San Francisco Asiana Crash - a little cautionary tale
 

I've had a light flashing somewhere in my brain ever since the Asiana crash and I traced down the source today. I read an aviation article about making the approach to San Francisco runway 28 (R) after an overseas flight a while ago and knew something about that particular pattern and approach. Now, I'm not suggesting this is directly applicable, but it does shed some light on the whole situation. The article was written by one of the highest-hour commercial 747 pilots around who also flies classic warbirds of all kinds and writes articles and books. The incident occurred on a flight with three very senior captains and two very senior flight engineers in the cockpit. A set up quote from the author:
Yet an incident happened, and was only prevented from accelerating to an accident by the final cockpit scan of a the pilot in charge.

The article is Pelican's Perch #80: Gear Up Landing in a 747? by John Deakin

Enjoy,

Bob

Interesting article.

Fascinating read... Thanks Bob!

In the article, it appears that the author/pilot had full manual control of the plane during his decent into SFO. Conversely, the Asiana crew was in either full or partial auto mode for landing, and apparently too trusting of the computer and too lax in monitoring it until it was too late.

One of the outcomes after the 1977 Tenerife crash was the dismantling of the Captain is God culture among flight crews and the encouraging of lesser pilots and engineers to challenge them and their decisions without impunity. In the same manner, I hope the Asiana crash brings back more hands-on human involvement and responsibility during key moments of a flight.

I enjoyed the article very much. It reminded me of a book I read decades ago called "God is My Co-Pilot," in particular the author's recounting of his early days in aviation and his reliance solely on his training and piloting skills to pull him through tough times.

Thanks for posting it.

I've heard some discussion questioning what role, if any, 'culture' (as in country of origin) might play in crashes when respect for authority is not something that is challenged in everyday life and likely extends to the command structure in the cockpit.

Malcolm Gladwell's book "The Outliers" has a whole chapter dedicated to Korean "Cockpit Culture" hierarchy with specific crash examples that is excellent and it's generating a buzz about the SF crash. The NY crash example is especially scary.

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