless at performing a visual approach.
13y ago

damian2000 13y ago

The pilots attempted to go around at the last second, when it was already too late - if the pilots had not attempted to go around, i.e. not piled on the throttle at the last second - just wondering - would the crash have been as severe?

imsofuture 13y ago
It would have been worse^. Throttle response is far from instantaneous (jets spool relatively slowly), and any speed that they did manage to gain contributed greatly to lift and almost certainly lessened the force of the impact. Throttling up a plane for a go around is not at all analogous to stepping on the gas while crashing into a brick wall. ^ total speculation
MBCook 13y ago
They made the runway, it's how they were able to interview the pilots. If they hadn't done anything, I'd expect more of the plane would have hit the seawall instead of just the tail gear. It probably would have been much worse.

rckrd 13y ago

Forgive me if I'm a little behind, but is the official consensus that this was a human error? That the measurements were presented correctly to the crew and that a veteran pilot wouldn't have made these mistakes?

ams6110 13y ago
These were fairly veteran pilots. One was new on type, but he had a check captain sitting next to him.
- dba7dba 13y ago
  The one who was in the left seat was a graduate of basic flight school based in Florida somewhere. Not sure where the right seat pilot learned basic flying but obviously he's experienced enough to be a training pilot. The one in the back jump seat was a graduate of ROK AF Academy and flew F5 and F16 before joining Asiana Air. He was youngest (least # of hours) of the 3 pilots in the cockpit?
  - greenyoda 13y ago
    The guy in the left seat was a very experienced pilot. From the article: "The Pilot Flying was in the left seat. He was a captain transitioning from the Airbus 320 to the Boeing 777. He had 9,700 hours flight time with less than 45 hours in the Boeing 777." That's almost as many hours as the instructor had (12,000 hours).
lisper 13y ago
I don't know if it's the consensus, but that's certainly how it looks to me (PPIASEL - private pilot instrument airplane single engine land). Complete and utter incompetence. The Koreans are actually notorious for this. http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/07/do-not-fly-asiana-or-kal.html http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/07/do-not-fly-asiana-or-kal....
- dba7dba 13y ago
  wow, stereotype much?

ash 13y ago

"Due to the potentially disturbing nature of the surveillance video we are about to show, we will pause for a moment to let [people?] exit the room if they choose." (9:22) Is it the standard warning for these hearings?

lukeholder 13y ago
I assume family could be present?

JHof 13y ago

I've spent time conducting basic flight training for international students (including Korean) and am now an airline pilot. Though I don't have much experience with international operations, what I saw as an instructor is freshly minted pilots going back to their home countries and immediately being put into the right seat of an airliner. Many of these students were very poor pilots, however, as long as they have the money, the flight training machine that exists in states like Florida will keep training them, and international airlines will continue to hire the product. It's a matter of national pride for many countries to be able to employ their own citizens as pilots. Many will cease learning as soon as they leave flight school due to the poor training environments that exist in some places. Going from a small prop plane to an airliner is perfectly acceptable. It's been going on for a long time and can produce safe pilots, but those pilots need to understand basic stick and rudder flying and continue to hone their skills. Unfortunately, many get started using the automation and allow their flying skills to atrophy. This is true for long-time airline pilots as well. In the US, by the time a pilot has reached the cockpit of something like a 777, they've gained quite a bit of experience flying smaller prop planes and regional jets, which require a little more work on the part of the pilot. The visual approach assigned to Asiana Flight 214 is a non-issue to US airlines. It's a routine, every day occurrence that doesn't cause one to become "very concerned", however, many countries choose to focus their pilot training more on managing automation than flying the aircraft, and I think that cultural difference played a big part in this crash. Talk to a US airline pilot who has worked with a training department internationally. The stories you'll hear are pretty eye opening.

js2 13y ago
http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety
- JHof 13y ago
  Good article. In the US and some other places around the world, you'll find pilots who are equally capable of flying automated Airbus type aircraft as they are 1960's style cockpits using old fashioned radio navigational aids. I take pride in my skills and ability to operate an aircraft safely. Unfortunately, what I know seems to be becoming a lost art, and the state of the piloting profession internationally will likely speed the process of automating pilots out of the cockpit. It's sad, and I've become pretty keen on learning a new skill in preparation for the demise of my job.