Asiana promises to bolster safety measures

By Nam Hyun-woo

Asiana Airlines pledged Monday to carry out a slew of enhanced aviation safety measures following the July 6 crash landing of its Boeing 777 at the San Francisco International Airport.

“Asiana will provide special training on automated flight systems and visual approaches to all pilots,” said Eun Jin-ki, a senior executive of the carrier, in a presentation to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

The ministry held an emergency meeting on aviation safety, and senior executives from eight Korean carriers and the vice minister of the ministry gathered to discuss safety measures.

Eun said the carrier will bolster safety management in airports through improved measures.

Dan Rose, a veteran pilot, speaking on a CBS broadcast said the San Francisco International Airport can be a challenging airfield to land. Surrounded by water, pilots can be confused about whether they are in the right position to land. The pilots of the ill-fated jet made a visual approach.

Asiana said it will run separate maintenance teams on Boeing and Airbus aircraft to offer tailored engineering service.

Eun said that Asiana will also strengthen its training programs for pilots switching to new types of jets. For that, the company plans to enforce mentoring and one-to-one training systems between pilots.

The new safety measures were released amid controversy that Pilot Lee Kang-guk of the ill-fated jet was under guidance of another pilot to switch from Airbus planes to Boeing 777s and had only 43 hours of flying time with the 777, though he had logged more than 9,700 hours of flying time with other aircrafts.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is investigating the crash, also pointed out that the two pilots had no experience of working together before the plane crash-landed.

Asiana and NTSB are at odds as the American investigators claimed that Asiana’s pilot assigning policy is problematic, while the Korean carrier denied such allegations.

During the meeting, Vice Minister Yeo Hyung-ku called on all carriers in the country to conduct in-depth investigations of their operating systems, taking the tragedy as a critical lesson.

“Foreign media outlets are seeing the country’s aviation safety systems as problematic. The country has been struggling to raise the air safety level for over a decade,” he said. “However, with the crash, such efforts may turn out to be meaningless. I feel grave responsibility over the crash.”