Asiana crash pilots didn't understand systems

The pilots of a South Korean airliner that crashed in San Francisco last year depended too much on automated systems they didn't understand, the head of the US National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.

Acting NTSB chairman Christopher Hart made the statement at the start of a day-long hearing to establish the probable cause and contributing factors of the Asiana Airlines disaster that left three dead and 187 injured.

"The Boeing 777 is one of the more sophisticated and automated aircraft in service," Hart said in his opening remarks.

"But the more complex automation becomes, the more challenging it is to ensure that pilots adequately understand it," he added.

"In this instance, the flight crew over-relied on automated systems that they did not fully understand. As a result, they flew the aircraft too slow and collided with the seawall at the end of the runway."

The July 6 crash of Flight 214 was the first fatal commercial airline disaster in the United States since 2009.

It was completing an otherwise routine 10-1/2 hour flight from Seoul when it clipped the seawall at San Francisco's airport with its landing gear, skidded off the runway and burst into flames.

All three of the fatalities were young Chinese women, including one who was struck by a fire truck beneath a wing covered with firefighting foam.

Investigators testified that she apparently had not buckled her seat belt, and thus had been hurled out of the aircraft on impact.

They also noted, however, that 98 percent of occupants were able to escape the burning aircraft themselves -- a fact they credited to the design of the seats and the overall aircraft structure.

The NTSB has previously said the autopilot was switched off about three miles (4.8 kilometers) out, and that the airspeed dipped as low as 103 knots (191 kilometers per hour), or 34 knots below the ideal approach speed.

The Boeing 777 descend so low that an array of approach lights at the end of the runway -- a key visual aid to landing -- showed four red lights, a situation that would call for an aborted landing.

Due to construction work, the instrument landing system (ILS) in San Francisco was out of order on the day of the crash -- requiring pilots to visually guide their airplanes onto the runway.

Central to the investigation has been the Boeing 777's auto-throttle and whether the pilots expected it to "wake up" and power up the aircraft when the airspeed dropped too low -- something it did not.

- Case of crew incompetency? -

Investigator-in-chief Bill English said Asiana emphasized "maximum use of automation" by its pilots, including the use of autopilots to as low as 1,000 feet (330 meters) from the ground.

He also suggested the pilot flying the approach, Lee Kang-Kuk, a seasoned Airbus A320 pilot transitioning to the Boeing 777, suffered rusty hand-flying skills.

"Pilot skills degrade if not practiced," he added.

Lee was flying into San Francisco with an instructor in the co-pilot's seat, Lee Jung-Min, who himself was freshly certified to train new Boeing 777 pilots.

Another NTSB investigator, Roger Cox, said Flight 214 was instructor Lee's first with a trainee under his wing. Typically, he added, a rookie instructor on such a flight would himself be supervised by an experienced instructor.

NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt, a commercial airline pilot for 32 years, doubted the crash was a case of crew incompetency.

Rather, Sumwalt said, "the pilot expected the airplane to do something for him that it wasn't designed to do."

He added: "The probably may be more widespread than we may have thought."

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Asiana Crash Debate Goes Beyond Pilots to Automation

U.S. investigators are debating whether to blame a Boeing Co. (BA) jetliner’s design for helping cause a cascade of pilot mistakes in last year’s Asiana Airlines Inc.  crash that killed three Chinese teenagers.

The sticking point within the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, in the days before its final decision is due, is over the extent to which Boeing’s automatic throttle contributed to the plane’s loss of speed before it slammed into a seawall in San Francisco on July 6, said three people with knowledge of the discussions. They asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak.

The safety board tomorrow will decide on the probable cause and other factors leading to Seoul-based Asiana’s crash, the first in the U.S. with passenger deaths in more than four years. While there’s little doubt the pilots made multiple mistakes, a finding that equipment on the 777-200 jet confused them could open Chicago-based Boeing to greater liability in lawsuits and shade public opinion.

“There’s quite a flurry of activity” in the days leading up to the NTSB’s findings in a major accident, Peter Goelz, who served as managing director of the agency during the 1990s, said in an interview.

Such debate is consistent with prior investigations as the NTSB’s five-member board and staff hammer out nuances of what caused tragedies, Goelz said.

The NTSB has several options to address the role of the auto-throttle design. It can include it as part of the cause, list it as a “contributing factor,” or make recommendations for safety improvements that mention the equipment’s role.

Pilot Error

The plane crashed after the Asiana pilots allowed it to get almost 40 miles (64 kilometers) per hour slower than the target speed as they neared the runway.

Both Boeing and Asiana, which gave their recommended conclusions to the NTSB in March, laid primary responsibility for the accident on the pilots.

The airline and planemaker differ over whether other issues were at play.

Boeing maintains the accident was solely the crew’s fault and would have been avoided if the pilots had aborted the landing, as required under airline procedures, Miles Kotay, a spokesman, said in a June 20 e-mail.

“The airplane and all airplane systems were functioning as expected prior to impact and did not contribute to the accident,” Boeing said in its submission to the NTSB earlier this year.

Automated Systems

Asiana urged the safety board in its March submission to find that the auto-throttle was a cause of the pilots’ mistakes. It also said the NTSB should recommend that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration require Boeing to add a cockpit warning when speeds get too slow.

Groups with a stake in the outcome have met with the safety board’s politically appointed members in recent weeks in an attempt to influence the process, as is often the case before conclusions are announced on major accidents, one person familiar with the proceedings said.

The 777, like Boeing’s 737 and 787, has a suite of computer-driven tools in the cockpit to help reduce pilots’ workload. Such automation, which has also been adopted in similar ways by Airbus Group NV, is credited with helping reduce accidents and improve efficiency.

At the same time, pilot misunderstandings about automation have been studied for 20 years and linked to accidents, David Woods, a systems engineering professor at Ohio State University, said in an interview.

“This is an old story,” Woods said.

Fatal Descent

Recent accidents, such as the Feb. 25, 2009, crash of a Turkish Airlines Inc. Boeing 737-800 on approach to Amsterdam that killed nine, have been linked to confusion over automation, he said. Woods called it the “creeping complexity” of the cockpit.

A FAA study released last year found that pilots’ reliance on cockpit automation systems has led to occasional confusion and new safety risks.

In the San Francisco accident, Captain Lee Kang Kuk, a veteran with Asiana who was being trained on the 777 wide-body, accidentally switched off the jetliner’s automatic speed control as he was trying to descend, according to NTSB documents.

The plane’s tail broke loose as it hit the seawall, and the fuselage then bounced and spun down the runway. The three girls who died may have been flung from the jet because they weren’t wearing seatbelts, according to statements to investigators by unidentified witnesses traveling with them.

More than 200 people were taken to hospitals. The plane held 291 passengers, 12 flight attendants and four pilots.

Minimum Speed

In almost all settings, the plane’s auto-throttle will prevent it from getting too slow, even if it’s switched off. Lee, 45, didn’t realize he’d put the jet into a rare mode that disabled this safety measure by making a series of changes to the auto pilot and throttles.

He “believed the auto-throttle should have come out of the idle position to prevent the airplane going below the minimum speed” for landing, the NTSB said in a summary of an interview with him. “That was the theory at least, as he understood it.”

Another Asiana captain, Lee Jung Min, 49, an instructor, was seated in the co-pilot’s seat.

First Fatalities

The pilots neglected to notice a runway light system showing they were too low, didn’t monitor their speed and didn’t follow airline procedures to abort a landing if they weren’t properly lined up for touchdown, according to information released already by the NTSB.

The 777, the world’s largest twin-engine jetliner, entered commercial service in 1995. Last year’s accident was the first involving fatalities, and only the third serious enough to destroy a 777. A fourth 777 presumed destroyed is the missing Malaysian Air 777-200ER model, the same as the Asiana jet.

Boeing designed the auto-throttle to aid crews while not replacing them, John Cashman, the company’s chief pilot on the 777 program, told an NTSB board of inquiry on Dec. 11. The crew is “ultimately responsible for the safe conduct of the flight,” Cashman said.

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Asiana Airlines takes delivery of its first Airbus A380

Asiana Airlines  has taken delivery of its first Airbus A380, becoming the eleventh operator of the type in the world. The A380 was handed over to Park Sam Koo, Chairman of Kumho Asiana Group, by Fabrice Brégier, Airbus President and CEO, during a special ceremony today (May 26) in Toulouse, France. Asiana Airlines has ordered six A380s, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines. The airline has specified a premium three class layout for its fleet, seating a total of 495 passengers, with 12 private suites in First Suite, 66 fully flat seats in Business Smartium and 417 seats in Travel Class. All seats are equipped with the latest on-demand in-flight entertainment systems.

Asiana Airlines will initially deploy its new flagship aircraft from Seoul on regional services in Asia to Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bangkok, followed by long-haul routes to Los Angeles. As part of its widebody fleet modernization strategy, Asiana Airlines also has 30 of the all-new the A350 XWB on order. The A350 XWB will offer a step change in efficiency, with operating costs 25 per cent lower than the competition. The A380 and A350 will complement an existing Airbus fleet at Asiana that currently includes the A330 and A320 Family. Airbus currently has 324 firm orders for the A380, from 20 customers.

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Airline employees who stole luggage in aftermath of Asiana crash in San Francisco last year sentenced to nine and six months prison

A husband and his wife, both United Airlines employees, were sentenced Tuesday to prison time for stealing luggage from passengers whose flights were diverted or cancelled in the aftermath of the Asiana Airlines crash at San Francisco International Airport last summer. Sean Sharif Crudup, 44, and Raychas Elizabeth Thomas, 32, both of Richmond, California, pleaded no contest to grand theft and possessing stolen property. They received sentences of nine months and six months, respectively, according to the Los Angeles Times.

They also received probation of three years and were ordered to pay $6,000 in restitutution, with most of that amount going to the high-end department store Nordstrom. Some of the passengers' whose luggage was stolen was headed from San Francisco to the Cayman. The luggage contained jewelry and clothing worth about $30,000.

'Ms. Thomas had taken a bunch of the clothing to Nordstrom to sell it back,' San Mateo County District Attorney Wagstaffe said at the time of the couple’s arrest last July. 'A search warrant was issued for their home in Richmond, and a large number of the items were found there.'

They were arrested at the San Francisco airport on July 25, 2013, as they were about to board a flight to Hawaii. Some of the items Crudup and Thomas stole from other people's luggage was found in their possession. A subsequent search of their home found even more stolen items, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Thomas will surrender to custody in December to start serving time, while Crudup will follow in December.

The Asiana crash on July 6, 2013 killed three Chinese students on board the flight from Seoul. More than 200 other people were injured. The accident wreaked havoc on the San Francisco airport for days, cancelling flights and diverting others.

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Asiana Airlines says pilot flying too slow before crash

Asiana Airlines acknowledged for the first time that the "probable cause" of the fatal crash in San Francisco last July was its pilot flying too slow, according to documents federal investigators released today.

However, the airline also said "inconsistencies" in the Boeing 777-200ER's autothrottle contributed to the crash. The airline's positions submitted earlier this month were part of hundreds of pages of documents the National Transportation Safety Board will consider while investigating the crash that killed three passengers and injured more than 200.

Asiana said the plane's navigation equipment "led the crew to believe that the autothrottle was maintaining the airspeed set by the crew" and instead the equipment "disabled the aircraft's minimum airspeed protection." The airline also said test pilots had trouble landing under the same conditions in simulators.

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The first Asiana Airlines Airbus A380 is rolled out of the paint shop

The first Airbus A380 for Asiana Airlines (Seoul) was rolled out of the Airbus paint shop in Hamburg, marking the completion of its painting. The aircraft will then have completion of its cabin and enter a final phase of ground and flight tests in Hamburg, during which all cabin systems will be thoroughly tested, including air flow and air conditioning, lighting, galleys,

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