Asiana head apologizes to parents of two Chinese victims

The head of South Korea's second-largest flag carrier Asiana Airlines Inc. offered his apologies to the parents of two Chinese teenagers killed in the crash-landing of an Asiana Airlines flight in San Francisco.

Yoon Young-doo, the president and CEO of Asiana Airlines, repeated his apology to the parents of Wang Linjia and Ye Mengyuan Monday night during their brief stopover in South Korea's Incheon International Airport on their way to San Francisco.

Ye's father called for a thorough investigation into the cause of the accident that also injured more than 180 of the 307 passengers and crew members of the ill-fated Asiana Airlines flight on Saturday, according to the carrier.

U.S. officials have said one of the two Chinese victims might have been run over by an emergency vehicle deployed to the scene of the crash.

"There was a possibility one of two fatalities might have been contacted by one of our apparatus at one point during the incident," said Dale Carnes, assistant deputy chief of the San Francisco fire department.

Yoon's apology came as South Korean and U.S. aviation authorities launched an investigation to identify the exact cause of the accident, a process officials and experts say could take months, if not years.

Yoon has dismissed the possibility that a pilot error may be to blame for the accident.

In San Francisco, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, along with the South Korean government's investigative team, prepared Monday to interview the four pilots of the doomed jet. (Yonhap)