The immediate causes of the Asiana Airlines flight 214 Shanghai to San Francisco crash are clear: the plane came in too slow, too low, and too soon. Flying slow prevented it from aborting the landing. Flying low, or nose-heavy, caused a hard landing, and coming to the runway too soon knocked off the landing gear on the sea wall, as well as landing the plane on non-runway, low-grade tarmac. But the crash’s human causes, and lifesaving factors, are not as clear.
The 3 factors
Three factors may have played into pilot Lee Jeong-Min’s errors. First, the Lee was inexperienced with the Boeing 777 model, and landing in particular, as detailed at TheCelebrityCafe.com. Second, the AP.com reports, the crash occurred at 3:37 AM Korean time, and “At the end of a 10-hour flight, regardless of whether you have had a two-hour nap or not, it has been a long flight,” said former Delta Air Lines chief international pilot Kevin Hiatt.
And finally, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has indicated that increased pilot reliance on automatic functions may have detracted from manual maneuvering capabilities. In this case, the pilot had autopilot off, but may have left the autothrottle engaged, unaware that he still needed to pay attention to his speed and altitude.
The 2 victims
With everything that went wrong, authorities are calling it a miracle that more people weren’t killed. The two girls who were the only victims, best friends and star students Wang Linjia and Ye Mengyuan, both had seats at the back of the plane. One girl may have been thrown out of the plane and landed with tail wreckage, while the other may have been run over by an emergency vehicle.
The lifesavers
Large numbers of spinal injuries are keeping many passengers hospitalized; according to the AP.com, lap seatbelts are probably to blame—and to thank. Experts say the injuries looked like exaggerations of car crash injuries from lap-belt days. Not having a seatbelt would probably have been deadly.
Equally important were the flight attendants and first responders, according to the AP.com and CNN.com. With a broken tailbone, and in the face of emergency evacuation slides that deployed inside the cabin, cabin manager Lee Yoon-hye took charge, assisting trapped passengers and keeping the evacuation orderly as fire broke out. Meanwhile, firefighters and unequipped police ran into the burning wreck to rescue remaining passengers.
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