Asiana plane made full spin after hitting seawall, NTSB says

SAN FRANCISCO — An Asiana Airlines pilot told investigators that he noticed Flight 214 was coming in too low to San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, and tried to correct the plane’s landing path just before it crashed, officials said Tuesday.

When the plane was 500 feet above the runway, instructional pilot Lee Jung-min told pilot-in-training Lee Kang-kook to pull the plane up, National Transportation Safety Board Deborah A.P. Hersman said during a news conference.

“They were trying to correct at that point,” said Hersman, citing completed interviews with three of the four pilots.

Hersman also said that at impact, two flight attendants were ejected from the plane and were not present to help with evacuation. Both were injured and are expected to survive. During the evacuation, one of the plane’s eight doors fell off and landed in the wreckage; the other seven were attached.

About 200 feet above the runway, Lee Jung-min said, he saw all four landing lights on the runway were red —a sign that the plane was coming in far too low. In the same moment, he said, he noticed that the auto-throttle was not properly regulating the plane’s speed.

Officials said the Asiana jetliner had fallen more than 30 knots below its target landing speed of 137 knots in the seconds before it crashed, even as the crew desperately tried to apply more engine power. The pilots were given a warning about four seconds before the crash that the aircraft was approaching a stall. At the time of the crash, the engines were running about 50% and increasing in power.

Then the aircraft struck a sea wall at the end of runway 28L, began turning counterclockwise, then went into a full spin, Hersman said. Debris flew onto the runway and into the grass as the aircraft skidded. Two people died in the crash. Scores more were injured.

Michael L. Barr, an aviation safety expert and former military pilot who teaches at USC, said that at 500 feet, the pilots should have had a stable approach in which the aircraft was on its proper glide slope, on course to the center line of the runway and at its proper airspeed. Otherwise, the landing should have been aborted and a “go around” taken for another attempt.

Pilots can be reluctant to abort a landing, even when the approach is unstable, Barr said. Although pilots’ willingness to abort a bad approach has improved, it remains a problem in the industry.

It was pilot Lee Kang-kook’s first time landing a Boeing 777 at the San Francisco airport, and with a key part of the airport’s automated landing system not working, he was forced to visually guide the massive jetliner onto the runway.

It was the first time Lee had flown with supervising pilot Lee Jung-min, who was on his first flight as a training supervisor, Hersman said. Lee Jung-min did not call to abort the flight and try again until about 1.5 seconds before the crash, officials have said.

Pilot Lee Kang-kook had logged 35 hours on the Boeing 777, about half the hours needed to be certified on the aircraft, Hersman said, citing interviews with the pilot. In total, Lee Kang-kook estimated that he had about 9,700 hours of total flight time, with 5,000 of those as a pilot in command.

When the 777 crashed, three pilots were in the cockpit. Lee Kang-kook was in the left-hand seat, flying; Lee Jung-min was in the right-hand seat, supervising his flight; and a relief first officer was sitting in the jumpseat to monitor the landing. “There is no requirement for four pilots to be in the cockpit,” Hersman said. The relief pilot was sitting in the cabin.

None of the crew was tested for drugs or alcohol after the crash, Hersman said, because foreign flight crews do not fall under the same regulatory requirements as U.S. crews involved in accidents.

Questions remain about the auto-throttle, which helps pilots control the thrust and speed of an aircraft. Although investigators later saw the auto-throttles in the cockpit set to “arm,” that does not necessarily mean they were engaged, Hersman said.

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laura.nelson@latimes.com