paulftw:
What I find funny around here is the total lack of any input from any Korean pilot, want to be pilot or what ever, to add anything in defense or against standards or what happened. “ The Korean mindset bashing “ that has been going on for pages and pages; I would have thought maybe a Korean post? Looking at History, if it's a bent plane say in India, we get posts form Indians either defending the standards or against, same for accidents in Russia etc., we get the locals involved.
With no input from any one in Korea on this issue over the last 60 odd pages leaves me to think, maybe if they ignore it the problem will go away. I just find it a little strange. Maybe they can Photoshop out the bent metal at SFO and all will be forgotten over time.
I don't know, maybe they find some of the racist-tinged comments sprinkled throughout this thread a bit off-putting?
I'm not a pilot, nor am I in the aviation industry. I am a journo and I happened to be on duty this weekend when the plane went down. It also happened in my hometown so I have been following this case closely and stumbled on to this forum via an external link.
It took me three days to go through every single post on here. At times it was insightful and at times, it was painful.
Even though I am on the other side of the cockpit door and have none of your expertise, I do know some things that may help to steer the conversation in the right direction.
Several of you speculated about the "cultural" dynamics among the pilots and whether the instructor pilot was junior to the pilot who was flying the jet. I would like to direct your attention to the following article:
The co-pilot, Mr. Lee, born in
1967, was attempting his first 777 landing at SFO, and his ninth landing overall with that model. He had previously landed the 777 at Narita in Tokyo, London Heathrow and Los Angeles. Between 1999 and 2004, Mr. Lee landed other models of passenger planes at the same airport in San Francisco.
A Korean transport ministry spokesman said Mr. Lee had been at the controls for five hours before landing. He has 43 hours of real, non-simulated experience flying 777s, roughly the equivalent of three to four trans-Pacific flights.
Few details emerged Monday about Mr. Lee, who joined Asiana as a trainee in 1994 and gained his pilot's license in 2001. He has just under 10,000 hours of flying time.
The captain on board, Lee Jeong-min (THIS IS THE INSTRUCTOR), has a 12,387 hour flight record. Born in
1964, Mr. Lee Jeong-min has 3,220 hours of flight experience in the 777 model.
As you can see, seniority was not an issue here so perhaps we can put that speculation to rest.