News

Nation/World

San Fran plane crash

On Saturday afternoon an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport, killing at least two passengers and injuring dozens more, many of them seriously. I've been an airline pilot since 1990, and I'd like to offer some perspective on this still-developing story. 
 But before getting to the accident itself, I'd like to express my dismay over the media's shamelessly sensationalistic coverage of it. A certain degree of network hyperventilation always follows air crashes, but this time, from the absurd eyewitness accounts to the at times wildly inaccurate commentary of various aviation "experts," they've taken things to a new level of inanity and poor taste. 
 One thing sorely missing from the coverage thus far has been a sense of perspective. I don't mean to diminish the seriousness of what happened. It's a tragedy when anybody is killed in an airplane crash. However, the vast majority of the passengers on Asiana Flight 214 made it off the airplane alive. This simply was not an air disaster of the scale that was once relatively common and is not deserving of terms like "catastrophe." It is imperative to remember that Saturday's accident was the first multiple-fatality crash involving a major airline in North America since November 2001. (There have been a handful involving regional affiliates, but the majors have been virtually accident-free). The streak has ended, but it lasted nearly 12 years, with some 20,000 commercial jetliners taking off and landing safely in this country every single day - an astonishing run. Is it perverse to suggest that Saturday's accident, awful as it was, serves to underscore just how safe commercial flying has become? That's asking a lot, I know, in this era of race-to-the-bottom news coverage, when speed and sizzle, not accuracy or context, are all that really count. 
 But consider for a moment the year 1985, one of the darkest ever for commercial air travel. By the end of that year, 27 crashes had resulted in the deaths of almost 2,400 people. These included the Air India bombing over the North Atlantic, with 329 casualties, and, two months later, the crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123 outside Tokyo, with 520 dead. (These, the second- and fifth-deadliest incidents in aviation history, happened 49 days apart.) Also in 1985 were the Arrow Air disaster in Newfoundland that killed more than 240 U.S. servicemen, the infamous British Airtours 737 fire, and the crash of a Delta Air Lines L-1011 in Dallas that killed 137. 
 Now, as for what may have happened in San Francisco: About the worst thing we can do at the moment is play fast and loose with speculation. Early theories as to why a plane crashed almost always turn out to be wrong or incomplete. All we know for certain is that the plane crashed short of the runway. That by itself is not a reason for the accident; it's the result of something else gone wrong. 
 Based on what the National Transportation Safety Board and other sources have reported thus far, the pilots found themselves in the throes of an unstable approach - apparently below the proper glide path and at too low a speed - and failed to correct or abandon the approach in time. They initiated a go-around - a fairly routine maneuver, referred to by some people as an "aborted landing," in which the approach is broken off and the jet climbs away for a second attempt - but it was too late. How or why they got themselves in this position, and why they did not correct or abandon the landing sooner, remains unknown. 
 Reportedly, Flight 214's captain was new to the aircraft, and had accrued fewer than 50 total hours in the 777 prior to the accident. While much is being made of this, to me it's a red herring. Pilots transition from aircraft type to aircraft type all the time, and it's not uncommon for a pilot to have a limited number of hours in whichever plane he or she has most recently qualified in. But experience in a particular model and experience overall are different things. All airline pilots are highly trained and are highly experienced before they ever set foot in a jetliner cockpit. 
 What's more, there is always a minimum of two pilots in the cockpit, a captain and a first officer - the latter is referred to colloquially as the "co-pilot." Both are fully qualified to operate the aircraft, and they share flying duties; first officers perform just as many takeoffs and landings as captains do. It's not yet clear which Asiana pilot was physically at the controls, the captain or first officer. In any case, either pilot would have been in a position to note and correct for deviations, or to execute a go-around maneuver. Why this didn't happen we don't know. 
 Whether transitioning from one type of aircraft to another or upgrading from first officer position to captain, pilots undergo a full, aircraft-specific training regimen, often lasting several weeks. This includes classroom training as well as hands-on instruction in both cockpit mock-up trainers and full-motion simulators. Once this phase is complete, all pilots fly the actual aircraft for a period of time under the watch and guidance of a training captain. 
 We've also been hearing about the supposedly hazardous SFO airport. Many in the media have been harping on the fact that the airport's runways crisscross and are spaced close together, and that the instrument landing system (ILS) of the runway Asiana crashed on had been out of service, requiring the crew to fly a "raw" visual approach. Could this have been a factor? To some extent, yes. This would have made the arrival trickier than normal. Even with all navigational equipment working, arrivals into SFO can be challenging. But that by no means made the arrival pattern unsafe. As in all lines of work, some aviation tasks are more difficult and work-intensive than others. All pilots are trained to handle the sorts of challenges SFO presents, and visual approaches, which do not rely on instrument guidance to the extent of the more common ILS approach, are common at large and busy airports. The lack of instrument guidance, together with SFO's high-workload environment, may have been a contributing factor, but this alone does not excuse or explain landing short of a runway. 
 Already I'm speculating more than I intended to. Whether this was human error, mechanical failure, or some combination of the two remains to be determined. In the meantime, I would caution readers to be leery of what you hear from TV or the press, and be exceptionally wary of on-air testimony from eyewitnesses or passengers who were aboard the jet. The news channels salivate over these firsthand narratives, but any crash investigator will attest to the notorious unreliability of such accounts. If some of the things I've heard in interviews over the past 24 hours are any indication, stuff your ears with gauze and leave the room when an eyewitness starts talking. I don't want to insult anybody's powers of observation, but passengers have a terrible habit of misjudging and misinterpreting the basics of flight even when things are running perfectly normal, never mind in the throes of a violent emergency. 
 Meanwhile, looking at some of the footage from Saturday, I was appalled by the number of passengers who chose to evacuate the burning aircraft with their carry-on luggage. We've seen this in several on-the-runway evacuations in recent years. I understand that reaching for one's valuables is human nature, and that people don't always behave rationally in a crisis, but lugging your carry-ons down the aisle in the middle of an emergency evacuation, when seconds can mean the difference between life and death, is reckless. You're endangering your own life and the lives of those people behind you. And those escape slides are much higher and steeper than it appears on television. They are not designed with convenience in mind. They are there to get a planeload of people out of, and away from, the aircraft as quickly as possible - without their belongings. When you slide, you slide very fast, and jumping into a slide with your belongings places physical obstacles directly in the path of others. 
 Although cabin crew are trained to command people to leave their things behind, there's only so much they can do without slowing things down even further. 
 Lastly, we're hearing murmurs already about the fact that Asiana Airlines hails from South Korea, a country with a checkered past when it comes to air safety. Let's nip this storyline in the bud. In the 1980s and 1990s, that country's largest carrier, Korean Air, suffered a spate of fatal accidents, culminating with the crash of Flight 801 in Guam in 1997. The airline was faulted for poor training standards and a rigid, authoritarian cockpit culture. The carrier was ostracized by many in the global aviation community, including its airline code-share partners. But South Korean aviation is very different today, following a systemic and very expensive overhaul of the nation's civil aviation system. A 2008 assessment by ICAO, the civil aviation branch of the United Nations, ranked South Korea's aviation safety standards, including its pilot training standards, as nothing less than the highest in the world, beating out more than 100 other countries. As they should be, South Koreans are immensely proud of this turnaround, and Asiana Airlines, the nation's No. 2 carrier, had maintained an impeccable record of both customer satisfaction and safety. 
 Whatever happened on final approach into SFO, I highly doubt that it was anything related to the culture of South Korean air safety in 2013. Plane crashes are increasingly rare the world over. But they will continue to happen from time to time, and no airline or country is 100 percent immune. 
 Smith is an airline pilot and the host of AskthePilot.com. He is the author of the new book "Cockpit Confidential."

Opinion

Commentary

OPSMITH08

Smith: What happened aboard Asiana Airlines Flight 214? A pilot's perspective

APTOPIX San Francisco Airliner Crash--cropped/ts

The two 16-year-old girls killed in the San Francisco plane crash were close friends and top students who were on Asiana Flight 214 for the same reason: to get a taste of American education and possibly brighten their futures. 
 Wang Linjia showed talent in physics and calligraphy; Ye Mengyuan was a champion gymnast who excelled in literature. Both were part of a trend among affluent Chinese families willing to spend thousands of dollars to send their children to the U.S. for a few weeks in the summer to practice English and hopefully boost their chances of attending a U.S. college — considered better than China's alternatives by many Chinese families. 
 Wang's family was staying at a hotel when they learned that the daughter was one of the two people killed when the Boeing 777 crash-landed Saturday at San Francisco International Airport. Officials said 182 people were taken to area hospitals. 
 When visited by a state media reporter, Wang's mother sat on a bed, crying silently and her father sat in a chair with a blank expression, said the Youth Times, an official newspaper in the girls' home province of Zhejiang, in eastern China. 
 Wang's next-door neighbor, a woman surnamed Xia, described Wang as quiet, courteous and diligent. 
 "She was very keen to learn. Every time she came home she would be studying. Very rarely did she go out and play," Xia was quoted as saying. She said Wang's father proudly displayed her calligraphy and art pieces on the walls of his office. 
 Wang and Ye were part among 29 students from the city of Jiangshan who were on board to attend a summer camp, sightsee and visit several U.S. universities in California. Parents have told Chinese state media that the 15-day trip cost each student about $5,000. 
 An additional 30 students from two middle schools in the central Chinese city of Taiyuan planned to visit Columbia and Harvard universities, the University of California, Berkeley, and Hollywood, Times Square and the Lincoln Memorial during their two-week, coast-to-coast itinerary. 
 Nearly 200,000 of Chinese students studied in the U.S. in 2011-2012, more than any other country and accounting for more than a quarter of the United States' international student population. 
 The number is expected to grow, and Chinese families hoping to have their children attend American colleges see such summer trips as another way to gain an edge in applications and to help with the cultural and linguistic acclimation expected of the young students once they are abroad. 
 The popularity of these summer programs has grown significantly over the past five years, according to Alex Abrahams, the general manager of Shanghai-based Blue Sky Study, which consults families who want to send students abroad. 
 "It's a significant cost for someone who's earning an average salary in China," Abrahams said. 
 An American education has become desirable among China's growing number of middle-class families, who believe it can better prepare their children in a globalized economy, and who are less willing to put their children — often their only child — through China's cruelly competitive education system. 
 Yan Jiaqi, a Beijing-based education consultant who helps Chinese students apply to U.S. schools, said the summer tours mix having fun with preparing for college. 
 "Those kids sooner or later will go to U.S. schools, and the trip is an opportunity for them to get to know the U.S. and help them choose a university later," he said. 
 While there are no firm figures available on how many students take these trips, the English-language China Daily reported in 2011 that more than 60,000 Chinese students planned to go to summer camps in the U.S., and the number probably has increased substantially in the past two years, according to industry insiders. 
 Wang and Ye were classmates at a Jiangshan school known for its students' high academic caliber, the Youth Times said. Wang was class monitor for three years, and teachers and schoolmates described her as excelling in physics and being good at calligraphy and drawing, according to the paper. 
 Ye also was a top student who excelled in literature, playing the piano, singing, and gymnastics. The Youth Times said Ye recently won a national gymnastics competition and routinely received honors at the school's annual speech contests. 
 The two girls were classmates from four years ago and became close friends, the paper said. 
 The girls posted their last messages on their microblog accounts Thursday and Friday. "Perhaps time can dilute the coffee in the cup, and can polish the outlines of memory," Wang wrote on her microblog Friday. 
 Her final message was simply the word "go." 
 Of the 291 passengers onboard, 141 were Chinese. At least 70 Chinese students and teachers were on the plane heading to summer camps, according to education authorities in China. 
 U.S. Embassy spokesman Nolan Barkhouse said Monday that U.S. officers are working as quickly as possible to issue visas for family members of the deceased and the injured to travel to America. The official Xinhua News Agency said the parents of Wang and Ye were to leave for the U.S. on Monday.

World

Chinese plane crash victims were student leaders

Teens killed in San Francisco plane crash were close friends, top students

China San Francisco Airliner Crash Students

Federal investigators are trying to determine whether a piece of airport navigation equipment that was out of service played any role in the deadly crash of Asiana Flight 214 at San Francisco International Airport.
Aviation experts, including two from the metropolitan area, said even if the glide scope indicator at the airport was down Saturday, the experienced flight crew piloting the South Korean jetliner should have been able to land safely. 
Deborah Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday that the runway's glide slope indicator, which pilots can use to help determine their altitude on approach, had been out of service since June because of a construction project. But she said it's not yet clear whether that played a role. 
Maxine Lubner, professor and department chair at Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in Flushing, Queens, said if the system was down, it would leave more room for pilot error. "That kind of approach over the water could be visually deceiving," she said.
Lubner said while humans can make quicker calculations in some instances than automated flight systems -- such as US Airways pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's "miracle" landing on the Hudson River -- it also can lead to disaster. 
She said there are discussions in the aviation community that "with so many automated landings, there are not enough manual landings, you get rusty."
Michael Canders, a professor of aviation at Farmingdale State College and a retired Air Force rescue pilot, said even if the system was down it should not have affected the landing during good weather. "The fact that it's down, I don't think it would've been a factor," he said. "There should be a proficiency to land aircraft manually."
With David Schwartz

Long Island

Transportation

USNAVI08

In San Francisco plane crash, investigators eye navigation equipment

San Francisco Plane Crash 

Asiana Airlines plane crash

Newsday

Homepage Trending

2026 NFL season preview

9/11 anniversary complete coverage

Wallet Watch

Most Popular

Latest videos

Nation/world video slot

Salvadorans on Long Island are preparing for the end of their Temporary Protected Status. The federal humanitarian program that allows immigrants to legally live and work in the United States, expires on Wednesday. NewsdayTV's Shari Einhorn reports.

'I never thought this would happen to them'

Aditi Patel of Old Westbury says her mother and mother-in-law, as well as a family friend, are among at least 90 Americans missing after the floods in Nepal and Tibet earlier this week, NewsdayTV's Doug Geed reports.

'It's been the most devastating 48 hours, I think, of my life'

The latest developments in the war with Iran include the naming of Ayotollah Mojtaba Khamenei to replace his father as the country's late supreme leader and the continued rise of gas prices.

Iran developments: Gas prices soar as supreme leader named

Federal officers shot another person in Minneapolis amid an immigration crackdown, Minneapolis Gov. Tim Walz said.

The man was identified as Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse

Sign up for the Breaking News newsletter

Nation/world Newsletter Widget

Nation/World Article Bottom Module

Nation/World Video Playlist

2026 has begun in other parts of the world. See celebrations from Hong Kong, Toyko, Bangkok and more locations.

Celebrations mark 2026 worldwide

State Republicans are fighting to scrap the even-year election law. Newsday columnist Joye Brown reports.

'We knew we had to take it to the federal option'

The House and Senate voted in favor of a bill to force the Justice Department to publicly release its files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

House and Senate vote to release Epstein files

The Justice Department says President Donald Trump has pardoned dozens of key figures allegedly involved in the plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Rudy Giuliani and others pardoned by Trump

Dick Cheney was one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in U.S. history.

A two-term vice president under George W. Bush

On Monday, Hurricane Melissa intensified to Category 5 strength as it neared Jamaica, where forecasters said it would unleash catastrophic flooding, multiple landslides and extensive infrastructure damage.

Category 5 hurricane to make landfall in Jamaica

On Tuesday, an immigration enforcement sweep targeting vendors on Manhattan's Canal Street turned chaotic when angry protestors surrounded federal agents and attempted to block them from driving off.

Angry crowds confront federal agents in Canal Street immigration sweep

The FBI is offering a $100,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk on a Utah university campus. NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports.

$100,000 reward for information

Donald Trump said the U.S. military struck three sites in Iran, directly joining Israel's effort to decapitate the country's nuclear program in a risky gambit to weaken a long-time foe.

Trump says Iran's key nuclear sites 'completely and fully obliterated' by strikes

Tensions in Los Angeles escalated over the weekend as thousands of protesters took to the streets in response to President Donald Trump's deployment of the National Guard.

Police and protesters clash outside federal detention center in LA after ICE raids

Americans could pay more for fresh vegetables and electronics as imports from Canada and Mexico will be taxed at 25% and Chinese imports at 20%. 

Trump tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China take effect

The last 10 minutes of the nearly 45-minute meeting devolved into a tense back and forth between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had urged skepticism about Russia's commitment to diplomacy, citing Moscow's years of broken commitments on the global stage.

Watch: Trump, Zelenskyy and Vance in Oval Office blowup

NEWSDAY TV SHORTS

Vertical videos

NewsdayTV's Shari Einhorn looks at how Long Island schools are using first-person memories and immersive experiences to teach about 9/11, 25 years later.

How LI schools are teaching 9/11 to those who didn't experience it

50 years of farm-fresh fun! NewsdayTV's Doug Geed takes us to a Water Mill u-pick farm that's harvesting way more than just apples.

Out East: The Milk Pail U-pick apple farm in Water Mill

The proposed Amazon warehouse and distribution center in Holbrook would be one of Amazon's largest facilities in the U.S. NewsdayTV's Andrew Ehinger reports.

Residents oppose proposed Amazon warehouse

Mark Nash, who was an assistant coach at Molloy and Stony Brook, takes over as head coach for the Ward Melville girls soccer team this season and is looking to bring back a championship standard, NewsdayTV's Jonathan Ruban reports.

New coach, different strategy for Ward Melville girls soccer

Organizers say the efforts will help restore the water quality in the bay because these sprats act as "filters." NewsdayTV's Shari Einhorn has more.

Baby oysters released into the Great South Bay

Street takeovers this summer on Long Island have led to traffic tickets, impounded vehicles and arrests. Newsday reporter Nicholas Grasso provides insight on this trend.

Long Islanders offer various perspectives on street takeovers

Some farm stand owners are sharing video footage on social media, citing threats to an ethics code that has guided the East End economy for decades. NewsdayTV's Doug Geed reports.

East End farm stands report thefts, threatening decades-old honor systems

ScieGen Pharmaceuticals wants to build a 60,000-square-foot factory and warehouse in Hauppauge to meet consumer demand. NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie reports.

Pharmaceutical company expanding, adding jobs in Suffolk

NewsdayTV's Carissa Kellman visits Adventure Paddleboards & Kayaks in East Quogue for a GoBoat adventure.

It's your last chance to book an LI 'bumper boat'

Sayville Falls Miniature Golf and Beer Garden offers family-friendly activities, gazebos with TVs for rent and food that changes with the seasons. NewsdayTV's Andrew Ehinger reports.

Sayville Falls Miniature Golf and Beer Garden offers more than you might think

<a href="https://www.newsday.com/video/newsdaytv-top-stories">Get more on these and other NewsdayTV stories</a>

Newsday TV

NewsdayTV Top Item

Teaching 9/11 in schools ... Delta flight makes emergency return to JFK ... Man sentenced for fatally kicking dog ... Shooting for magical soccer season

Teaching 9/11 in schools ... Man sentenced for fatally kicking dog ... Shooting for magical soccer season

Pushing back against Amazon warehouse ... Mother seeks recognition for son who died on 9/11 ... Salvadorans with TPS status can stay ... Look ahead at the weather

Pushing back against Amazon warehouse ... Mother seeks recognition for son who died on 9/11 ... Salvadorans with TPS status can stay

App Nativo Ad Unit Slot

Nation/World - megaslot

Read the latest national and world news, including stories from Newsday's reporters in Washington, D.C.

Most Popular

Latest videos

Stay logged in.