Crash at SFO! Asiana Airlines Boeing 777

[Zorba]

FR24 shows GS, quite low indeed. I wonder how much the fact that ILS and VASI/PAPI were U/S played.

[Nevihta]

Well, loc and DME were still working apparently, and very good visual conditions.
Could be either technical problem, or unstabilized approach that ended very badly...

[stratofreighter]

A video of the actual crash-landing, filmed from far far away...

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/us ... fred-hayes

[Zorba]

Wow it just turns 360 degrees

NTSB's Twitter account is very interesting, they are tweeting their press conference:

https://twitter.com/ntsb

[earthman]

It is starting to look a bit like the Turkish crash at AMS.

[Tomskii]

In meanwhile the NTSB has indeed confirmed the speed was too low "and not just by a few knots". The pilot landing the plane was also still under education (typerating of a F/O I suppose). Question that still remains is how the captain did not notice the low speed and slightly too low altitude..

[Zorba]

I think it was the captain who had 40-something hours on the B777, coming from B737/B747. The F/O had plenty of hours on B777.

[Boeing767copilot]

Correct


http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articl ... 77-388013/

[Tomskii]

Oh ok, well turn the question around, why did the F/O not notice it? Or will this be another case of the strong hierarchy between crew members at asian companies?

[teddybAIR]

Since the Captain was still in training, the F/O had to be a captain himself, performing the duties of an F/O. I don't know all in's and out's but he was probably TRI on the B772.
The fact that the GS was U/S affects the workload for the crew as the approach reverts to a non-precision approach. Yet, it seems that meteorological conditions were well above the non-precision minima and within the flight envelope of the B772.

[B.Inventive]

Workload or not, if you cannot fly a visual segment of an approach (be that a precision, non precision or full visual approach) you don't have a place in a cockpit... PERIOD. (also, if the right seat was a TRI, this shows the quality of their trainers in a very poor state...)
However all these things are speculations, let's wait for the report to finalise first...

[teddybAIR]

Hey b.inventive,

Fully agree and probably chose the wrong wording to say that an unserviceable glideslope merely affects the workload of the crew and should in no way lead to the known outcome.
I don't think however that it is fair to draw conclusions on the quality of the TRI (or even the captain) without having the slightest bit of information on the events.

[Homo Aeroportus]

IIRC there was a crew of 4. Don't know whether they were all in the cockpit at that time though.

The Captain, PF, has 9k TT but only 43Hr on type.
Don't know if PM was the F/O or if the TRE/TRI was in the RH seat but the TRE/TRI has +12kTT and 3k on type yet he let it go !
They were below normal approach path (GS and PAPI were both u/s) for agood part of the approach and had a RoD in excess of 1000 ft/m down to finals

They were not even on centerline though the LOC was in service.

When going TOGA (at 1.5 sec before impact!) they did not keep the nose under control and this probably killed what was left of their horizontal speed.

What was that prediction about entering the era of FS pilots without much of basic flying experience? How about getting first some hours on glider?

H.A.

[Flanker2]

This accident is the perfect example of the children of the magenta line.
It's funny, watch it:

[AirOpinion]

'The Atlantic' gathered some pictures on the crash of Asiana Airlines 214.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013 ... 14/100551/

[sn26567]

This is a very accurate reconstruction of the crash of Asiana flight 214 at San Francisco Airport on July 6, 2013 with the exception of the post impact fire. It is now reported that the fire did not break out until 90 seconds after the aircraft came to rest.

[SpottairBRU]

Thank you for the video André.

Where did the left engine end up? In the video (from 0:20), it seems it was "thrown away" violently. Is it the video being not 100% accurate (what I can understand of course, not criticizing it), or could the engine have passed not that far from the nearby UA 747 waiting on the taxiway?

[YYZ727]

I arrived at SFO on july 10th
The wreck and the debris trail were still present on the runway. I arrived on BA287 and landing on the runway next to the wreck was pretty sobering.
Last friday the removal of the wreckage was live on tv
In the mean time, the crew is getting a lot of kudos in the local press for their performance during the evacuation.

[Flanker2]

One thing that has me worried is how those chairs folded like cheap suits.
That's not supposed to happen and severely impacts evacuation times.

The impact wasn't that big, there were no deaths resulting from internal bleeding.

Another one of those CFRP problems? (the B777 floor beams).

At this point, does the B777's evacuation certification have any meaning at all, given that tests are carried out in a clean cabin without unanchored chairs all over the place? I think not.

[Passenger]

Press release NTSB - 24/06/2014:

NTSB Finds Mismanagement of Approach and Inadequate Monitoring of Airspeed Led to Crash of Asiana flight 214 - Multiple contributing factors also identified

June 24, 2014
WASHINGTON - In a Board meeting held today, the National Transportation Safety Board determined that Asiana flight 214 crashed when the airplane descended below the visual glidepath due to the flight crew’s mismanagement of the approach and inadequate monitoring of airspeed. The Board also found that the complexities of the autothrottle and autopilot flight director systems, and the crew’s misunderstanding of those systems, contributed to the accident.

On July 6, 2013, about 11:28 a.m. (PDT), the Boeing 777 was on approach to runway 28L at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, California when it struck the seawall at the end of the runway. Three of the 291 passengers died; 40 passengers, eight of the 12 flight attendants, and one of the four flight crewmembers received serious injuries. The other 248 passengers, four flight attendants, and three flight crewmembers received minor injuries or were not injured. The impact forces and a postcrash fire destroyed the airplane.

The NTSB determined that the flight crew mismanaged the initial approach and that the airplane was well above the desired glidepath as it neared the runway. In response to the excessive altitude, the captain selected an inappropriate autopilot mode and took other actions that, unbeknownst to him, resulted in the autothrottle no longer controlling airspeed.

As the airplane descended below the desired glidepath, the crew did not notice the decreasing airspeed nor did they respond to the unstable approach. The flight crew began a go-around maneuver when the airplane was below 100 feet, but it was too late and the airplane struck the seawall.

“In this accident, the flight crew over-relied on automated systems without fully understanding how they interacted,” said NTSB Acting Chairman Christopher A. Hart. “Automation has made aviation safer. But even in highly automated aircraft, the human must be the boss.”

As a result of this accident investigation, the NTSB made recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration, Asiana Airlines, The Boeing Company, the Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting Working Group, and the City of San Francisco.

These recommendations address the safety issues identified in the investigation, including the need for reinforced adherence to Asiana flight crew standard operating procedures, more opportunities for manual flying for Asiana pilots, a context-dependent low energy alerting system, and both certification design review and enhanced training on the Boeing 777 autoflight system.

The recommendations also address the need for improved emergency communications, and staffing requirements and training for aircraft rescue and firefighting personnel.

“Today, good piloting includes being on the lookout for surprises in how the automation works, and taking control when needed,” Hart said. “Good design means not only maximizing reliability, but also minimizing surprises and uncertainties.”

A synopsis of the NTSB report, including the probable cause, findings, and a complete list of the 27 safety recommendations, is available at http://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/2014/as ... tract.html. The full report will be available on the website in several weeks.

End of press release

Source & more info:

http://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/2014/as ... tract.html