New concerns raised about pilots’ skills in automated age
WASHINGTON — The crash landing of a South Korean airliner in San Francisco has revived concerns that airline pilots get so little opportunity these days to fly without the aid of sophisticated automation that their stick-and-rudder skills are eroding.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the accident, is a long way from reaching a conclusion as to its probable cause. While the focus of the investigation could still shift, information released by the board thus far appears to point to pilot error.
What is known is Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed short of its target runway Saturday at San Francisco International Airport in broad daylight in near-ideal weather conditions. The Boeing 777’s engines are being examined, but appear to have been receiving power normally. And the flight’s pilots didn’t report mechanical issues or other problems.
But the plane was travelling too slowly in the last half-minute before the crash, slow enough to trigger an automated warning of an impending stall. The jet should have been travelling at 254 km/h as it crossed the runway threshold. Instead, the speed dropped to as low 190 km/h before the plane struck a rocky seawall short of the runway. The plane careened and then pancaked down. Two of the 307 people on board were killed, and dozens more injured.
The pilot, Lee Gang-guk, had a lot of flying experience but was new to the plane, having clocked only 43 hours at the controls. He was supposed to be flying under the supervision of another experienced pilot. There were two more pilots on board, typical of long flights during which two pilots rest while two fly.
Lee was flying without the aid of a key part of the airport’s instrument landing system, which provides pilots with a glide slope to follow so the plane isn’t too high or low. He was also new to the airport, having never landed there before.
Investigators are interviewing the flight’s four pilots, and hoped to wrap up those interviews Tuesday.
Automation has been a boon to aviation safety, providing a consistent precision humans can’t duplicate. But pilots and safety officials have expressed concern in recent years that pilots’ “automation addiction” has eroded flying skills. “If your last dozen landings were autopilot landings and here you are faced with nothing but visual (cues) to deal with, your rust factor would be greater,” said Cass Howell, a former military pilot and human factors expert at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.