What has Asiana taught us? What have any of these crashes told us? Not many people look into a crash without mystery. Where all the information is seemingly given out on a local news channel and certaintly not an incident with a smaller loss of life. However, there is no such thing as a "smaller" loss of life. Life is life. Something, or someone on that airplane caused it to go down and for there to be closure for the victims and their families, there must be blame. We start at the minutes before landing. The weather in the San Franciscan skies enough so for a visual approach, an uncommon occasion. The 777 was scheduled to land on Runway 28L, whose vertical guidance was out of operation from June 1, therefore a precision landing wasn't possible. The captain handed over the controls to the co-pilot who had both operated a 777 and landed at San Francisco in the past but never both at the same time. After 8 hours of autopilot, the crew took over the plane for a manual descent. The autopilot was turned off-82 seconds before impact- at 1,600 feet therefore setting the throttles to idle. The co-pilot was approaching too slow and at a low height. Three seconds before impact someone in the cockpit yelled to abort landing. At this point, the landing gear was down. The nose was lifted up and the landing gear hit the sea wall, damaging the gear and the fuselage. The entire crash was due to the pilots relying far too much on autopilot. The NTSB recommended that Boeing change the manual "to prevent confusion from auto-pilot modes"According to MIT aeronautics professor R. John Hansman Jr., "an increased focus on pilot training to maintain basic piloting skills and not become too dependent on automation."Which is exactly what is happening in our skies. The pilot only has to fly for 2% of the time, takeoff and landing and even then, they have runway assists to help them find the perfect glide slope. Air crashes help us learn and this case, telling us that the modernity of our world has caused us to rely heavily on machines, when in truth we are the smarter being. Why use machines if we have ourselves?
Asiana 214 crash landed in San Francisco International Airport on July 6, 2014 and started the damage to the Boeing 777's previously pristine fatalities record. As of a few months ago, people were forgetting the error that took the lives of three fifteen-year old teenage girls, but as March came around people started remembering again. This was completely due to the stark dissappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, service from Kuala Lumpur to Bejing, another 777-200.
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AuthorRia Thakkar CategoriesArchives
October 2015
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