7-6-13 SFO

[Av8r3400 1179]

Looks like the Koreans piled one up at SFO today in the severe clear.  Killed two people.  Luckily most got out alive.  Wrecked a perfectly good Boeing 777, though.

 

 

I guess the Koreans can't make quality cars or quality pilots...

Edited 7 Jul 2013 by Av8r3400

[C5Engineer 1170]

It would appear they flew a perfectly good jet into the ground but I don't want to speculate too much. An interesting note is the Glideslope and VASI's were Notam'd out of service.

 

Click the pic for a huge high res shot. Sure looks like they came in just short. Not sure what their FMS does for them on a Non-Precision approach but I could easily envision an airline pilot not being able to land one of those things without the glideslope where they are essentially VFR after passing the MDA and VDP (Minimum Descent Altitude and Visual Descent Point)

 

 

[Boat 10]

My immediate thought was that they allowed the GPS to fly the airplane sense the  ILS wasn't working.  Seems the threshold had been moved 1,000 ft farther down the runway.  Putting in a number 1,000 ft in the "wrong" direction should just about cause what happened.

[Av8r3400 1179]

The final word was plain incompetence of the flight crew in landing VFR.  They landed short.  Plain and simple incompetance.

 

Combine this with the Asian cultural problems of pointing out failure, there was a check pilot on board, and this is the result.  The check pilot watched the entire approach and said nothing to the PIC until the crash happened.  Google the flight deck recordings to hear this yourself.

 

Personally, I won't ever fly a Korean Airline.  Ever.

[akflyer 1427]

They land up here on the taxi ways at ANC with a regular frequency.  They have also taken off on the taxi ways and in one case I can remember 3-4 years ago, they drug the landing gear through the snow berm at the end of the taxiway as they clawed their way into the sky.  But that was in a 747.