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commo, criticism & culture in Asiana 214 crash 7/9/2013 6:50:19 AM
Did cultural factors play a part in the SFO crash of Asiana 214? Yesterday I wrote about the technical aspects of Sunday’s crash of Asiana flight 214 at SFO. As I wrote yesterday I repeat today: this is pure speculation on my part, so perhaps worthless to any accident cause and/or resolution. The crash at San Francisco did, however, remind me in its details and outcome of a few flying accidents I’ve read about over the years. By reading various reports, such as those from the National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB, Pilots familiarize themselves with the misfortunes of their colleagues, to learn from them, and to possibly avoid the mistakes and scenarios that put the other fellow in the dirt. It’s not a morbid thing, or a way to burnish our own cockpit creds. For me at least, as I wove my way toward the end of a successful, accident-free flying career, those reports reinforced for me that there are no new ways to have an aviation accident. No novel flight profiles pop up, no warp occurs in the laws of physics to create brand new hazards for those who make their living in the vineyard of the sky.
And one of the things that always jumps off the page of any NTSB report I ever read is the communication breakdown that seems a part and parcel of every single crash.
An example is an accident at Washington National Airport in January 1982. ‘Palm 90′ took off that frigid day with ice on its control surfaces. The thin film of ice degraded the lifting ability of the wings, and clogs of ice in the pitot tube, the exterior orifice that delivers speed information into the cockpit gave the pilots inaccurate data. Reading the cockpit communication from that crash is chilling: the pilot not on the controls knows there’s something amiss, he just can’t force himself to abandon the takeoff, to simply communicate his apprehension to his colleague. ‘God, look at that thing–That don’t seem right, does it? Uh, that’s not right–Yes it is, there’s eighty–Naw, I don’t think that’s right. Ah, maybe it is–Hundred and twenty– I don’t know…’ The next sound on the recording is the plane’s impact into the 14th Street bridge across the Potomac. Nowhere in the taping does either pilot discuss stopping to figure out the anomaly in front of them.
Yet another accident happened on Tenerife in the Canary Islands in March 1977. The pilot of a KLM 747 attempted to take off on a fog-shrouded runway. Too late to stop, he saw a Pan-Am 747 taxiing toward him on the same runway. Again, miscommunication caused the collision of two jumbo jets, killing 583 people, the worst accident in aviation history.
Another happened on Guam in August 1997 when a Korean Airlines 747, flight 801 crashed into a hillside short of the Agana Airport. The pilot insisted that he was in position to land, and despite the subtle hints from his co-pilot that the plane is too low, and even with a low-altitude aural warning, the pilot flew the plane into the ground.
In the Korean Air crash on Guam an accident factor emerged that may have played a role in Sunday’s accident at SFO. Cultural biases against questioning the authority of an elder, or someone in charge seems to have led to the Guam accident. The right seat pilot threw several hints and subtle verbal cues to his captain, but he couldn’t force himself to question the man’s judgement or authority. The young fellow quite literally watched his captain fly into the ground rather than cause embarrassment to him in the cockpit. The student/co-pilot chose to risk his very life rather than make his captain look bad. Reading the text, and watching the video of Sunday’s Asiana accident I can’t help wondering if a breakdown in communication, a hesitation to speak up due to cultural restraint might well be a factor in putting that plane in the dirt as well.
