Letters: Asiana’s misguided lawsuit

Re “Asiana to sue over TV’s pilot name flub,” July 16

Asiana Airline’s planned lawsuit over fake pilot names read during a TV news broadcast about the crash of Flight 214 really takes the cake. The airline says the mistake damaged its reputation. Asiana damaged its own reputation when its pilots apparently flew a perfectly good aircraft into a sea wall.

Whether driven by home-office cultural insensitivity to an American sense of humor that thrives on disaster jokes or by a locally made decision to sue first and ask questions later, Asiana’s decision to litigate is foolish. Its lawsuit looks like a so-called SLAPP suit, intended to chill legitimate media coverage of an incident that is a subject of public interest.

With three dead and many more injured, Asiana should concentrate on making things right, not on protecting its already shredded reputation.

Paul S. Marchand

Cathedral City

Since I live in Los Angeles, I didn’t hear the names read during the San Francisco news broadcast. However, the real damage to Asiana’s reputation is the fact that the plane “was on the verge of stalling” before the crash, according to a previous article in The Times.

While the National Transportation Safety Board has yet to report its findings, it appears that pilot error was at least one cause of the accident.

The airline should be more concerned with the accident itself and the pilots’ actions, not their names.

Sue Kamm

Los Angeles

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