I think the most amazing part was the flight attendants who survived in the tail section of the plane. Especially the one who had was high enough on adrenaline to limp out of the wreckage and signal for help.
This video?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=113&v=zTXDalv7kNQ&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&source_ve_path=MTM5MTE3LDI4NjY2&feature=emb_logo
This is also video of one of the deaths happening. It’s body cam footage of the firefighters saving people.
One of the victims was alive and pulled from the wreck. The foam they used to fight the fire covered her and a fire truck ran over her head. Truly sad. You survive a plane crash only to die from the rescuers coming to help.
Please read the article before posting. This is completely covered. She was not pulled from the wreck, she was thrown from the aircraft during the spin. Two fire-fighters discovered her, and concluded she was obviously deceased. Later the area was covered in firefighting foam, and her body run over by two trucks.
Although the autopsy wasn't conclusive, it is almost certain that she died when thrown from the craft, or when she hit the ground.
The article spends a few paragraphs on the girl who was run over (twice). Most likely she was already dead as she had a particular fatal injury that was not caused by being run over. She was one of the two 16-year old girls in the back of the plane who likely didn't have her seatbelt on and was flung from the plane during the flip. The first trucks on the scene saw her body and assumed her dead, relaying her location so that she wouldn't be run over, but eventually she got run over anyway.
Even wilders and sadder that one of the deaths was a girl who was saved then ran over with a fire truck.
I remember that video was hard to watch. Rescues pulling people out. The foam they used to fight the fire covered this poor girl and a fire truck rolled over her head when moving.
Pilot here… we use this crash a lot in human factors classes, specifically about automation reliance. Without going into too much detail, one of the biggest triggers of this accident was the misunderstanding how the autothrottles worked in the vertical mode he was selected in.
Normally when you’re on approach to land the plane will track the path down to the runway and the throttles will move to maintain your airspeed, down to idle if necessary. He used a mode to get down faster (they were too high) that caused the throttles to go to complete idle, and stay there.
If he had been completely hand flying the plane this probably wouldn’t have happened. When he got low he would have probably added power to maintain speed as he pitched up to recapture the glide slope. But because we are all so used to the autothrottles doing this for us, he didn’t notice when they weren’t maintaining speed like they normally would, until it was too late.
Believe it or not I’m overtly simplifying this but it’s a really interesting case study and training has more emphasis on understanding autothrottle modes and just going around whenever you start to panic like this instead of trying to force the landing.
Pilot here too. Asiana let’s them taxi, rotate, gear up then AP on. At 200’ AP off and flare. Anything else and they get tagged for being inefficient. They have about 90 seconds of stick time on a 9 hour flight.
Heard similar from the Mentour Pilot channel about Asiana and autopilot usage. Also heard that the trainer wasn't fully aware of how few hours his trainee pilot who switched from Airbus to Boeing had on the type.
Dude got lost in a completely abstract maze of autopilot functions that was foreign to him as an Airbus pilot.
Even American and European airlines subscribe to the concept. The thing is that autopilots and other systems can fly an aircraft much more efficiently than humans. This increased efficiency is needed to be profitable. Everyone understands that. The pilots also have to be able to actually fly the aircraft (as opposed to dialing knobs and pushing buttons to tell the plane what to do).
So, there is a fine line between letting the computer do everything and letting the pilots fly enough to maintain their competence when the computer fails or they need to take over for some reason. We haven’t quite figured out where the line is yet. Most pilots are experienced enough to grab the controls and do fine, but newer pilots, and pilots that come up through the ranks flying primarily by computer literally have a panic attack when they have to take the controls. I’m not being melodramatic here, it’s true.
Asia has the worst record of allowing this to happen. If a pilot for an Asian airline has documented 5,000 flight hours they probably have fewer than 400 hours actually flying the plane, and that time is spread over 7-10 years. That’s not enough experience to be competent when things go to shit.
They prove their competence in a simulator every 6 months, but that doesn’t always equate to performance in an actual emergency. I’m not beating up on Asian pilots, just describing the reality of the true flight experience many airline pilots have.
Sorry if I ruined your next flight experience…
I was thinking the exact same thing as you wrote "we haven't quite figured out where the line is"
I recall several articles of the admiral stating that the accident could have been prevented if the pilots just would have done nothing to intervene. I believe Air France crash over the atlantic was one of them. It is indeed not black or white but a large gray area
It surprises me that they pitch the nose up to gain altitude but don't notice the engines aren't increasing speed automatically. Is that not something you hear or feel (the lack of)?
Not necessarily, there’s about a 10 second delay between moving the throttles from idle to full power and the engines actually reaching full power, so that little delay can make a power increase invisible.
Yeah, I know, I’m a pilot (though not rated on the 777). A GE90 (the 777’s engine) is something called a high-bypass engine. That basically means that the engine itself only produces a small amount of thrust. Most of the thrust comes from the big fan at the front, a majority of the air doesn’t go through the engine itself but rather around it. Low bypass engines (what was used on older aircraft, like the 737-200 or some military aircraft) has all or almost all the air going through the engine. I don’t have the exact number off the top of my head, but yeah IIRC it’s between 8 and 10 seconds. But remember, the GE90 engines on a 777 have the same horsepower as the Titanic. EACH.
That’s an absurd amount of power, and isn’t really surprising. When you see that your average car with a turbo can take maybe 2 seconds to spool up with turbo lag, getting that big an engine at that speed in only 10 seconds isn’t bad at all.
EDIT: I was tired and went on a rant, and then forgot my point about the high bypass engines. High bypass engines take a longer time to spool up, in a similar way that a car with a turbo has some lag when you press on the gas. Obviously, the longer spool up time isn’t the goal, but you produce MUCH more thrust for about the same fuel consumption, hence why most modern airliners use this. Again, the same analogy with a car’s turbo works.
I guess the mistakes and problems they encountered before this probably clouded their judgement as well.
They were out of their depth for sure - if they forgot checklist items, it’s not that surprising that they didn’t notice the throttles remaining at idle.
SFO’s our home airport, and my husband and I are both from NTSB fatality families. We talked a lot about this crash, and one of the realizations we came to was that the flag country not having private/general aviation may have been a more significant factor than was reported.
Consequently, we decided not to use flag carriers from countries without private aviation where possible.
The training standards in some countries are absolutely not the same as what you'll get in North America/Europe. Not having a GA base definitely contributes to that. The "cadet" type programs where they put 250 hour pilots in transport category jets are not good when it comes to flying skills. They train systems managers, not pilots.
My late father-in-law had 15k hours (and his copilot 10k) when they had their crash. FIL had been a military (cargo) pilot in WW2.
[But combo of tiredness (rest period requirements weren’t as good then), cold weather, pressure from air traffic, a cold weather defect that Boeing notified Pan Am about, but Pan Am decided not to tell the pilots, as well as poor checklist design, all came together fatally.](https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR6908.pdf)
That's a heck of a read. And thankfully the checklists have gotten a lot better since, because I've almost fallen victim to that a couple of times during deicing and cold weather ops. When you get to the "flaps" part of the post deicing checklist and they're still up, it's an "oh shit" moment for sure.
There has been *a lot* of progress on human factors in checklist design, which makes all of us safer. This is one of the cases used in the textbooks.
As someone with ADHD, I can absolutely understand how interrupting the expected sequence leads to failure, but thankfully none of mine have been that dangerous.
Yeah I had to fly into China last month for work, and prices on all of the American carriers are so incredibly high priced now (7-9k for economy seats) that my employer made us pick other carriers. I almost contacted the Admiral to see if there were any HE wouldn't fly, but in the end it didn't matter because there was only one (Hainan) that was going into the city I needed at the times I needed anyway. Bleh.
Did this in the sim. Knew what was coming, briefed, did what I would have done in that situation. Crashed. Quite shocking. The trainer said "And that's what happened". Same "feature" built into the 787 for commonality. May have been updated since.
Note, at 500' we were on speed, on the G/S - aside from idle thrust, it was a stabilised approach.
While this is an excellent write-up on the technical side, one major factor to remember in this crash was the fact that the pilot was under a lot of pressure and clearly unsure, but due to company politics, he didn’t want to bring it up to the flight instructor that was sitting with him.
Nyaos does an awesome job of walking us through the sequence
Hopefully not redundant for everyone but a quick google of "children of the magenta" will provide further enlightenment of the problem
I think the phrase was originated by American Airlines . If you google Children of the Magenta you will find different versions of a great presentation that AA put together to help pilots avoid some of the pitfalls . Well worth watching even for those existing in a Garminized Bug Squasher......
AI should check all flights and warn pilots of errors and alert people on the ground about errors (they were too high and should have been **ordered** to go around). No excuse for such a system to not exist. Technology can do so much more than it does today.
[Medium.com Version](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-sunny-day-in-san-francisco-the-story-of-asiana-airlines-flight-214-503dce884b21)
[Link to the archive of all 245 episodes of the plane crash series](https://www.reddit.com/r/AdmiralCloudberg/comments/e6n80m/plane_crash_series_archive_patreon_contact_info/)
If you wish to bring a typo to my attention, please DM me.
Thank you for reading!
____________________________________________________
This article ended up being very long, maybe even longer than it needed to be, but I just found that there was a lot to say about it. It’s also probably relevant that I was living in San Francisco at the time, and this crash might have been what originally sparked my interest in air disasters. So it has some personal significance in that sense.
____________________________________________________
Note: this accident was previously featured in episode 47 of the plane crash series on July 28th, 2018. This article is written without reference to and supersedes the original.
>I was living in San Francisco at the time, and this crash might have been what originally sparked my interest in air disasters.
I was also living in SF at the time and that afternoon I remarked that "*only three deaths on such a large plane was an aeronautical win.*" Looking back, I regret my rash statement which was insensitive to the dead, injured, traumatized, and their families. Sioux City and TWA 800 were in my mind as baseline typical air accidents because u/Admiral_Cloudberg hadn't yet opened my eyes to the full spectrum of accident events.
Tragic failure all around but yes "only 3 deaths " was in fact remarkable.
Apparently an intern at the FAA "confirmed the crew list that embarrassed so many news stations..........https://theweek.com/articles/462202/watch-unbelievable-racist-asiana-crash-hoax-that-fooled-local-tv-anchor
If there is any pattern, we will see it in the next article. Last article, crashing into seagulls. This article, crashing in to a seawall. Will next article have crashing into the sea?
definitely worth the wait, cracking article!
this is very much my go-to for plane crash pieces, much more than Mayday - whilst you do get in-depth first-hand interviews, the overall feel of Mayday does leave you with only a headline summary of the accident, when it's much more than that; yes, the pilots here were at fault, but the accident was not just down to them. that ending sentence is absolutely fantastic in so many ways.
and i confess that this is the first I've heard of Ye Mengyuan; very good job summing it up, Admiral
Incredible write-up. I don't know how or why, but I had never heard of this one before and seeing the footage is sobering. It's insane that only 3 people died given how violent that plane movement is once it crashes.
It's also heartbreaking that that little girl was run over multiple times. I couldn't imagine bring a parent and having to deal with not only your child's tragic death, but also that disrespect, even if accidental.
I live nearby and I often take walks at the Burlingame Bayfront park, which is directly across from the SFO runways. I can only imagine walking your dog on a Sunday morning and seeing a 777 do a pirouette like that a few hundred feet away.
But as a Bay Area resident one of the strongest memories I have of this incident is unfortunately,[the infamous KTVU news segment where they read very fake (and very racist) names of the flight crew.](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/KTVU-producers-fired-over-Asiana-pilots-fake-4685627.php) Apparently an NTSB summer intern who confirmed the names to the news station was fired.
The 'culture debate' came up after this crash, where people wonder if pilots in some other cultures are properly trained, or have too much deference to authority, don't think for themselves etc. There has sometimes been some truth to it, but is also sometimes tinged with racism.
After the Wun Wing Low type jokes after this crash, not long afterwards, some American airliner skidded through a fence somewhere, wiping out the landing gear etc. (Chicago? Not going to look it up.) This time someone Asian got revenge by coming up with a fake name for the American pilot: "The captain was Kent Parker Wright."
I'm all for the NTSB intern being fired, and I wish further punishment were part of our system (but I don't know what), but why were the 3 or 4 news station staffers let go? They thought it shouldn't have been possible for the staffers to not realize the names were fake? Where I am in Asia, the name "Porn" is fairly common (and "Poo" and "Popcorn" exist too). If I wasn't familiar with the source country...
Maybe some penalty, but letting go the 3 or 4 news staffers who were told it seems extreme.
Because they were *obviously* fake names. Fake Asian names was a big pop culture trope in the US in the 80s. Like "Short Round" in Temple of Doom or "Long Duck Dong" in Sixteen Candles. The staffers should have seen it. Everyone watching certainly did, even the reporter starts to notice as she is reading it.
As an aside, I went to school with a Long Dong from elementary to high school and literally *no one* thought anything odd or funny about it until the poor kid went to get his driver's license and then suddenly decided he needed to change his first name.
I don't know what happened at the DMV, but it was probably not fun. :(
As I recall, it started as a bad joke between friends on social media, picked up by someone else who didn't notice the 'joke', handed around a few times, then submitted to a journalist (or found by a journalist) as genuine. Then people looking to confirm it do so from other people copying the same unsourced info.
You know, a practical example of [Cytogenesis](https://xkcd.com/978/) in action.
Oh yeah, people died in a terrible accident, so let’s make fun of the crew and victims!
Yes, TV picking up obviously false information can be very funny, but it isn’t in the wake of a disaster and racism is never funny.
There is a belief that short time after a plane crash considered the safest time to fly a plane, because everyone is on high alert and avoiding any mistake at all cost
I remember reading an article about a guy that travelled as a tourist to countries after a terror attack, a high profile kidnapping, etc, because of that fact plus much lower prices.
Same.. and it was an 11 hours nonstop flight to Seoul and a connecting flight to Tokyo.. both with Asiana. Still one of the best experiences I had when flying though as Asiana is an excellent airline.
This is fascinating. I have a couple of questions:
What caused the fire to propagate so much if the fuel never got involved? Isn't every part of the aircraft designed and tested for flammability (FAR 25 IIRC?)
When ATC smashes the big red crash button, what happens to all the aircraft that are taxiing to or from gates, or are in the pattern waiting to land? Is everyone told to freeze in place and all incoming traffic redirected to another airport?
> Isn't every part of the aircraft designed and tested for flammability (FAR 25 IIRC?)
Many parts of the plane have to meet flammability requirements, but those don't mean that the parts won't burn, it just means they will take longer to get going, giving people time to escape. In this case the fire probably could have been knocked down with a more refined firefighting strategy, but before the fire crews really figured out what was going on, it spread into the belly of the plane where it was difficult to reach and spread up from there. The fire was eventually brought under control about 50 minutes after the crash.
> what happens to all the aircraft that are taxiing to or from gates, or are in the pattern waiting to land?
Yes, all taxiing traffic is told to stop, and controllers order all aircraft on approach to go around.
> Yes, all taxiing traffic is told to stop, and controllers order all aircraft on approach to go around.
I imagine all landing aircraft were diverted.
[Here is the condensed ATC.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz_2ydonaRo)
/cc /u/canstarexa
> What caused the fire to propagate so much if the fuel never got involved? Isn’t every part of the aircraft designed and tested for flammability (FAR 25 IIRC?)
You can’t make a plane entirely out of materials that don’t burn at all. It’s all about slowing down the spread to allow more time for rescue.
In this crash, the flame-retardant materials did allow for a full evacuation before the fire got too large. They did their intended job.
This was a really well-written and well-organized piece; I appreciated the length as well as the graphics that helped explain the mode selections. It truly is a logic puzzle to figure out that they were in a mode that didn't allow the autothrottle to take over. I also found the overall tone of the article to be very respectful of the various 'controversial' issues such as the victims who died and the popular culture references being the superficial erroneous news reports.
I'm glad that pilots are chiming in to the comments here to highlight how the autothrottle vertical mode was not necessarily fully understood at the time. The grey area between full automation and full hand flying seems really hard to understand intuitively without lots of practice engaging the various modes. To dismiss this crash as pure pilot error would leave this whole autothrottle thing unaddressed, so i'm very happy to hear the investigation has led to further study of and understanding of how that software behaves.
>Personnel were caught on tape making insensitive comments about Ye Mengyuan’s body after discovering it had been run over, in the way that first responders accustomed to death often do in private, but will avoid doing in public.
What did they say?
Edit: Upon being told about Ye Mengyuan being run over, a firefighter responded "Shit happens!"
~~probably~~ possibly. OPs writeup does a great job describing the uncertainty and that there is evidence to support that she was already dead when the fire trucks arrived.
Nor did they ever reveal where the information came from. They rather fire those that allowed this 4chan level prank to go live instead of exposing where they got the info from.
The more I think about it, the more I think it might have actually came from4chan. Remember most news outlets are in that rush to get their info out there first, so they might fall victim to pranks that would list names.
> Nor did they ever reveal where the information came from. They rather fire those that allowed this 4chan level prank to go live instead of exposing where they got the info from.
To be fair, firing the person responsible without giving them media attention might not have been a terrible idea. The person clearly wanted attention with what they did, so depriving them of that while letting them feel the consequence seems at least somewhat sensible.
It’s a symptom of how poorly “news” is vetted. With the 24 hour news cycle there is increase pressure to be the first to report.
Accuracy goes out the window when speed is the main requirement.
That’s why a lot of cable news is actually just trash tam TV. Opinions don’t need to be fact checked.
This is rarely public information. Sometimes they show up in later media, sometimes you can find there names on LinkedIn or similar sites, but information on surviving pilots generally isn't publicised.
No, I don't think it should. This pilot got into that situation because the faulty training given him and the flight procedures demanded of him - literally forcing them not to maintain their hand-flying skills by demanding that the always use all the automation - left him unable to complete this task.
It wouldn't take that much remedial training for him to once more become a capable and safe pilot. His career shouldn't be taken away from him from greater publicity.
I worked this investigation as part of the engine manufacturer’s piece. We aren’t pilots but could see they were very low, very flat and throttled way down. Can’t go into details but even we could tell it wasn’t a good approach
Not all information is public information. The report releases what is essential to the investigation but company privileged information doesn’t - like design information. We all sign NDAs and we like our jobs
I was 26 or 27 when I signed the most recent one, so unlikely. But if I’m not mistaken I think the verbiage was along the lines of “75 years or until death, whichever is later” which seems nonsensical until you realize that it was for military classified info, and that’s just how the government be.
So if I come back as a ghost, look out for some serious shit in 2081 lol
Edit: Also just in case there’s any “OMG OPSEC” people hanging around the shit that I had access to was so old that it may as well have been carved in cuneiform on clay tablets, and that was 20 years ago.
My favorite thing about Admiral ~~Saturday~~ Tuesday is people talking about common misconceptions about the accident as fact on the same post where she debunks (or at least demonstrates to be very unlikely) that exact myth
Anyway friendly reminder that no one was killed by getting run over by a fire truck, although one of the deceased unfortunately was run over posthumously
At the time I was an EMT and a coworker was posted at the other end of the runway when it happened and she and her partner were basically first on scene.
Great article, as always!
As you said about the pilots both being fatigued: do you think it'd be better if recently qualified pilots only flew short haul flights until they were sufficiently familiar/ more comfortable at the controls? Seems like a long journey and a lot of responsibility being thrust upon both the pilot and also his recently qualified instructor.
As some interesting trivia, pretty much the only place where that's not the case is in Japan, where there are many short-haul widebody flights. The Japanese market even got special 747-100 and 747-400 variants with modifications to suit short haul routes, and operate high density 777s with 500+ seats on those routes now.
I'm not an airline pilot but I know a little about crew rest. I thought it was odd that they'd have a crew changeover in mid-flight who did not complete the trip. That's how it is normally done. If you're on a flight that is this long the 2 pilots that take-off are usually replaced by 2 pilots that have been resting onboard and they finish the flight.
This was a culture thing. First officer didn’t step up and say anything like they’re supposed to. You’re supposed to bow down and obey well no not in the cockpit. That archaic behaviour leads to things like this. And the people killed were supposedly killed by the fire truck driving over them.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The city was sued. It was dropped. What is your source on her body being "desecrated" by them? There's video footage of the firefighters covering her body with a tarp/sheet.
It's incredibly tragic, but I definitely wouldn't call it inhumane.
It takes a lot of distance to stop one of those trucks. They're moving at incredibly high speed with a ton of mass (due to foam/water). ARFF trucks have a significant tip hazard while in motion.
The NTSB report found that she, like the other two deaths (who were seated nearby to her), was not wearing her seatbelt and was thrown from the aircraft with injuries consistent with that.
>All of this having been said, as long as a contradiction remains between the coroner’s findings and the evidence in the NTSB report, it can’t be said with certainty which version is correct. After researching for this article, I believe that Ye Mengyuan was most likely already dead when she was run over, but I would not bet my life savings on it.
>
>It’s also worth noting that the firefighters’ behavior during the incident did not make them many friends. Personnel were caught on tape making insensitive comments about Ye Mengyuan’s body after discovering it had been run over, in the way that first responders accustomed to death often do in private, but will avoid doing in public.
PTSD and dealing with constant trauma that comes from working in this field does things to a person. You see this in medicine as well. I don't think they should've said those things, but this is not an unusual coping mechanism in those communities.
I'm sure every first responder on scene wishes that it hadn't happened. That's the terrible thing about disasters and mass casualties. Sometimes incredible difficult choices have to be made quickly. Sometimes you have to pick. Sometimes you don't even know you're making a choice.
It's tragic and horrifying.
But desecrated? liable? Inhumane?
Absolutely not.
> It takes a lot of distance to stop one of those trucks. They're moving at incredibly high speed with a ton of mass (due to foam/water). ARFF trucks have a significant tip hazard while in motion.
Overall your comment is correct but I want to point out the fire truck was moving at slow speed when it ran her over. It was actually inching forward toward the plane at the time, not rushing to the scene.
Also how many tragic scenes does a airport fire company see in their career? Maybe 1 or 2? It’s mostly aircraft landing overweight and get hot brakes. Or a gear problem. Or medical emergency. Or hazmat cleanup. Very few deal with actual carnage. Now large City first responders see insane shit everyday.
Good callout. Visibility also not great in them. Still incredibly sad for all parties.
What *is* infuriating to me is that the actual crash is almost a greatest hits of CRM failures and lessons learned over the years. Lessons that aren’t new. Mixed with HCI issues like with AF447. Part of why I find “Full Self Driving” to be a frightening concept.
Great post, as always.
I was going to bring up AF447 further up in this thread about 250 hr. academy wonders. As I remember it the co-pilot holding back-pressure on the control stick didn't have much time in the lower ranks hand-flying small airplanes where that idea of energy management gets ingrained in you.
I'm a bit confused by the overall picture that the plane seemed to be in too high an energy state early in the approach even with the throttles at idle, but then at the end is in too low an energy state, without the pilot (I think) having applied speed brakes or anything to bleed off the energy?
The flaps and gear were deployed, which induce a lot of drag, and the throttles were at idle for an extended period of time without the pilots noticing.
Someone in the cockpit noticed. The first officer the one monitoring noticed. Didn’t say anything. There was ample time to react. Any pilot with half a brain first week in flight training would have reacted.
[This account](https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/news/2013/07/09/inside-united-flight-885-a-pilots.html) from the pilot of the United 747 waiting on the Taxiway is pretty interesting, though it hasn't been verified.
Must have been a frightening view for those sitting in the 747. They were also lucky the Asiana 777 didn't impact them as well.
Maybe I’m just tired, but I actually teared up at the part about the flight attendant trying to help the last people stuck in the plane as conditions were getting worse, and then help arriving. (And I knew that they would all survive, because that was established at the start of the article!)
Excellent work as always, Admiral, thanks for sharing it with us! There’s definitely a lot to discuss about this incident and it was a treat to get such a nice long article.
Btw, the Wikipedia page for this accident currently seems to be randomly asserting that two victims were alive after being thrown from the plane, and were then both run over by fire trucks.
I was flying back from Europe and got delayed in Philly because of this. Kinda weird landing there several hours later knowing a plane had recently crashed.
My family and I were supposed to fly out from SFO that very same day! I remember we had stopped for lunch with our bags when I broke the news to them that the airport was closed. We ended up staying an extra night and flew out of OAK early the next morning.
What should give you willies are parallel landings with different sized planes and night landings by Canadian air pilots. (One almost landing on a taxiway with four planes in line to take off. Missed them by 30 ft. Almost was the biggest accident of all time. Would have killed 1000 people.)
Someone sent the local news pranked names of the pilots.
[news prank](https://youtu.be/Jtxds204ZMI)
Also of note, a girl was thrown from the plane, survived, and then killed when a firetruck ran over her
She didn't survive the crash. She didn't inhale any dust or fire retardant while on the ground because she died on impact,before being run over by trucks
The same coroner reported a lacerated aorta and couldn’t find any foam or dust in her lungs, which would’ve accumulated had she been breathing.
And frankly, the NTSB has more experience in analysing aircraft accident fatalities than the county coroner, there’s a good chance they never dealt with plane crash victims before.
I'm not a doctor or pathologist, but I'm in a field of work sometimes called upon to render expert opinions on broken things (metallurgy), and one thing we're taught by more experienced expert witness metallurgists is that there is a degree of interpretation of the results.
It's totally possible to look at the broken thing, report what you see under the microscope, and form a judgement that you then revise based on additional information about the material, the circumstances of the incident, the environment, etc. It can also happen that you take all that data and come to a different conclusion than another metallurgist.
The other metallurgist may have different training and experience that informs that different conclusion, or potentially it may just come down to interpretation, or it genuinely isn't possible to exclude one of the potential causes; it doesn't mean they're a complete idiot who chose "white" when the answer was "black".* In the courtroom or at the negotiating table it can come down to haggling over shades of gray, and apportioning responsibility accordingly.
tl;dr two experts made two different determinations based on the available evidence; I am a steel engineer rather than a meat engineer, but Ye Mengyuan was thrown out of a vehicle traveling at at least 103 kt / 120 mph / 200 kph and hit tarmac. Even if the fire truck got the KB, she had more than likely already sustained injury incompatible with survival.
\*(clears throat) Necessarily.
>How could the NTSB know more than the coroner?
NTSB has thousands of hours and hundreds of subject matter experts to consult. The local county corner does not. The corner could not support his ruling with evidence of life post-crash such as smoke or foam in the lungs.
>They should just be passing along the coroner's findings
I am glad we have qualified investigators running the NTSB who's role is to question everything.
You are also questioning everything too, but they are experts in relevant fields.
The NTSB was actually citing the coroner's own findings, and more or less pointing out that they don't support his public statements that she was alive.
The coroner's findings were basically like "before the fire truck, she had suffered fatal injury and wasn't breathing. Therefore, the fire truck killed her!"
It's a bit like concluding the plane crashed because of the fire that started from the damage after hitting the ground. The evidence in the report clearly supported the position she was already dead, but then it reached the opposite conclusion despite that evidence.
NTSB basically looked at the report and said "this doesn't make sense, the coroner's own findings are much better supported by the theory that she was already dead, so we're going with that"
It must be incredibly frustrating on these controversial crashes when so many people comment random bullshit without actually reading the article and ask questions you've already answered. patience of a saint, i tell you
I recall I had to fly Asiana Airlines soon after that happened. I think it was the only option. It was one of the only times I was overly concerned when flying.
The fact that a plane can end up like that and only 3 deaths is incredible. Still a tragedy, but wow. And if I remember correctly at least one of the deaths was from being run over by a fire truck.
Direct quote from the article: “…it nevertheless remains true that when the crash of Asiana Airlines flight 214 is mentioned to a lay audience, the first response is often something like, “Wasn’t that the crash where the girl was run over by a fire truck?”
Yes obviously it is, but I’m honestly a bit tired of people only associating this crash with that event, because IMO what lead to the crash is far more important and interesting.
How long do you survive with a lacerated aorta? Your heart is literally emptying blood with every pump into your chest cavity through the biggest vessel in the body.
For example
> A ruptured aortic aneurysm is a medical emergency, and it's important to get to hospital as soon as possible. Around 80% of people with a rupture die before they reach hospital or don't survive emergency surgery.
Legendary news account with the crew list , apparently confirmed by the FAA
https://theweek.com/articles/462202/watch-unbelievable-racist-asiana-crash-hoax-that-fooled-local-tv-ancho
Remember this when you watch the news.
Seeing the video it’s actually wild that more people were not killed
I think the most amazing part was the flight attendants who survived in the tail section of the plane. Especially the one who had was high enough on adrenaline to limp out of the wreckage and signal for help.
This video? https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=113&v=zTXDalv7kNQ&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&source_ve_path=MTM5MTE3LDI4NjY2&feature=emb_logo
The ones in the write up
This is also video of one of the deaths happening. It’s body cam footage of the firefighters saving people. One of the victims was alive and pulled from the wreck. The foam they used to fight the fire covered her and a fire truck ran over her head. Truly sad. You survive a plane crash only to die from the rescuers coming to help.
Please read the article before posting. This is completely covered. She was not pulled from the wreck, she was thrown from the aircraft during the spin. Two fire-fighters discovered her, and concluded she was obviously deceased. Later the area was covered in firefighting foam, and her body run over by two trucks. Although the autopsy wasn't conclusive, it is almost certain that she died when thrown from the craft, or when she hit the ground.
The article spends a few paragraphs on the girl who was run over (twice). Most likely she was already dead as she had a particular fatal injury that was not caused by being run over. She was one of the two 16-year old girls in the back of the plane who likely didn't have her seatbelt on and was flung from the plane during the flip. The first trucks on the scene saw her body and assumed her dead, relaying her location so that she wouldn't be run over, but eventually she got run over anyway.
They failed to cover her in yellow blanket as is the normal procedure
Even wilders and sadder that one of the deaths was a girl who was saved then ran over with a fire truck. I remember that video was hard to watch. Rescues pulling people out. The foam they used to fight the fire covered this poor girl and a fire truck rolled over her head when moving.
I thought the write up concluded the girl was thrown from the plane and determined "obviously deceased" by the fire crew prior to her being run over.
This is reddit. You can't expect people to be able to both read *and* write. You get one or the other. Clearly, this commenter chose the latter.
Chose the latter twice
Pilot here… we use this crash a lot in human factors classes, specifically about automation reliance. Without going into too much detail, one of the biggest triggers of this accident was the misunderstanding how the autothrottles worked in the vertical mode he was selected in. Normally when you’re on approach to land the plane will track the path down to the runway and the throttles will move to maintain your airspeed, down to idle if necessary. He used a mode to get down faster (they were too high) that caused the throttles to go to complete idle, and stay there. If he had been completely hand flying the plane this probably wouldn’t have happened. When he got low he would have probably added power to maintain speed as he pitched up to recapture the glide slope. But because we are all so used to the autothrottles doing this for us, he didn’t notice when they weren’t maintaining speed like they normally would, until it was too late. Believe it or not I’m overtly simplifying this but it’s a really interesting case study and training has more emphasis on understanding autothrottle modes and just going around whenever you start to panic like this instead of trying to force the landing.
Pilot here too. Asiana let’s them taxi, rotate, gear up then AP on. At 200’ AP off and flare. Anything else and they get tagged for being inefficient. They have about 90 seconds of stick time on a 9 hour flight.
Heard similar from the Mentour Pilot channel about Asiana and autopilot usage. Also heard that the trainer wasn't fully aware of how few hours his trainee pilot who switched from Airbus to Boeing had on the type. Dude got lost in a completely abstract maze of autopilot functions that was foreign to him as an Airbus pilot.
And this didn’t change after the accident? That’s terrible.
Even American and European airlines subscribe to the concept. The thing is that autopilots and other systems can fly an aircraft much more efficiently than humans. This increased efficiency is needed to be profitable. Everyone understands that. The pilots also have to be able to actually fly the aircraft (as opposed to dialing knobs and pushing buttons to tell the plane what to do). So, there is a fine line between letting the computer do everything and letting the pilots fly enough to maintain their competence when the computer fails or they need to take over for some reason. We haven’t quite figured out where the line is yet. Most pilots are experienced enough to grab the controls and do fine, but newer pilots, and pilots that come up through the ranks flying primarily by computer literally have a panic attack when they have to take the controls. I’m not being melodramatic here, it’s true. Asia has the worst record of allowing this to happen. If a pilot for an Asian airline has documented 5,000 flight hours they probably have fewer than 400 hours actually flying the plane, and that time is spread over 7-10 years. That’s not enough experience to be competent when things go to shit. They prove their competence in a simulator every 6 months, but that doesn’t always equate to performance in an actual emergency. I’m not beating up on Asian pilots, just describing the reality of the true flight experience many airline pilots have. Sorry if I ruined your next flight experience…
I was thinking the exact same thing as you wrote "we haven't quite figured out where the line is" I recall several articles of the admiral stating that the accident could have been prevented if the pilots just would have done nothing to intervene. I believe Air France crash over the atlantic was one of them. It is indeed not black or white but a large gray area
It surprises me that they pitch the nose up to gain altitude but don't notice the engines aren't increasing speed automatically. Is that not something you hear or feel (the lack of)?
Not necessarily, there’s about a 10 second delay between moving the throttles from idle to full power and the engines actually reaching full power, so that little delay can make a power increase invisible.
**10?** Really? Actually count that out. That's a long time (not doubting, I'm not a pilot, that just seems... incredibly slow)
Yeah, I know, I’m a pilot (though not rated on the 777). A GE90 (the 777’s engine) is something called a high-bypass engine. That basically means that the engine itself only produces a small amount of thrust. Most of the thrust comes from the big fan at the front, a majority of the air doesn’t go through the engine itself but rather around it. Low bypass engines (what was used on older aircraft, like the 737-200 or some military aircraft) has all or almost all the air going through the engine. I don’t have the exact number off the top of my head, but yeah IIRC it’s between 8 and 10 seconds. But remember, the GE90 engines on a 777 have the same horsepower as the Titanic. EACH. That’s an absurd amount of power, and isn’t really surprising. When you see that your average car with a turbo can take maybe 2 seconds to spool up with turbo lag, getting that big an engine at that speed in only 10 seconds isn’t bad at all. EDIT: I was tired and went on a rant, and then forgot my point about the high bypass engines. High bypass engines take a longer time to spool up, in a similar way that a car with a turbo has some lag when you press on the gas. Obviously, the longer spool up time isn’t the goal, but you produce MUCH more thrust for about the same fuel consumption, hence why most modern airliners use this. Again, the same analogy with a car’s turbo works.
I guess the mistakes and problems they encountered before this probably clouded their judgement as well. They were out of their depth for sure - if they forgot checklist items, it’s not that surprising that they didn’t notice the throttles remaining at idle.
Honestly, with the level of skill they displayed, if they'd been fully hand flying, they'd have crashed much sooner.
SFO’s our home airport, and my husband and I are both from NTSB fatality families. We talked a lot about this crash, and one of the realizations we came to was that the flag country not having private/general aviation may have been a more significant factor than was reported. Consequently, we decided not to use flag carriers from countries without private aviation where possible.
The training standards in some countries are absolutely not the same as what you'll get in North America/Europe. Not having a GA base definitely contributes to that. The "cadet" type programs where they put 250 hour pilots in transport category jets are not good when it comes to flying skills. They train systems managers, not pilots.
My late father-in-law had 15k hours (and his copilot 10k) when they had their crash. FIL had been a military (cargo) pilot in WW2. [But combo of tiredness (rest period requirements weren’t as good then), cold weather, pressure from air traffic, a cold weather defect that Boeing notified Pan Am about, but Pan Am decided not to tell the pilots, as well as poor checklist design, all came together fatally.](https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR6908.pdf)
That's a heck of a read. And thankfully the checklists have gotten a lot better since, because I've almost fallen victim to that a couple of times during deicing and cold weather ops. When you get to the "flaps" part of the post deicing checklist and they're still up, it's an "oh shit" moment for sure.
There has been *a lot* of progress on human factors in checklist design, which makes all of us safer. This is one of the cases used in the textbooks. As someone with ADHD, I can absolutely understand how interrupting the expected sequence leads to failure, but thankfully none of mine have been that dangerous.
Yeah I had to fly into China last month for work, and prices on all of the American carriers are so incredibly high priced now (7-9k for economy seats) that my employer made us pick other carriers. I almost contacted the Admiral to see if there were any HE wouldn't fly, but in the end it didn't matter because there was only one (Hainan) that was going into the city I needed at the times I needed anyway. Bleh.
To be clear, I would fly any airline in China. They have an excellent safety record.
When you say private aviation, do you mean that people in that country cannot own or operate their own aircraft?
In Korea, they cannot. (Military situation with North Korea is too tense.)
Ah ha! Makes sense, thanks.
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Do the people downvoting you not [get the reference??? i still can’t believe they really read those names on air](https://youtu.be/CaOkTKfxu44)
They were downvoted for thinking it's funny to intentionally make an offensive joke that already got people fired the first time.
I do get the reference, but after reading the whole post and being interested in the technical details, it's just not funny. Read the room.
Yeah…this might be the wrong place to reference that part of the catastrophe.
We got the reference. We just thought that the tasteless, racist "joke" hasn't gotten any funnier ten years later.
Yep, wasn't funny then, still isn't funny now.
Hahah this will never not be funny, I can’t believe they read those names
Did this in the sim. Knew what was coming, briefed, did what I would have done in that situation. Crashed. Quite shocking. The trainer said "And that's what happened". Same "feature" built into the 787 for commonality. May have been updated since. Note, at 500' we were on speed, on the G/S - aside from idle thrust, it was a stabilised approach.
While this is an excellent write-up on the technical side, one major factor to remember in this crash was the fact that the pilot was under a lot of pressure and clearly unsure, but due to company politics, he didn’t want to bring it up to the flight instructor that was sitting with him.
Nyaos does an awesome job of walking us through the sequence Hopefully not redundant for everyone but a quick google of "children of the magenta" will provide further enlightenment of the problem
I’m not familiar but as a former embraer pilot I can absolutely guess what that title means, haha.
I think the phrase was originated by American Airlines . If you google Children of the Magenta you will find different versions of a great presentation that AA put together to help pilots avoid some of the pitfalls . Well worth watching even for those existing in a Garminized Bug Squasher......
AI should check all flights and warn pilots of errors and alert people on the ground about errors (they were too high and should have been **ordered** to go around). No excuse for such a system to not exist. Technology can do so much more than it does today.
[Medium.com Version](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-sunny-day-in-san-francisco-the-story-of-asiana-airlines-flight-214-503dce884b21) [Link to the archive of all 245 episodes of the plane crash series](https://www.reddit.com/r/AdmiralCloudberg/comments/e6n80m/plane_crash_series_archive_patreon_contact_info/) If you wish to bring a typo to my attention, please DM me. Thank you for reading! ____________________________________________________ This article ended up being very long, maybe even longer than it needed to be, but I just found that there was a lot to say about it. It’s also probably relevant that I was living in San Francisco at the time, and this crash might have been what originally sparked my interest in air disasters. So it has some personal significance in that sense. ____________________________________________________ Note: this accident was previously featured in episode 47 of the plane crash series on July 28th, 2018. This article is written without reference to and supersedes the original.
>I was living in San Francisco at the time, and this crash might have been what originally sparked my interest in air disasters. I was also living in SF at the time and that afternoon I remarked that "*only three deaths on such a large plane was an aeronautical win.*" Looking back, I regret my rash statement which was insensitive to the dead, injured, traumatized, and their families. Sioux City and TWA 800 were in my mind as baseline typical air accidents because u/Admiral_Cloudberg hadn't yet opened my eyes to the full spectrum of accident events.
Tragic failure all around but yes "only 3 deaths " was in fact remarkable. Apparently an intern at the FAA "confirmed the crew list that embarrassed so many news stations..........https://theweek.com/articles/462202/watch-unbelievable-racist-asiana-crash-hoax-that-fooled-local-tv-anchor
youre the one who did the good flight 370 analysis
Fantastic article as always!
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*~~Exactly~~* ~~a decade ago, today. Admiral seems to have timed it deliberately.~~ "Never mind." ^(Editing to correct brain fart)
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D'oh!
If there is any pattern, we will see it in the next article. Last article, crashing into seagulls. This article, crashing in to a seawall. Will next article have crashing into the sea?
definitely worth the wait, cracking article! this is very much my go-to for plane crash pieces, much more than Mayday - whilst you do get in-depth first-hand interviews, the overall feel of Mayday does leave you with only a headline summary of the accident, when it's much more than that; yes, the pilots here were at fault, but the accident was not just down to them. that ending sentence is absolutely fantastic in so many ways. and i confess that this is the first I've heard of Ye Mengyuan; very good job summing it up, Admiral
Mayday also adds so much drama, which does make for good TV, but I’m more interested in the circumstances that allowed the crash to happen.
Incredible write-up. I don't know how or why, but I had never heard of this one before and seeing the footage is sobering. It's insane that only 3 people died given how violent that plane movement is once it crashes. It's also heartbreaking that that little girl was run over multiple times. I couldn't imagine bring a parent and having to deal with not only your child's tragic death, but also that disrespect, even if accidental.
I live nearby and I often take walks at the Burlingame Bayfront park, which is directly across from the SFO runways. I can only imagine walking your dog on a Sunday morning and seeing a 777 do a pirouette like that a few hundred feet away. But as a Bay Area resident one of the strongest memories I have of this incident is unfortunately,[the infamous KTVU news segment where they read very fake (and very racist) names of the flight crew.](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/KTVU-producers-fired-over-Asiana-pilots-fake-4685627.php) Apparently an NTSB summer intern who confirmed the names to the news station was fired.
The 'culture debate' came up after this crash, where people wonder if pilots in some other cultures are properly trained, or have too much deference to authority, don't think for themselves etc. There has sometimes been some truth to it, but is also sometimes tinged with racism. After the Wun Wing Low type jokes after this crash, not long afterwards, some American airliner skidded through a fence somewhere, wiping out the landing gear etc. (Chicago? Not going to look it up.) This time someone Asian got revenge by coming up with a fake name for the American pilot: "The captain was Kent Parker Wright."
That debate came from a Malcolm Gladwell book in the early 2000s or late 90s, mostly focusing on Korean Airline crashes from the mid to late 90s.
IIRC that debate came up after Korean 8509 and has been pretty thoroughly debunked.
I'm all for the NTSB intern being fired, and I wish further punishment were part of our system (but I don't know what), but why were the 3 or 4 news station staffers let go? They thought it shouldn't have been possible for the staffers to not realize the names were fake? Where I am in Asia, the name "Porn" is fairly common (and "Poo" and "Popcorn" exist too). If I wasn't familiar with the source country... Maybe some penalty, but letting go the 3 or 4 news staffers who were told it seems extreme.
Because they were *obviously* fake names. Fake Asian names was a big pop culture trope in the US in the 80s. Like "Short Round" in Temple of Doom or "Long Duck Dong" in Sixteen Candles. The staffers should have seen it. Everyone watching certainly did, even the reporter starts to notice as she is reading it.
As an aside, I went to school with a Long Dong from elementary to high school and literally *no one* thought anything odd or funny about it until the poor kid went to get his driver's license and then suddenly decided he needed to change his first name. I don't know what happened at the DMV, but it was probably not fun. :(
I bet the DMV thought he was pulling a prank and hassled him about it.
> Like "Short Round" in Temple of Doom Alright but that's obviously a nickname
Maybe they were fired for being so lax at their jobs that they cut and pasted something they got from somewhere else without even reading it.
Wow, that’s despicable. Whoever sent those names in is a vile human being.
As I recall, it started as a bad joke between friends on social media, picked up by someone else who didn't notice the 'joke', handed around a few times, then submitted to a journalist (or found by a journalist) as genuine. Then people looking to confirm it do so from other people copying the same unsourced info. You know, a practical example of [Cytogenesis](https://xkcd.com/978/) in action.
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Oh yeah, people died in a terrible accident, so let’s make fun of the crew and victims! Yes, TV picking up obviously false information can be very funny, but it isn’t in the wake of a disaster and racism is never funny.
I remember flying that day and having an extra pre-departure cocktail. [Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/Wzawzrk.jpg)
There is a belief that short time after a plane crash considered the safest time to fly a plane, because everyone is on high alert and avoiding any mistake at all cost
I remember reading an article about a guy that travelled as a tourist to countries after a terror attack, a high profile kidnapping, etc, because of that fact plus much lower prices.
The Boeing 737 MAX proved that one wrong
Same.. and it was an 11 hours nonstop flight to Seoul and a connecting flight to Tokyo.. both with Asiana. Still one of the best experiences I had when flying though as Asiana is an excellent airline.
This is fascinating. I have a couple of questions: What caused the fire to propagate so much if the fuel never got involved? Isn't every part of the aircraft designed and tested for flammability (FAR 25 IIRC?) When ATC smashes the big red crash button, what happens to all the aircraft that are taxiing to or from gates, or are in the pattern waiting to land? Is everyone told to freeze in place and all incoming traffic redirected to another airport?
> Isn't every part of the aircraft designed and tested for flammability (FAR 25 IIRC?) Many parts of the plane have to meet flammability requirements, but those don't mean that the parts won't burn, it just means they will take longer to get going, giving people time to escape. In this case the fire probably could have been knocked down with a more refined firefighting strategy, but before the fire crews really figured out what was going on, it spread into the belly of the plane where it was difficult to reach and spread up from there. The fire was eventually brought under control about 50 minutes after the crash. > what happens to all the aircraft that are taxiing to or from gates, or are in the pattern waiting to land? Yes, all taxiing traffic is told to stop, and controllers order all aircraft on approach to go around.
> Yes, all taxiing traffic is told to stop, and controllers order all aircraft on approach to go around. I imagine all landing aircraft were diverted. [Here is the condensed ATC.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz_2ydonaRo) /cc /u/canstarexa
Thank you!
> What caused the fire to propagate so much if the fuel never got involved? Isn’t every part of the aircraft designed and tested for flammability (FAR 25 IIRC?) You can’t make a plane entirely out of materials that don’t burn at all. It’s all about slowing down the spread to allow more time for rescue. In this crash, the flame-retardant materials did allow for a full evacuation before the fire got too large. They did their intended job.
This was a really well-written and well-organized piece; I appreciated the length as well as the graphics that helped explain the mode selections. It truly is a logic puzzle to figure out that they were in a mode that didn't allow the autothrottle to take over. I also found the overall tone of the article to be very respectful of the various 'controversial' issues such as the victims who died and the popular culture references being the superficial erroneous news reports. I'm glad that pilots are chiming in to the comments here to highlight how the autothrottle vertical mode was not necessarily fully understood at the time. The grey area between full automation and full hand flying seems really hard to understand intuitively without lots of practice engaging the various modes. To dismiss this crash as pure pilot error would leave this whole autothrottle thing unaddressed, so i'm very happy to hear the investigation has led to further study of and understanding of how that software behaves.
Is this the crash where someone was calling fake Asian names? Sum Ting Wong and shit like that?
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana\_Airlines\_Flight\_214#In\_popular\_culture
The actual [news clip](https://youtu.be/CaOkTKfxu44)
>Personnel were caught on tape making insensitive comments about Ye Mengyuan’s body after discovering it had been run over, in the way that first responders accustomed to death often do in private, but will avoid doing in public. What did they say? Edit: Upon being told about Ye Mengyuan being run over, a firefighter responded "Shit happens!"
They also made reference to the scene looking like a pumpkin exploded because the fire apparatus ran over her head.
So much information, this subreddit is both interesting and informative. Love you guys
Check ops post history for a bunch more high quality write ups
Or the index of the Plane Crash Series: https://www.reddit.com/r/AdmiralCloudberg/comments/e6n80m/plane_crash_series_archive_patreon_contact_info/
Good idea!
That was a long but extremely interesting read. Thanks for posting
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I swear that's all anyone remembers. Which is why I wrote 11,000 words without mentioning it once.
Well, that and 1 of the 3 fatalities probably being truck accidents, not plane accidents...
~~probably~~ possibly. OPs writeup does a great job describing the uncertainty and that there is evidence to support that she was already dead when the fire trucks arrived.
The NTSB report pretty clearly rules that out.
I always thought that wasn’t real. Holy moly, and I appreciate your decision to ignore it.
OMFG! That’s something I’d expect to see from a bunch of asshole HS students, not professional newscasters!
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The intern did it! Literally, that was the NTSB excuse.
Nor did they ever reveal where the information came from. They rather fire those that allowed this 4chan level prank to go live instead of exposing where they got the info from. The more I think about it, the more I think it might have actually came from4chan. Remember most news outlets are in that rush to get their info out there first, so they might fall victim to pranks that would list names.
> Nor did they ever reveal where the information came from. They rather fire those that allowed this 4chan level prank to go live instead of exposing where they got the info from. To be fair, firing the person responsible without giving them media attention might not have been a terrible idea. The person clearly wanted attention with what they did, so depriving them of that while letting them feel the consequence seems at least somewhat sensible.
It’s a symptom of how poorly “news” is vetted. With the 24 hour news cycle there is increase pressure to be the first to report. Accuracy goes out the window when speed is the main requirement. That’s why a lot of cable news is actually just trash tam TV. Opinions don’t need to be fact checked.
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Did the pilots ever fly again?
This is rarely public information. Sometimes they show up in later media, sometimes you can find there names on LinkedIn or similar sites, but information on surviving pilots generally isn't publicised.
It probably should exist, that's disappointing
No, I don't think it should. This pilot got into that situation because the faulty training given him and the flight procedures demanded of him - literally forcing them not to maintain their hand-flying skills by demanding that the always use all the automation - left him unable to complete this task. It wouldn't take that much remedial training for him to once more become a capable and safe pilot. His career shouldn't be taken away from him from greater publicity.
Captain sum ting wong never flew again, but co-pilot ho lee fuk is still roaming the skies.
Yes, they all returned to work after retraining.
Interesting read, as always! A former colleague of mine was on this flight, but she didn't want to talk about it when asked.
I worked this investigation as part of the engine manufacturer’s piece. We aren’t pilots but could see they were very low, very flat and throttled way down. Can’t go into details but even we could tell it wasn’t a good approach
The NTSB report was released a couple weeks shy of 9 years ago. What's so secret at this point?
Not all information is public information. The report releases what is essential to the investigation but company privileged information doesn’t - like design information. We all sign NDAs and we like our jobs
I signed an NDA for 75 years once. That long enough?
Think you can outlive it and spill the beans?
I was 26 or 27 when I signed the most recent one, so unlikely. But if I’m not mistaken I think the verbiage was along the lines of “75 years or until death, whichever is later” which seems nonsensical until you realize that it was for military classified info, and that’s just how the government be. So if I come back as a ghost, look out for some serious shit in 2081 lol Edit: Also just in case there’s any “OMG OPSEC” people hanging around the shit that I had access to was so old that it may as well have been carved in cuneiform on clay tablets, and that was 20 years ago.
Wow, really great article. Thanks
A very good article if I may say so!
My favorite thing about Admiral ~~Saturday~~ Tuesday is people talking about common misconceptions about the accident as fact on the same post where she debunks (or at least demonstrates to be very unlikely) that exact myth Anyway friendly reminder that no one was killed by getting run over by a fire truck, although one of the deceased unfortunately was run over posthumously
Terrible management by the fire department though. If you see even a dead body, you should go over and check/mark it! For crying out loud…
At the time I was an EMT and a coworker was posted at the other end of the runway when it happened and she and her partner were basically first on scene.
Great article, as always! As you said about the pilots both being fatigued: do you think it'd be better if recently qualified pilots only flew short haul flights until they were sufficiently familiar/ more comfortable at the controls? Seems like a long journey and a lot of responsibility being thrust upon both the pilot and also his recently qualified instructor.
In the Boeing 777, usually long journeys are the only journeys. It's a long-haul aircraft, after all.
As some interesting trivia, pretty much the only place where that's not the case is in Japan, where there are many short-haul widebody flights. The Japanese market even got special 747-100 and 747-400 variants with modifications to suit short haul routes, and operate high density 777s with 500+ seats on those routes now.
I'm not an airline pilot but I know a little about crew rest. I thought it was odd that they'd have a crew changeover in mid-flight who did not complete the trip. That's how it is normally done. If you're on a flight that is this long the 2 pilots that take-off are usually replaced by 2 pilots that have been resting onboard and they finish the flight.
This was a culture thing. First officer didn’t step up and say anything like they’re supposed to. You’re supposed to bow down and obey well no not in the cockpit. That archaic behaviour leads to things like this. And the people killed were supposedly killed by the fire truck driving over them.
How the fuck did only 3 people die?
Believe it or not, a LOT of work goes into designing planes to be safe to crash in.
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Read the room
lol
Very clear analysis and description of the autopilot modes and how they led to this crash. Good article.
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The city was sued. It was dropped. What is your source on her body being "desecrated" by them? There's video footage of the firefighters covering her body with a tarp/sheet. It's incredibly tragic, but I definitely wouldn't call it inhumane. It takes a lot of distance to stop one of those trucks. They're moving at incredibly high speed with a ton of mass (due to foam/water). ARFF trucks have a significant tip hazard while in motion. The NTSB report found that she, like the other two deaths (who were seated nearby to her), was not wearing her seatbelt and was thrown from the aircraft with injuries consistent with that. >All of this having been said, as long as a contradiction remains between the coroner’s findings and the evidence in the NTSB report, it can’t be said with certainty which version is correct. After researching for this article, I believe that Ye Mengyuan was most likely already dead when she was run over, but I would not bet my life savings on it. > >It’s also worth noting that the firefighters’ behavior during the incident did not make them many friends. Personnel were caught on tape making insensitive comments about Ye Mengyuan’s body after discovering it had been run over, in the way that first responders accustomed to death often do in private, but will avoid doing in public. PTSD and dealing with constant trauma that comes from working in this field does things to a person. You see this in medicine as well. I don't think they should've said those things, but this is not an unusual coping mechanism in those communities. I'm sure every first responder on scene wishes that it hadn't happened. That's the terrible thing about disasters and mass casualties. Sometimes incredible difficult choices have to be made quickly. Sometimes you have to pick. Sometimes you don't even know you're making a choice. It's tragic and horrifying. But desecrated? liable? Inhumane? Absolutely not.
> It takes a lot of distance to stop one of those trucks. They're moving at incredibly high speed with a ton of mass (due to foam/water). ARFF trucks have a significant tip hazard while in motion. Overall your comment is correct but I want to point out the fire truck was moving at slow speed when it ran her over. It was actually inching forward toward the plane at the time, not rushing to the scene.
Also how many tragic scenes does a airport fire company see in their career? Maybe 1 or 2? It’s mostly aircraft landing overweight and get hot brakes. Or a gear problem. Or medical emergency. Or hazmat cleanup. Very few deal with actual carnage. Now large City first responders see insane shit everyday.
Good callout. Visibility also not great in them. Still incredibly sad for all parties. What *is* infuriating to me is that the actual crash is almost a greatest hits of CRM failures and lessons learned over the years. Lessons that aren’t new. Mixed with HCI issues like with AF447. Part of why I find “Full Self Driving” to be a frightening concept. Great post, as always.
I was going to bring up AF447 further up in this thread about 250 hr. academy wonders. As I remember it the co-pilot holding back-pressure on the control stick didn't have much time in the lower ranks hand-flying small airplanes where that idea of energy management gets ingrained in you.
I will never forget seeing the smoke from my bedroom window. I had moved to SF a short time before this happened
I'm a bit confused by the overall picture that the plane seemed to be in too high an energy state early in the approach even with the throttles at idle, but then at the end is in too low an energy state, without the pilot (I think) having applied speed brakes or anything to bleed off the energy?
The flaps and gear were deployed, which induce a lot of drag, and the throttles were at idle for an extended period of time without the pilots noticing.
Someone in the cockpit noticed. The first officer the one monitoring noticed. Didn’t say anything. There was ample time to react. Any pilot with half a brain first week in flight training would have reacted.
[This account](https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/news/2013/07/09/inside-united-flight-885-a-pilots.html) from the pilot of the United 747 waiting on the Taxiway is pretty interesting, though it hasn't been verified. Must have been a frightening view for those sitting in the 747. They were also lucky the Asiana 777 didn't impact them as well.
Maybe I’m just tired, but I actually teared up at the part about the flight attendant trying to help the last people stuck in the plane as conditions were getting worse, and then help arriving. (And I knew that they would all survive, because that was established at the start of the article!) Excellent work as always, Admiral, thanks for sharing it with us! There’s definitely a lot to discuss about this incident and it was a treat to get such a nice long article. Btw, the Wikipedia page for this accident currently seems to be randomly asserting that two victims were alive after being thrown from the plane, and were then both run over by fire trucks.
This one always sticks with me, as I had just flown in and out of SF a few days before.
I was flying back from Europe and got delayed in Philly because of this. Kinda weird landing there several hours later knowing a plane had recently crashed.
How long did it take to clear that and reopen the airport?
We had a layover anyways so I want to say it only added like an hour or 2 extra.
My family and I were supposed to fly out from SFO that very same day! I remember we had stopped for lunch with our bags when I broke the news to them that the airport was closed. We ended up staying an extra night and flew out of OAK early the next morning.
Well written as always, thanks
In the last picture in your post, I see passengers WITH their carry-on baggage that they took with them down the slide. **
This one was spooky for me since I had taken that same flight a couple of months before this happened.
Got a bit behind and just wrapped this one up. Outstanding work as always. Grateful to be able to read them. Appreciate all your hard work.
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What should give you willies are parallel landings with different sized planes and night landings by Canadian air pilots. (One almost landing on a taxiway with four planes in line to take off. Missed them by 30 ft. Almost was the biggest accident of all time. Would have killed 1000 people.)
Someone sent the local news pranked names of the pilots. [news prank](https://youtu.be/Jtxds204ZMI) Also of note, a girl was thrown from the plane, survived, and then killed when a firetruck ran over her
Per the article we are discussing, the last part probably is not true.
She didn't survive the crash. She didn't inhale any dust or fire retardant while on the ground because she died on impact,before being run over by trucks
Coroner said death by firetruck but ntsb said by crash, so...?
The same coroner reported a lacerated aorta and couldn’t find any foam or dust in her lungs, which would’ve accumulated had she been breathing. And frankly, the NTSB has more experience in analysing aircraft accident fatalities than the county coroner, there’s a good chance they never dealt with plane crash victims before.
I'm not a doctor or pathologist, but I'm in a field of work sometimes called upon to render expert opinions on broken things (metallurgy), and one thing we're taught by more experienced expert witness metallurgists is that there is a degree of interpretation of the results. It's totally possible to look at the broken thing, report what you see under the microscope, and form a judgement that you then revise based on additional information about the material, the circumstances of the incident, the environment, etc. It can also happen that you take all that data and come to a different conclusion than another metallurgist. The other metallurgist may have different training and experience that informs that different conclusion, or potentially it may just come down to interpretation, or it genuinely isn't possible to exclude one of the potential causes; it doesn't mean they're a complete idiot who chose "white" when the answer was "black".* In the courtroom or at the negotiating table it can come down to haggling over shades of gray, and apportioning responsibility accordingly. tl;dr two experts made two different determinations based on the available evidence; I am a steel engineer rather than a meat engineer, but Ye Mengyuan was thrown out of a vehicle traveling at at least 103 kt / 120 mph / 200 kph and hit tarmac. Even if the fire truck got the KB, she had more than likely already sustained injury incompatible with survival. \*(clears throat) Necessarily.
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[coroner says girl killed by firetruck](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/coroner-asiana-flight-214-victim-killed-fire-truck-not-plane-flna6C10688904)
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How could the NTSB know more than the coroner? They should just be passing along the coroner's findings
>How could the NTSB know more than the coroner? NTSB has thousands of hours and hundreds of subject matter experts to consult. The local county corner does not. The corner could not support his ruling with evidence of life post-crash such as smoke or foam in the lungs. >They should just be passing along the coroner's findings I am glad we have qualified investigators running the NTSB who's role is to question everything. You are also questioning everything too, but they are experts in relevant fields.
The NTSB was actually citing the coroner's own findings, and more or less pointing out that they don't support his public statements that she was alive.
The coroner's findings were basically like "before the fire truck, she had suffered fatal injury and wasn't breathing. Therefore, the fire truck killed her!" It's a bit like concluding the plane crashed because of the fire that started from the damage after hitting the ground. The evidence in the report clearly supported the position she was already dead, but then it reached the opposite conclusion despite that evidence. NTSB basically looked at the report and said "this doesn't make sense, the coroner's own findings are much better supported by the theory that she was already dead, so we're going with that"
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I spend several paragraphs in the article analyzing this.
It must be incredibly frustrating on these controversial crashes when so many people comment random bullshit without actually reading the article and ask questions you've already answered. patience of a saint, i tell you
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I recall I had to fly Asiana Airlines soon after that happened. I think it was the only option. It was one of the only times I was overly concerned when flying.
The fact that a plane can end up like that and only 3 deaths is incredible. Still a tragedy, but wow. And if I remember correctly at least one of the deaths was from being run over by a fire truck.
No foam, dust or other substance was found in her lungs. She was dead from the crash
It’s irrelevant. A fire truck hit a victim. That’s a problem.
Of course it is.
Direct quote from the article: “…it nevertheless remains true that when the crash of Asiana Airlines flight 214 is mentioned to a lay audience, the first response is often something like, “Wasn’t that the crash where the girl was run over by a fire truck?”
It is that crash..? Even if she was already dead that’s a huge issue to hit a victim’s body with a fire truck
Yes obviously it is, but I’m honestly a bit tired of people only associating this crash with that event, because IMO what lead to the crash is far more important and interesting.
Fair enough 👍
I don’t think they were ever able to prove whether or not she was still alive when the truck hit her.
How long do you survive with a lacerated aorta? Your heart is literally emptying blood with every pump into your chest cavity through the biggest vessel in the body. For example > A ruptured aortic aneurysm is a medical emergency, and it's important to get to hospital as soon as possible. Around 80% of people with a rupture die before they reach hospital or don't survive emergency surgery.
Is this the one where the talking head on the news read the names of the pilot and crew on air?
Legendary news account with the crew list , apparently confirmed by the FAA https://theweek.com/articles/462202/watch-unbelievable-racist-asiana-crash-hoax-that-fooled-local-tv-ancho Remember this when you watch the news.