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Asiana Flight 214 | 118 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Asiana Flight 214
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 12:59 AM EDT
Most airlines would put him in the right hand seat for his first landing,
with a pilot experienced at that location in control in the left seat.
Note the respective roles in the Lufthansa example I posted above.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

BBC report
Authored by: Ian Al on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 04:00 AM EDT
The BBC had an eyewitness report saying that the aircraft appeared to be less
stable than for other, normal landings.

A day later, the BBC reported that the landing speed of the plane was too low
for that particular craft.

It does seem likely that inexperience on this model of aircraft may have
resulted in pilot error.

---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Asiana Flight 214 - It was pilot error - (my opinion only)
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 08 2013 @ 01:54 PM EDT
Have you looked back at the Heathrow 777 crash.

Both planes crashed at the start of the runway.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/09/heathrow_crash_report/

and the AAIB website

ww.aaib.gov.uk/latest_news/archive/heathrow_17_january_2008.cfm

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Asiana Flight 214 - It was pilot error - (my opinion only)
Authored by: tknarr on Tuesday, July 09 2013 @ 12:18 AM EDT

As a pilot pointed out elsewhere years ago, "pilot error" is all but redundant because in almost every crash (save for catastrophic mechanical or structural failure) the final link in the chain is something the pilot did. The more interesting question is why he did what he did, what led him to make that final fatal mistake. For instance, at SFO the electronic approach aids weren't functioning so the normal instrument cues for glide slope and such weren't available. The plane was doing a straight-in approach from 18,000 feet over water, giving less opportunity to acquire visual cues for the approach. The radar altimeter would've been consistently reading probably 40-50 feet high (the runway being about that far above the level of the water surface that the radar would've been reading during the approach). And the pilot had few hours in that aircraft type, so he wouldn't have a good feel for what a normal-altitude approach should look like out the cockpit window. Those are the causes of the incident, not generic "pilot error".

All indications are the aircraft was above the glide slope for most of the approach, and the engines were throttled back right up until the very end. My guess is the pilot started out high and was trying to slow down and drop altitude, failed to take into account that his radar altimeter was giving him 40-50 more feet of altitude to play with than he really had (minor at 6000 feet, not so minor at 100 feet) and didn't have any of the normal electronic aids or visual cues that'd've clued him in to his mistake. By the time he realized that he was 10 feet above the runway, not 60, he was almost on the seawall and the engines couldn't spool up fast enough. The final error was the pilot's, the initial errors were with the people who put a type-inexperienced pilot on approach to a difficult runway with none of the normal instrument assistance. The only thing that could've helped him is a reworking of the radar altimeter to take into account terrain profile so it calls out height above runway level and not height above ground. Maybe we ought to be installing military terrain-following systems?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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