i i
hide captionThe wreckage of Asiana Flight 214 lies on the ground after it crashed at San Francisco International Airport in July 2013. The NTSB concluded Tuesday that an over-reliance on automated systems contributed to the crash.
Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
The wreckage of Asiana Flight 214 lies on the ground after it crashed at San Francisco International Airport in July 2013. The NTSB concluded Tuesday that an over-reliance on automated systems contributed to the crash.
Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
Pilot misjudgment and an over-reliance on automated systems were the main causes of last year’s crash of Asiana Flight 214 in San Francisco that killed three people, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded Tuesday.
The Boeing 777 with 307 people aboard came in too low and too slow in its landing approach, the NTSB said. It hit a seawall, ripping off the tail and sending the plane’s fuselage skidding down the tarmac.
The board said there was confusion over whether the plane was maintaining adequate speed for landing.
Acting NTSB chairman Chris Hart said at a meeting ahead of the agency’s vote on its conclusions that the crew “over-relied on automated systems that they did not fully understand.”
He also cited the complexity of the 777’s autothrottle and pilot training by the South Korea-based airline, according to The Associated Press.
“In their efforts to compensate for the unreliability of human performance, the designers of automated control systems have unwittingly created opportunities for new error types that can be even more serious than those they were seeking to avoid,” Hart said.
“Asiana has acknowledged the crew failed to monitor and maintain the plane’s airspeed, which was likely to have been the cause of the accident, according to documents made public by the NTSB.
“The South Korea-based airline said those flying the plane reasonably believed the automatic throttle would keep the plane flying fast enough to land safely.
“But that feature was shut off after a pilot idled it to correct an unexplained climb earlier in the landing.
“The airline argued the automated system should have been designed so that the auto throttle would maintain the proper speed after the pilot put it in “‘hold mode.'”
Article source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/24/325209092/ntsb-too-much-technology-too-little-training-caused-asiana-crash?ft=1&f=1001