The pilot flying the Asiana Airlines jet that crash landed at San Francisco International had a mere 43 hours of experience on the Boeing 777, although airline official insist the pilot had a significant amount of flight time on other jets. The pilot had also never flown into San Francisco International Airport before.
Asiana Airlines spokeswoman Lee Hyo-min revealed that the pilot, Lee Kang-kook had flown a Boeing 777 9 previous times to other airports, but was flying the jet to SFO for the first time. "He is a veteran pilot with almost 10,000 hours on other aircrafts like the 747," she said. "He was in the process of getting a license for the new 777."
The Asiana Airlines Flight 214 that Lee piloted was carrying more than 300, when it tragically crash-landed on Saturday at San Francisco International Airport. Lee flew the plane with an experienced Boeing 777 pilot mentor, despite the precautions tail of the plane was ripped off as it burst into flames upon impact.
New evidence from the plane's black box revealed that the pilots discovered the plane was going to stall and attempted to abort the landing a mere seconds before crash landing on the runway. Further analysis uncovered control malfunctions, "the control yoke shook in the pilot's hand at approximately four seconds before the plane crashed", NTSB Chair Deborah Hersman said. The pilots then attempted to perform a "go around" to abort landing on the runway, although 2 seconds later they had crash-landed.
The crash of the Boeing 777 killed two and injured 181 people. The injured were being cared for at several hospitals and according to hospital officials at least 22 were in critical condition.
The two passengers who died in the crash landing were identified as 16-year-old female students from China; they have been identified as Wang Linjia and Ye Mengyuan. The girls were part of a student group from Jiangshan Middle School in China's eastern Zhejiang province; the group was traveling to take part in a summer program.
While the initial investigation counties, the National Transportation Safety Board investigators have recovered the plane's black boxes and they were sent to Washington to be analyzed.
"We went out and looked at the accident aircraft. We have not yet talked to the pilot; we hope to do that in the coming days. But we have obtained the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, and they have been sent back to our labs in Washington. We hope that there is good data, good information on those, and we'll audition them today back at headquarters," Hersman said today while doing an interview on "This Week."
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