Armchair air crash investigator

http://momav.me/armchair-air-crash-investigator/

by momavujisic • 13 years ago

230 150 13 years ago

bdirgo• 13 years ago

I heard a reporter on TV reporting that the airplane was doing cartwheels on the runway, and I pictured the semi-truck being flipped over in Batman. And then I thought what the hell could have done that? Fishtailed makes more sense, thanks for the clarification.

austenallred• 13 years ago

There were a lot of reports like these that were complete assumption based on the fact that one witness said the airplane had flipped over. It actually hadn't.

JshWright3• 13 years ago

Just like the comment that Michael Hastings' car crash 'sounded like a bomb' resulted in all sorts of assumptions that the car exploded.

stcredzero• 13 years ago

I don't think airframes have quite the strength to flip end over end from contact with the ground, even at landing speeds. I can grab this pen rom my desk and throw it on the carpet so it flips vertically end over end. A 777 airframe might do something halfway between that and crumbling as it bounces.

dmourati2• 13 years ago

O RLY? http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/07/us/plane-crash-main/index.html...

WalterBright• 13 years ago

With cameras everywhere on the streets, I am baffled that there aren't cameras on the runways. Many, many airplane accidents on runways would be a lot easier to investigate, including, for example, the one where the SST caught fire.

timcederman• 13 years ago

There are runway cameras.

momavujisic6• 13 years ago

CNN just released video footage they have of the actual crash.

The plane (from what I see) after crashing does a near 360-degree turn with the right wing high up – in fact you can see that the plane is almost nose down-tail up which almost makes it look like it was cartwheeling.

Very surprising revelation, I really did not expect an airframe to remain as intact as it did after going through that.

rogerbinns2• 13 years ago

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2013/07/07/vo-plane-...

neurotech13• 13 years ago

I looked at the video again and again, and ironically, if the jet had done a 360 on the ground it would have broken into pieces, but this jet did a airborne near-360 after the wingtip dug in and the jet became airborne again for an instant.

Lusake2• 13 years ago

Here is graphical comparison of safe landing and Asiana crash: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BOhIDCWCUAApHFV.jpg:large .

Also it appears that runway was modified: http://metabunk.org/sk/HL7742_777_Crash%2C_Korean_Asiana_Air...

pcl• 13 years ago

Interesting. I wonder what the Asiana's descent profile looks like compared to the average and some outliers of other safe 777 landings at SFO. Did you generate that image? If not, what was the source?

Lusake2• 13 years ago

I found picture on twitter, it is generated by FlightAware - live flight tracking (http://www.flightaware.com)

gklitt• 13 years ago

I saw another image online, which compared the descent profiles of the past week of landings for the same flight. It showed that the July 6th landing was very close to the normal descent profile, and the July 5th landing was actually the outlier -- it had an unusually shallow glide slope.

Unfortunately I can't find the image right now, but perhaps someone else knows where it is and can provide it?

joezydeco• 13 years ago

From a reddit comment[1]:

"PPrune[2] also had a guy weighing in saying that when he flew for a Korean carrier he saw guys try to do banana-shaped approaches to get a smoother landing. Wouldn't be the first time the Koreans have pulled something like this."

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1hrewx/asiana_air...

[2] http://www.pprune.org

bajsejohannes3• 13 years ago

Poking around flighaware's website, I found data sources that could be used to make a better graph:

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAR214/history/20130625/0...

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAR214/history/20130626/0...

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAR214/history/20130706/0...

Nothing like URLs with obvious patterns!

proexploit• 13 years ago

Worth noting that with a modification like that, it looks like it actually gives extra space for landing, not less. So that piece probably isn't a factor at all.

mikeyouse• 13 years ago

Runway 28L at SFO is 10,800 feet long in its current configuration. The spec for the 777 is 5,800 feet of runway for landing[1]. There is obviously a fair amount of weight, wind dependency in determining the minimum required length, but the runway was almost 100% longer than was necessary.

[1] http://www.ana.co.jp/eng/aboutana/corporate/galleryclassi/19...

bajsejohannes3• 13 years ago

This is comparing one single safe landing to a crash landing. Does that gain us new insights? Not really. For that, we'd need the crash landing compared to the average landing, and also to other (safe and unsafe) extreme landings of the past.

And to get all Tufte of the graphics: Most of this is chart junk. The 3d view only serveres to hide information, and overlaying the paths (in 2d) would actually let us compare more accurately.

omegant• 13 years ago

Average aircraft approach is a 3º glide slope. And usually all of them look exactly like that (only minor deviations due to the wind). If that chart is true is easy to see that they where high on the (non working) glidslope.

ronnier• 13 years ago

This is an excellent article. Like Air France 447, seems very plausible that pilot error did play some role. This reinforces my respect for the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549, Captain Sullenberger.

jared3142• 13 years ago

Thank you for your armchair analysis, but I will wait for the NTSB's report.

JshWright3• 13 years ago

That seems needlessly snarky in response to some thoughts that are very clearly labeled as speculation.

jared3142• 13 years ago

It was snarky, and I expected the down votes. But, I think it needs to be said. Neither I, nor the OP, have enough information to make any conclusions. It is just a lot of observations, rumors, and opinions.

I love speculating about everything from government policy to interpersonal relationships. (It helps me validate my mental model of the world.) But, in this case, I know the NTSB currently has a better picture of the situation than anyone on the internet.

joshbaptiste• 13 years ago

indeed, which will take ~2 years

neurotech13• 13 years ago

They'll make a preliminary, primarily "factual" report within days, or weeks. This will be based on the FDR, Quick Access Recorder, statements by crew, passengers and witnesses to the NTSB investigators.

Even though I'm a former pilot, I've not made any posts prior to this one, because I didn't want to speculate.

madiator2• 13 years ago

Sorry to go offtopic here, but the images seem to be used without any credits. The first one was taken by David Eun (https://path.com/p/1lwrZb)

momavujisic6• 13 years ago

I'm actually working right now to try to put some kind of overlay over the images for credit situations. My blog is still a WIP. Sorry!

pedrocr• 13 years ago

You say that as if giving credit is enough. If you don't have a license/permission to use the image you're violating copyright and the correct response is to take it down.

avree• 13 years ago

Well, the whole blog design is very gray-area 'theft' of Medium's design.

madiator2• 13 years ago

Oh, I was actually thinking I was reading a post on Medium.

jrockway• 13 years ago

I don't know what Medium is, but ... a white page with a title on the top? This is just as much a 'theft' of the default Apache "It works!" page.

saraid216• 13 years ago

I think that the lack of author information in the top left is sufficiently different to not even call it gray area. And the lack of paragraph-level comments.

The logo and typography seem very similar, even to my untrained eye, though.

ISL• 13 years ago

Not just credit, but also permission.....

kop316• 13 years ago

"The final bit of information is interesting. It shows a positive rate of climb – 120 feet per minute to be exact, which for a jet airliner, is very slow. For reference, at takeoff the vertical speed is most often +1500 feet per minute. Another interesting bit of information is the aircraft’s airspeed; 85 kts – for a Boeing 777 that is (and I’m guessing here) probably way below stall speed."

That is actually expected. It is called the flare just before touchdown:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_flare

lukecampbell• 13 years ago

I've never flown a B777 or any heavy aircraft so I can't comment on their typical flares, but in a Cessna 172 the flare doesn't induce a positive rate of climb, it simply slows the vertical descent speed to something manageable for touch down, a positive vertical speed seems counterintuitive to me as a good flare. What I want to know is what his IAS (indicated air-speed) at the decision altitude.

Again the only thing I've flown are parachutes and some hours in a C172 and a C182.

VLM6• 13 years ago

It gives a pretty good estimate of the error involved in the descent rate reporting. Probably accurate +/- 200 FPM or so.

The airspeed encoder is probably from the same system that displays the pilot instruments, indicated airspeed IAS. I thought it odd that the analysis of conditions didn't think 125 and 98 were ridiculously low airspeeds, but claimed that an approach around 130 knots was a "fast approach". However what little I know about the 777 from the flightsim and real pilot community is that a typical approach is around 150-something slowing to a bit above 130 at flare. I've read some claims from actual heavy pilots that under really light conditions a Vref below 120 is theoretically possible.

None of us know the weight and balance calcs so its impossible to determine if the pilots were doing the correct thing, although it is possible to determine they were flying a flight path implying they thought they were very light indeed. Now why? Who knows. Maybe because they were right, they were light. Maybe because they were low-ish on fuel. Maybe they didn't trust their IAS instrument. Maybe their IAS was actually broken and comparing their visual approach with instruments, well, its just a really strong headwind today. Maybe they made a math error. Somebody overcontrolled?

He could have found this info by violating the copyright of numerous google-able flight sim forums, and forums with real genuine 777 pilots talking about their experience with the 777. Instead he violates the copyright of a picture which we've all already seen, oh well.

momavujisic6• 13 years ago

In a landing flare, you want to raise your negative V/S to near zero. A positive vertical speed means you're no longer descending, but ascending. Having a positive vertical speed during the landing flair is something you don't want to have as you're basically floating (and possibly climbing) above the runway and bleeding your airspeed which, in a couple seconds will most likely end in a hard landing as you've stalled while floating over the runway.

The positive rate of climb to me, indicates that they attempted to climb (go-around) but their low airspeed resulted in a stall.

It's important to remember that this data was pulled off Flightware which is basically aggregated data. and not from an accurate source such as the FDR. So my guess could be totally wrong.

trothamel• 13 years ago

I'm not sure we can believe the last data point - it's possible that's a real ascent, or it's possible it's caused by failing hardware as the plane crashes.

mikeash4• 13 years ago

It's been said, but I want to add weight to it: this is not at all expected. You never climb during a normal landing.

I'd wager that 120fpm climb reading to be due to a measurement error of some kind, not actually something that really happened.

phire• 13 years ago

Looking at the GPS coordinates, the second to last reading was ~200m before the seawall, while the last reading was around halfway down the runway.

The plane is far outside it's normal operating conditions by this point, it's possible the plane instruments actually experienced a brief moment of 'climb' while the plane was crashing, or it could be equipment malfunction.

However, from what I can tell, the plane never reached that far down the runway. And the gps coordinates have actually snapped to the middle of runway 19L, near where it intercepts 28L, suggesting that flight radar 24 are doing some post-processing to make the planes stick to runways better.

I wouldn't trust that last data-point at all, as it's definitely post-seawall.

jervisfm• 13 years ago

It goes without saying that my qualifications in aviation matters are only as an aviation enthusiast and for the full cause of the accident, we'll have to wait for the NTSB report (which has access to vital black box data and cockpit recordings).

However, I did give this accident some thought as well given the circumstances of the accident and came the pretty much the same final conclusion as the OP.

An airline pilot I once spoke to told me once that all the big jetliners use automated ILS with autopilot to automate the landings. The system is pretty accurate and reliable and can deliver landings as good as a well-trained and experienced pilot can.

When I saw the rather steep final approach the aircraft was making, I had suspected that the pilots were doing a manual landing. Now that we have information that the ILS was temporarily inoperational this appears to be what transpired and the pilots manually flew the final approach.

The precise reasons for why the manual approach ended up in this accident are still to be determined. One thing that I will point out though is that pilots for modern jetliners do relatively little actual manual flying of the plane. Modern airplanes have advanced FMS (Flight Management System) that allow for automatic flying from lift-off until landing with pilots overseeing the system. Given this lack of manual flying, there is a greater potential for human error when a pilot is required to actually do manual flying.

cjrp2• 13 years ago

Pilots will actually very rarely use the autoland functionality (apart from when weather, e.g. low visibility, requires it, and also to ensure that they're current with the procedure). They'll use the autopilot for the initial part of the approach, but then when visual with the runway will often disconnect it in order to fly the actual landing manually (still following the indications on the flight director, which are provided by the localiser/glidescope signals).

simpleigh• 13 years ago

Relevant link: http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/12/12/cockpit-confidential-...

"The touchdown had been a fully manual one, as the vast majority of touchdowns are."

jevinskie• 13 years ago

Why is this? Can they do a better (in terms of passenger comfort) job landing manually?

gcv• 13 years ago

So the price of automation is eternal vigilance? Reminds me of the old argument that overuse of calculators means people have lost the ability to do mental arithmetic.

dopamean• 13 years ago

My father is a commercial airline pilot. He flew Boeing aircraft for 15 years and for the last 10 has been on a variety of Airbuses. He tells me that pilots very, very rarely use the auto land features and that he has never used it himself.

will_asouka• 13 years ago

I'm a widebody captain, maybe I can add some insight.

The handling of the aircraft is a small part of the job. Autoflight systems have been capable of flying and landing since the 1960s. It is a mature technology although it does need to be monitored by humans as equipment failures do occur. I am confident a system could be developed with sufficient fail safes to remove the requirement for monitoring, and a fully automatically flown aircraft could be built tomorrow although at a higher cost than the current monitored setup.

Even if an unmonitored autoflown aircraft was developed, judgement decisions about the operation of the aircraft still need to be taken, and these are best done by a human. Examples of decisions I make:

1. The best fuel consumption maybe achieved at a higher flight level, but I elect to stay low and burn into contingency because I've heard reports of turbulence at the higher level. I judge that I probably won't need the contingency fuel later based on previous experience of the route and destination. So I give my passengers a smooth ride, which helps repeat custom for the airline.

2. I experience radio crackle whilst in cloud and elect to change my routing as I suspect we are near a developing thunderstorm that may soon become active. I have to balance the extra fuel burn of a non-optimal route versus the risks of being caught in a thunderstorm which could destroy the aircraft.

I'm not an AI expert, but it seems to me these are value judgements that are best made by a human. So the fully autoflown aircraft will still need a human in the loop at some point.

It is possible to remotely site this human, and maybe make efficiency savings by a single human controlling many aircraft but this would require a bulletproof, near realtime datalink. Again, I'm not an expert in the field, but I would suggest this is, if not technically impossible, then a lot more expensive than the cost of employing human pilots. I imagine this datalink would also be of interest to people with ill intent- no fun when you get the airborne equivalent of a rickroll.

TL;DR: A human is required in the loop, not to handle the aircraft but to make decisions. It's cheaper to have them on-board than the cost of a datalink. It's cheaper to have them trained to take manual control than the cost of an autopilot sufficiently fail safe that it can be left unmonitored.

rdl4• 13 years ago

NY Daily News is reporting that VASI was down as well (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/expert-runway-guida...) Which appears to be due to someone incorrectly reading a post-crash NOTAM which is about the aids being gone due to the crash, so there's no particular reason to think VASI was down before the crash.

I really don't think I'd trust SF city government to run an airport, even under FAA regulations. Look at every other city service SF has, and imagine that quality applied to preventing hundred ton soda cans full of people and jet fuel from exploding.

dave5104• 13 years ago

How many of those other services are as highly federally regulated as flying an airplane, though? MUNI may suck, but MUNI doesn't need to answer to the feds.

rdl4• 13 years ago

Rail is federally regulated; it's part of why BART and Caltrain and HSR are so screwed up (passenger rail has to conform to some very very high crash standards to operate on the same network as freight rail, unlike in Europe and Asia -- so instead they built BART as a separate network and used essentially custom gauge, trainsets, etc. for everything.)

Admittedly the parts of Muni, BART, etc. which are the most screwed up are not the parts regulated much by the federal government, but at the very least SF is the organization picking the people to do things, and I'm wary of that. (although elected officials are also bad in SF; a Chief Law Enforcement Officer who beats his wife, etc.)

snom38011• 13 years ago

I bet those other services aren't subject to frequent inspections by the FAA.

VLM6• 13 years ago

The short version is there are multiple things on a runway that emit light and I think they're being confused.

"Which appears to be due to someone incorrectly reading a post-crash NOTAM which is about the aids being gone due to the crash"

OK first of all VASI has been obsolete since I was a kid in the 90s, its all PAPI now. (edited to add, in the USA) Much like people still call the AWOS an ATIS because it does about the same thing. I'm not just picking nits, if you try researching this, you'll find the VASI has been outta service probably since the 90s, you want the PAPI. Its all the same anyway, white you're light, red you're dead. VASI is before my time but I'm told it was the same arrangement?

If you want NOTAMs you can just go to FAA's pilotweb, this link might work or you can search. Holy cow SFO has a lot of NOTAMS to read about.

https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWeb/notamRetrievalByICAOAc...

!SFO 07/047 SFO RWY 10R/28L CLSD WEF 1307062309

!SFO 07/046 SFO RWY 28L PAPI OTS WEF 1307062219

The PAPI (precision approach whatever indicator or something) was marked out on the 6th at 2219 and the runways (not all listed above) formally closed at 2309. I think that is after the crash UTC time?

Now according to this NOTAM

!SFO 06/003 SFO RWY 28R ALS OTS WEF 1306011400-1308222359

They've been screwing around with the ALS lights for like 5 weeks now as per the daily news story. The ALS is mostly to light the place up at night, make sure you can line up on the correct runway (L or R) and most importantly in the USA this has the decision bar, if the weather is so poor that you can't see the decision bar, its too poor to continue the approach. I'm told the weather was beautiful during the crash, so I don't think the decision bar being rebuilt or whatever had much if anything to do with the crash.

Something I don't understand about ALS on an airport by an ocean (not exactly a problem where I live) is how they mount the decision bar and its little friends. Its going to be quite a distance from the end of the runway and some runways seem to go right up to the sea, so piers out in the ocean or something? If they hit the SFO ALS that would imply the plane would be well offshore under water.

The ALS, aside maybe from some wiring, is probably not any more or less messed up by the crash than anything else's power wiring. I could imagine a plane running off the runway into the PAPI and that would be about the end of that PAPI, or at least it'll have to be aligned.

rdl4• 13 years ago

It looks like they mount stuff on CA-92/San Mateo Bridge (http://www.flysfo.com/web/export/sites/default/download/abou...) and then from there along the approach. The main issue seems to be the two parallel runways. From when I took photos of the airfield, there were a lot of lights and other things sticking out of the bay on the approach path. Decision Bar is supposed to be 1000' off the threshold so that was probably it.

I'm not a pilot; once I have spare money and time (and enough to fly monthly to keep current), probably.

It's interesting reading about stuff like the "No Transgression Zone", though.

sneak3• 13 years ago

I could imagine a plane running off the runway into the PAPI and that would be about the end of that PAPI, or at least it'll have to be aligned.

As best I can tell from the available photos, the reason the 28L PAPI is out is because the plane took out the three rightmost ones when it slid/bounced across the blast pad area.

leoedin• 13 years ago

The accuracy of something like flighradar24 at low altitudes (where the difference between a landing and a crash is a matter of feet) is not high enough, and the data reporting interval is not small enough, to be used to do more than guess what happened. The article gives 3-4 data points per minute. You can't look at that data and draw any conclusions about the motion of an aircraft.

It's fun speculating, but please remember that the data from ADS-B is not designed to reflect the aircraft's motion over the time periods that matter in a crash. We have no idea what delays are present in the system, what delays flightradar's system adds in, and what the accuracy of the system is. It's very important to understand the limitations of any sensor data you analyse. It would be good to mention that in the article.

Edit: I notice that there's a little disclaimer at the bottom of the article saying that Flightradar24/flightaware data is "not 100% accurate", which is sort of covering the issue. However, when dealing with data like this it's important to remember that there's all sorts of ways data can be "accurate" or not. The uncertainty of the data itself, the frequency of data captured, the accuracy of the timestamps attached to the data and all sorts of other variables need to be considered when you're trying to understand the picture that sensor data is painting.

tonylemesmer• 13 years ago

I would hope the difference between a landing and a crash is a little more than 'feet' otherwise we'd have a lot more crashes. Maybe the difference between a BAD landing and a crash is only feet :)

mikeash4• 13 years ago

A typical airliner approach is a 3 degree angle touching down at 1000ft past the end of the runway. That means that they pass over the threshold at about 150ft. Let's say there's another 1000ft past that before things get problematic (at SFO it's considerably less, I believe), that means that the airliner passes over the dangerous bit at about 300ft when operating normally, and 300ft lower would cause a crash.

This isn't normally a problem, because detecting and ensuring that 300ft difference is not really hard.

nostromo• 13 years ago

Curious as to why autopilot isn't being used to land planes yet. My understanding is that pilots can choose to use it to land, but only do so when visibility is very low. (ex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOFs-oa-bbc)

cpncrunch3• 13 years ago

The autopilot requires the ILS to land the plane. If the ILS is inoperative, it can't autoland. However pilots do still land planes to keep their skills honed.

vl• 13 years ago

Presumably GPS and/or visual recognition system can be used to achieve the same, after all airstrip location is know in advance.

pbhjpbhj• 13 years ago

They mention that the ILS was off for repairs. Isn't that a major negative for doing autopilot landing (if indeed it's still allowed/possible without the external location based information).

dakrisht• 13 years ago

Correct. You cannot Autoland without the ILS (both glide slope + localizer are required)

snom38011• 13 years ago

It's being used when needed. When not needed, pilots use the opportunity to practice landings. It's important to not get over-dependent on automation.

cpncrunch3• 13 years ago

It looks like this was an unstabilized approach right down to the ground. It would be interesting to see what the company SOP is. Any safe airline has a no-fault go-around policy for unstabilized approaches, and you'll actually get in trouble if you continue with an unstabilized approach and you don't go around. From what pilots are saying on the message boards it seems that a lot of Asian airlines have pretty much the opposite policy - you get in trouble if you go around for any reason, and they would prefer you to salvage an unstabilized approach to save money.

VladRussian23• 13 years ago

pretty much looks the same to me - the guy stalled and when he finally, at the last second (actually - well past the last second), decided to go around, he did jerk up the nose and that increased the stall, so they fell. Reminds me about the AirFrance fall in the Atlantic some years ago - that guy was trying to gain altitude by jerking the nose up (i.e. increasing the "angle of attack") instead of "pressing the accelerator pedal".

marvin2• 13 years ago

If this is what really happened, I'll say the same thing I said then - it shocks me that airline pilots with thousands of flight hours can make the most elementary piloting mistake possible.

But I've read accident reports before, and it's rarely a good idea to speculate. I won't have an opinion about this until the official report is published.

rogerbinns2• 13 years ago

There is an excellent posting with graphs comparing the Asiana flight to a United 777 that landed 10 minutes before. The graphs compare height, speed and importantly energy. http://flyingprofessors.net/what-happened-to-asiana-airlines...

As most have hypothesized, it was an unstabilized approach and they should have done a go around (barring unknown technical/mechanical factors).

VLM6• 13 years ago

Looking at the graphs the plane was ahead of them by about 5-10 seconds. That usually doesn't turn out too well. Gotta be ahead of the plane, not the plane ahead of you. Usually a noob mistake (on the ground system failure, hard to fix) OR hopefully extensive extenuating circumstances (on the plane system failure, easy to fix).

JonFish85• 13 years ago

I don't really like when people post these sort of "arm-chair" hypotheses. As much as it's fun to try to figure things out, there is always the danger of people jumping to conclusions based on bad or incomplete data. It reminds me a lot of the reddit people immediately following the Boston Marathon bombings. It's definitely an interesting read, but I don't want to take it for much more than just idle speculation.

momavujisic6• 13 years ago

Idle speculation and having a bit of fun trying to play air crash investigator, is exactly what this article is. I hope that I was able to convey that this is about "what I think" happened and not "what happened".

joejohnson• 13 years ago

Does anyone know if they've released the information about where the people who died/were severely injured were sitting in the plane? I'd love to see a seating chart that shows the safest and least safe seats on a 777.

hga• 13 years ago

It really depends on the type of accident (skim Wikipedia on ones with survivors) ... and after looking at the CNN supplied video https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6003232 right now I'm thinking "Major miracle" and "If it's ain't Boeing, I ain't going", although I'm sure it's a lot more of the former than the latter.

Wistar• 13 years ago

Cellphone video shot by a guy, Fred Hayes, watching aircraft land yesterday at SFO shows the tail dragging in the water for quite a distance before striking the seawall.

http://statter911.com/2013/07/07/must-see-crash-of-asiana-fl...

I'm guessing that the pilot was praying for those engines to spool-up faster.

United857• 13 years ago

To the OP just curious -- are you a licensed pilot? Not to question you since you did say this was just speculation but just wondering. It's pretty well informed.

jussij• 13 years ago

Here is my one minute as an armchair air crash investigator.

In recent times I've read some very strange incidents reports with regard to airline pilots.

One plane crashed on landing while coming in to final approach at twice the recommended speed.

Another was coming in for final approach some 500 feet below the allowable height and off the designated flight path.

These are examples of some very basic flying errors.

In years previous pilots had to do many hours in light aircraft, then move on to bigger aircraft and only after decades of flying experience did they make it onto the big jets.

But in todays cut price flying environment I suspect most pilots don’t do that much flying and as such they don’t know as much about flying as they should.

This one is going to be pilot error.

damian20002• 13 years ago

Some more relevant news just breaking now ... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/asiana-flight-214-p...

elnate• 13 years ago

Is anyone else puking mad at those people carrying their luggage in the photo? I feel like getting off a burning plane should take priority over duty free purchases.

Armchair air crash investigator

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