Federal panel to hold hearing on S.F. Asiana crash
Kevin Fagan | San Francisco Chronicle
Published 5:58 pm, Saturday, December 7, 2013
Federal investigators will interview dozens of experts and witnesses in a two-day hearing this week to try to come closer to determining what caused an Asiana Airlines jet to crash at San Francisco International Airport in July, and why rescuers ran over a survivor with a fire rig.Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board already have named several possible factors in the crash that left three dead and 181 injured. Those include problems with the Boeing 777's automatic throttle and communications issues among the cockpit crew of the South Korean airline.
But even if the board's hearing Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington, D.C., tightens the focus on those factors, many experts already believe human error was to blame.
'Pilots screwed up'
"There is no doubt about it, the pilots screwed up because of automation dependency," said Barry Schiff, a former TWA pilot who has written extensively about aviation safety and has closely followed the probe into the Asiana crash. "The primary responsibility of a pilot is to make sure the aircraft is maintaining a minimum speed, because speed is the lifeblood of flight, and they clearly did not do that."
Investigators quickly concluded that as Asiana Flight 214 made its approach to the runway July 6, it was traveling at a dangerously slow 122 mph - instead of the usual 158 mph required at that point - and was about to stall. The pilots told safety board inspectors that they had engaged an automatic throttle designed to keep the plane at a proper speed for landing, but the inspectors have said it wasn't clear the mechanism was operating.
It wasn't until 7.5 seconds before impact that the pilots finally tried to accelerate, according to safety board reports. At 1.5 seconds before impact, the crew announced it would try to pull up and circle around.
The aircraft instead clipped a seawall in front of the runway with its landing gear and tail assembly, slammed into the tarmac, and skidded into a field, where it burst into flames. Two teenage girls from China died of crash injuries.
A third, 16-year-old Ye Meng Yuan, was run over and killed by a San Francisco fire rig as she lay outside the plane. That incident will be scrutinized on the second day of the safety board's hearing.
S.F. officials will attend
Airport and fire officials from San Francisco are scheduled to attend with a city legal team. At least one of them, Assistant Deputy Fire Chief Dale Carnes, head of the airport bureau, will be questioned by investigators as a witness.
Few, however, expect the safety board to assess blame during the two-day session.
"This is just an investigative hearing to gather information, and the idea is to help us narrow things down," said Keith Holloway, a spokesman for the safety board. "We will look at every aspect of the accident, and we can't focus on any one particular thing at this point."
The agency's final report isn't expected to be finished until at least July.
On the first day of the hearing, the safety board will zero in on the jet's flight deck controls, air speed dynamics and pilot training. On the second, it will look at the influence of automated controls on pilot performance, crash-safety features of the airplane and the emergency response by the Fire Department and other agencies.
Pilots not on list
In addition to Carnes, witnesses expected to testify include several experts in air flight, Boeing mechanics and an Asiana pilot who was not on the plane. The four pilots who were on Flight 214 were interviewed in the weeks after the crash and are not on the witness list for the Washington hearing.
Larry Mares, duty manager at SFO, said city officials are "looking forward to the results of the investigation."
"Up until now we've been very pleased with the NTSB's fact-finding process, and we continue to cooperate with that," he said. "Whatever they come up with, we will of course act upon."
The airport released its own review of the emergency response last month, finding that a website designed to alert key managers of an emergency had failed. Because of the review, Mares said, the website has been updated and a hot line installed to establish immediate contact between the airport's control tower and command center managers on the ground.
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Federal-panel-to-hold-hearing-on-S-F-Asiana-crash-5045072.phpCheck out http://groups.yahoo.com/group/californiadisasters/
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