When Asiana Airlines Flight 214
crashed on landing at San Francisco International Airport, Todd Thrush was shocked. The Destrehan resident, a retired airline pilot who estimates he has flown into San Francisco 400 times, considers that airport one of the easiest in the United States for landing, with a runway posed against the bay so that pilots arriving from the east can enjoy a long, leisurely approach.
Besides, the weather at the time of Saturday's crash was so ideal that even the wind had calmed. After the crash landing, smoke from the ensuing fire lingered over the plane, instead of blowing out across the water.
On top of that, the aircraft model at issue, the Boeing 777, had experienced
only two accidents, neither responsible for a death, since it went into service in 1994. And the part that had caused the most recent crash before Sunday's, an engine prone to icing, had been modified. The National Transportation Safety Board
noted that the San Francisco plane did not seem to experience a mechanical failure. "The engines indicate that both engines were producing power," Chairman Deborah Hersman said.
So what had gone wrong on this flight, which
ended with the deaths of two 16-year-old passengers and the hospitalization of 182 others? Why did the plane, which originated in Shanghai and flew into San Francisco on a routine 10-hour leg from Seoul, Korea, end in a fiery snarl?
With the safety board set to further review the data recorders that detail the final 30 minutes of the flight, Thrush and other New Orleans area pilots, monitoring the news from afar, began to wonder whether the fault might not lie with the pilots.
