George Black, the lead investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said the disaster had ““all the earmarks’’ of a crash caused by ““an error on someone’s part.’’ Later he added: ““It’s too early to talk about what or who that was.’’ But if pilot error turns out to be the cause, another black mark will be entered on the safety record of Korean Air, which over the years has been the victim of both sloppy performance and sickening misfortune.
It was KAL Flight 007 that wandered off course over Soviet territory in the Far East in 1983 and was shot down; all 269 people aboard died. The Russians overreacted, but the Koreans were off course. The airline has only itself to blame for some other accidents, in which its pilots made mistakes or cut corners. In 1989 one of its pilots ignored a warning about dense fog and crashed his plane trying to land in Libya; 78 people died, and the pilot was sentenced to prison for two years. In 1994 the Canadian pilot and Korean copilot of another plane struggled with each other over the controls while landing on the island of Cheju; the plane skidded off the runway but the passengers were evacuated before it burst into flames. ““This is an airline with a [safety] record from two to six times worse than U.S. airlines,’’ says Mary Schiavo, the former Transportation Department inspector general who now crusades for air safety. ““They’ve had too many crashes with particularly reckless actions by the pilots.''
Korean Air has by no means the worst safety record in the airline business. Most of its pilots come from the well-trained South Korean military, and it has a good reputation for sound aircraft maintenance. ““Most of [the worst disasters] were not our fault,’’ says a spokesman. ““We are undervalued, as far as our safety reputation is concerned.’’ In a statement issued in Seoul, the company said no quick conclusions should be drawn about the Guam crash. ““We are not yet ruling out the possibility of a sudden change in altitude caused by torrential rains, the breakdown of the glide slope [indicator] or other elements, which, combined, could have caused the accident,’’ it said.
Guam is an important destination for the airline. The island’s beaches and duty-free shops attract more than 1 million Korean and Japanese tourists a year. The conditions facing the pilot of Flight 801, Park Yong Chul, 44, as he started his descent were tricky but not unusual. The clouds were dense, but visibility, at 1.5 miles, was well above the minimum.
The glide-slope indicator, which shows the correct path of descent to the airport, had been shut down for repairs early last month, a step duly reported to governments and airlines. Without the indicator, pilots could use an operating radio beacon to head themselves in the right direction, as did Flight 801. They would have to monitor their altitude and distance from the airport, but a ““template,’’ or map, for the approach to Runway 6 Left showed them the altitude they needed to clear Nimitz Hill. There should have been no problem. Indeed, airliners landed successfully both before and just after the crash.
The plane was equipped with a ““ground proximity warning system,’’ which barks ““Pull up! Pull up!’’ if the ground comes too close. But that system can be turned off once the landing gear is locked in place, as it was on Flight 801. Investigators said the cockpit voice recorder contained no ““Pull up!’’ warning. Apparently the crew thought they were about to land safely. It is possible that some key instrument, such as the altimeter, failed. Far more likely, sources said, the crew made a colossal error of navigation. They may have misread the template or they may have thought that a radio beacon positioned just before Nimitz Hill was located at the edge of the airport, three miles away. The plane flew next to that beacon as it smacked into the hill.
After the crash, it took Korean Air 17 hours to issue information to victims’ families and the press. The airline is the world’s third largest cargo carrier and ranks 12th in passengers; some industry analysts think its management understands freight handling better than people-moving. Since 1988, Korean Air has faced stiff competition from a new South Korean airline, Asiana. It responded by slashing prices on domestic routes and expanding aggressively, from 59 planes in 1988 to 113 today. Last year, with fuel prices rising and South Korea’s economy in the doldrums, it lost nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, compared with a profit of $125 million in 1995.
The airline has been plagued by a shortage of Korean pilots, filling the gaps with recruits from countries like Indonesia, Australia and Canada. The foreigners serve as pilots, with Korean copilots, and although all of them are supposed to speak English, there can be language problems. During the botched landing on Cheju, the pilot, Canadian Barry Woods, told his copilot, Chung Chan Kyu, to turn on the windshield wipers. Chung replied: ““Yeah, windshears.’’ Then the two men got into an argument - which soon turned violent - over how to land the plane. ““Wait, man. You’re going to kill us,’’ Woods is heard saying on the voice recorder. The government canceled Chung’s license for disobeying the pilot. Negligence charges were brought against Woods, who returned to Canada and is trying to negotiate a settlement.
Of nine significant Korean Air accidents in the past 20 years, some evidence of pilot error surfaced in seven. ““There is a pattern of misconduct by pilots,’’ charges Steve Pounian, a New York City lawyer who represented some of the families in the shooting down of Flight 007. Some of the errors are egregious. The Korean Air cargo pilot responsible for an accident in Anchorage in 1983 committed an almost farcical series of mistakes. Refusing to ask for directions in a snowstorm, he taxied onto the wrong runway and eventually took off in the wrong direction, clipping a commuter plane as he lifted off. Both aircraft were destroyed, though no one died. Alaska’s Supreme Court upheld a lower-court decision blaming the Korean pilot for ““willful misconduct.’’ His conduct was also stupid; the court said he ““followed tracks in the snow that he assumed were left by other aircraft.''
It is still too early to say conclusively what mistakes, if any, were made by Captain Park, who died on Guam. There was speculation that he was over-tired or unfamiliar with the Guam route. The airline said he had flown the route eight times before the crash. It also said Park had two days off on July 31 and Aug. 1 and then flew for three days before the flight to Guam. ““That kind of schedule is very common,’’ said Ricardo Meiraleite, a Brazilian pilot who flies for rival Asiana. ““It’s normal.’’ What happened to Flight 801 was far from normal - though disturbingly familiar when viewed against Korean Air’s turbulent record.
Korean Air has suffered a series of devasting accidents, some the result of error, some of misfortune.
1 1978, near Kem, U.S.S.R.: Two passengers were killed when Soviets opened fire on a Boeing 707 after it strayed off course; the plane was forced to land on a frozen lake
2 1980, Seoul, South Korea: Landing in thick fog, a Boeing 747 struck its rear landing gear on a embankment, slid to a stop on its fuselage and burst into flames; 15 died.
3 1983, off Sakhalin Island, U.S.R.R.: A Boeing 7474 was shot down by at least one soviet air-to-air missile after straying into Soviet airspace; all 269 on board perished.
4 1983, Anchorage, Alaska: Six people were seriously injured when a DC-10 collided with a commuter plance while attempting to take off from the wrong runway.
5 1987, Andaman Sea, off Burma: A Boeing 707 crashed after a terroist bomb exploded in flight; all 115 people were killed.
6 1989, Tripoli, Libya: Seventy-eight people, some on the ground, died after a DC-10 crashed while landing in thick fog.
7 1989, Seoul, South Korea: One passenger was killed when the left engine of an F28-4000 failed immediately after takeoff.
8 1994, Cheju, South Korea: Landing during a typhoon warning, an Airbus slammed into a barricade and exploded; no fatalities.
9 1997, Aganan, Guam: Landing at night in heavy rain, a Boeing 747 crashed a few miles short of the runway, killing 225.
