5 ms·

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 th

by 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?
  - PhantomGremlin 13y ago
    Why do you glibly dismiss it as a "stereotype"? Did you read the post that prompted him to write that? It was preserved on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6025525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6025525 That post discusses in detail exactly what is wrong with the training culture in Korea. Do you have any knowledge or experience to dispute the post? Can you come up with something more enlightening than the 3 word reply "wow, stereotype much?"? BTW this criticism of flying culture in many foreign airlines isn't just found in this one post. Read pprune.org and you will find many many similar stories. Are all those people posting simply making things up? I don't think so.
    - jpatokal 13y ago
      And this post demolishes Gladwell's theory rather thoroughly. http://askakorean.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/culturalism-gladwell-and-airplane.html http://askakorean.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/culturalism-gladwe...
      - lisper 13y ago
        So what? Just because some author advanced a flawed argument does not change the fact that Koreans account for a greater share of aircraft accidents caused by pilot error than could be reasonably accounted for by random chance. Just because an argument is flawed doesn't mean the conclusion is false.
        jpatokal 13y ago
        The link I posted notes that 3 of the 7 crashes where Gladwell blames "pilot error" were actually caused by being shot down by the Soviets (x2) and being bombed by the North Koreans (x1). Which pretty much removes the statistical anomaly of Korean airlines having more accidents.
dlgeek 13y ago
To the best of my knowledge, the NTSB has not released any preliminary assignment of blame. They spend years on these sort of things, checking every detail, dotting every 'i' and crossing every 't' before they make those determinations, as they carry a huge amount of weight. (And I do think this is the appropriate thing to do). That being said, from all the information that is publicly available, the consensus of everyone else seems to be that it is human error, as there have been no reports of any of the plane's systems not performing normally given the inputs of the crew. Now, that being said, we shouldn't say "Pilot Error" and move on, but should instead look for any systematic flaws that allowed the pilot error to take place. This might be the result of training issues, or the airlines policies on crew rest, or something else that we can remediate to prevent this sort of thing from recurring in the future

by rckrd 13y ago

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?
- PhantomGremlin 13y ago
  Why do you glibly dismiss it as a "stereotype"? Did you read the post that prompted him to write that? It was preserved on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6025525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6025525 That post discusses in detail exactly what is wrong with the training culture in Korea. Do you have any knowledge or experience to dispute the post? Can you come up with something more enlightening than the 3 word reply "wow, stereotype much?"? BTW this criticism of flying culture in many foreign airlines isn't just found in this one post. Read pprune.org and you will find many many similar stories. Are all those people posting simply making things up? I don't think so.
  - jpatokal 13y ago
    And this post demolishes Gladwell's theory rather thoroughly. http://askakorean.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/culturalism-gladwell-and-airplane.html http://askakorean.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/culturalism-gladwe...
    - lisper 13y ago
      So what? Just because some author advanced a flawed argument does not change the fact that Koreans account for a greater share of aircraft accidents caused by pilot error than could be reasonably accounted for by random chance. Just because an argument is flawed doesn't mean the conclusion is false.
      - jpatokal 13y ago
        The link I posted notes that 3 of the 7 crashes where Gladwell blames "pilot error" were actually caused by being shot down by the Soviets (x2) and being bombed by the North Koreans (x1). Which pretty much removes the statistical anomaly of Korean airlines having more accidents.

dlgeek 13y ago

To the best of my knowledge, the NTSB has not released any preliminary assignment of blame. They spend years on these sort of things, checking every detail, dotting every 'i' and crossing every 't' before they make those determinations, as they carry a huge amount of weight. (And I do think this is the appropriate thing to do). That being said, from all the information that is publicly available, the consensus of everyone else seems to be that it is human error, as there have been no reports of any of the plane's systems not performing normally given the inputs of the crew. Now, that being said, we shouldn't say "Pilot Error" and move on, but should instead look for any systematic flaws that allowed the pilot error to take place. This might be the result of training issues, or the airlines policies on crew rest, or something else that we can remediate to prevent this sort of thing from recurring in the future