Asiana pilot says he was blinded by light prior to crash

Federal crash investigators revealed Wednesday that the pilot flying Asiana Airlines flight 214 told them that he was temporarily blinded by a bright light when 500 feet above the ground. Deborah Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said it wasn't clear what could have caused the problem. Asked specifically whether it could have been a laser pointed from the ground, Hersman said she couldn't say what caused it. "We need to understand exactly what that is," Hersman said. "It was a temporary issue." Her comments came during a daily press briefing on the Saturday crash of Asiana Flight 214 that left two dead and another 168 injured.

www.usatoday.com...


neener neener neener neener
kinda odd i suppose

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reply to post by canucks555


The idea that this crash could have been induced, rather than a complete accident is terrible in and of itself. But there are other interesting factors within the article. Particularly interesting is the failiure of the evacuation slides to deploy in the correct fashion, although that is easily explained by the fact that by the time the aircraft came to a halt, its entire subframe had probably been under significant stress, and had warped enough to hamper the slides effective deployment.

Also interesting is the delay between the stoppage of the aircraft, and the evacuation of the aircraft. Normally speaking the first thing one would want to ensure, is that as many people make it on to the tarmac as possible, meaning that should there be an issue with fire, or, God forbid, some sort of explosion, as many people as possible are already off the plane, and moving away from it, to a safe distance. Mind you, I can understand that there are perhaps some scenarios where a fast exit, though sensible, might not always be the best idea. For instance, the pilots might have been aware that with several members of the planes crew unaccounted for (having been thrown out of the arse end of the aircraft when the tail broke off) , it might have been difficult to marshall the survivors once they had reached the ground, and given the wrecked nature of the plane, may have been worried about further loss of structural integrity, leading to injuries from falling bits of plane.

Trying to cover his butt. Ufo people grasp at nothing.

there is two guys in front of the plane pilot and co pilot..how about Mr co pilot..is he feel the same?

Were there any references to this by either pilot before the crash? One would think the blinded pilot would have mentioned it to the other.

Originally posted by butcherguy
Were there any references to this by either pilot before the crash? One would think the blinded pilot would have mentioned it to the other.

not only mention it, but to hand off the aircraft to the "co-pilot". i also recall seeing that at least one if not both of the other pilots were in the cockpit as well, and one of them could have taken over as well. plus why only mention it now? i would have thought "i was blinded by something" would have been about the first words out of his mouth after the crash if that had happened. was there any unexplained "ouch", "s**t" or other expletives or words of pain on the voice recorder? i know when i have been suddenly blinded by a bright light i tend to say something as it is a bit painful when it happens, heck i have even involuntarily moved after a particularly bright flash of light, surly someone would have noticed something was wrong.

i guess i would have to agree with Jefferton, the pilot seems to be grasping at straws to cover his butt.

They were already on a bad slope approach and too slow before they even reached the run way a blinding light or not wouldn't have made any difference.

Originally posted by TrueBrit
reply to post by canucks555

 

Also interesting is the delay between the stoppage of the aircraft, and the evacuation of the aircraft. Normally speaking the first thing one would want to ensure, is that as many people make it on to the tarmac as possible, meaning that should there be an issue with fire, or, God forbid, some sort of explosion, as many people as possible are already off the plane, and moving away from it, to a safe distance.

At a major hub there are many other aircraft, and there is some danger in an uncontrolled evacuation onto taxiways without awareness.

reply to post by mbkennel


I would have thought that Air Traffic Control would have re-routed any plane scheduled to land on that specific runway, placed as many aircraft as possible in holding, as well as using other runways to take planes which could not circle any longer. It is highly unlikely that right after a serious crash, involving all manner of debris being smashed all over the place, that the controllers would have been prepared to use the runway until they were sure precisely what happened to the plane, and that any potential debris threat had been mitigated to the best ability of the ground crews and saftey officials at the airport.

reply to post by canucks555


Pilots have been seeing UFOs through out the history of aviation, dating as far back as the 1940's...Fighter Pilots during WW2 reported metallic objects flying passed their aircraft, calling them "Foo-Fighters".
I think it is very possible that the Asiana Pilot witnessed a UFO reflecting sunlight and temporarily blinded and/or frightened him upon landing the jet. This may also explain why he slowed down more than he needed to on his descent, perceiving that the "bright light" was moving toward the aeroplane.

As ATSZOMBIE has pointed out, the plane was already in bad shape for a landing. The approach was consistently bad: it did not suddenly get out of shape. If the pilot was blinded as he claims, one would expect something to show up in conversations with ATC - it doesn't. It may be borne out by the cockpit voice recorder tape - we'll see. But in any event, it's something which should have led to him handing over control or initiating an immediate go-around.

On the evidence so far, it doesn't ring true at all.

Originally posted by TrueBrit
reply to post by mbkennel

 

I would have thought that Air Traffic Control would have re-routed any plane scheduled to land on that specific runway, placed as many aircraft as possible in holding, as well as using other runways to take planes which could not circle any longer. It is highly unlikely that right after a serious crash, involving all manner of debris being smashed all over the place, that the controllers would have been prepared to use the runway until they were sure precisely what happened to the plane, and that any potential debris threat had been mitigated to the best ability of the ground crews and saftey officials at the airport.

True, but the aircrew still has responsibility for their own passengers. Aircraft taxiing have limited visibility, and in the absence of a fire, a minute to take count and get info on the situation is not unreasonable.

The best explanation I've heard about the accident is a user-interface confusion on the auto-speed controls.

There is no one single 'autopilot', there are a number of automated assist systems which can be activated or not in various phases. The best I've heard is that the autospeed was in fact set to the correct value for 777 landing, but the system was set to "ARMED" instead of "ON" or "OFF" (the "ON" would have actually set control). Crew must have believed they had taken care of the speed correctly but in fact they had not. They realized before the accident this was the case and had powered up engines manually to compensate but it was too late for the descent rate.

From the story here, it appears the problem developed very rapidly.

www.npr.org...

They started their approach high, because the glideslope for the ILS was down. They then set in a 1500 fpm descent, which was probably too high, and descended at flight idle. They assumed that the autothrottle was holding their speed, but they apparently missed an autopilot mode change that would have kept the AT holding their speed at 137 knots.

The instructor noticed they were looking at three red, and one white on the PAPI lights next to the runway, which indicated they were low (two red, two white is on glideslope, three white or all white is high), so commanded the "student" to climb. He pulled the nose up, and went for the throttles, but was told the throttles were already pushed forward. At four seconds before impact, they were around 103 knots, and the stick shaker activated warning them they were going to stall. The throttles were pushed forward to abort the landing, but the main landing gear struck the jetty before the engines could spool up.

You had two pilots who were probably uncomfortable in their roles (a 10,000 hour pilot who was suddenly a "student" again, and a new instructor), with a third pilot in a cockpit meant for two, looking over their shoulder to make things worse.

He may have seen a glare, or even had a light shined into the cockpit that temporarily blinded him, but it didn't play a role in the accident. But, it has to be mentioned, and investigated, to rule out everything.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
They started their approach high, because the glideslope for the ILS was down. They then set in a 1500 fpm descent, which was probably too high, and descended at flight idle. They assumed that the autothrottle was holding their speed, but they apparently missed an autopilot mode change that would have kept the AT holding their speed at 137 knots.

The instructor noticed they were looking at three red, and one white on the PAPI lights next to the runway, which indicated they were low (two red, two white is on glideslope, three white or all white is high), so commanded the "student" to climb. He pulled the nose up, and went for the throttles, but was told the throttles were already pushed forward. At four seconds before impact, they were around 103 knots, and the stick shaker activated warning them they were going to stall. The throttles were pushed forward to abort the landing, but the main landing gear struck the jetty before the engines could spool up.

Wow. Sounds as if they had retracted gear a couple of seconds earlier they would have made it---less drag.

He may have seen a glare, or even had a light shined into the cockpit that temporarily blinded him, but it didn't play a role in the accident. But, it has to be mentioned, and investigated, to rule out everything.

Did the glare preclude them seeing the lights or the autothrottle settings well?

I wonder if both 'more' and 'less' automation would be a good thing. Less in the sense that we should have a human paying attention to the throttle and course, but more in the sense of a really good "you're not going to make it" navicomputer which knows how fast it takes to respond to an abort and forces an abort at a safe distance and altitude. It knows the aircraft and landing target and figures out the 'cone' of allowable trajectories in geometry and speed, and if you get too far out of it, you can't land, and will auto-abort. Think of the correct and robust human factors you need for this.

Use the automation to upgrade human skills, not confuse them with 'on' vs 'armed' along with the "We were just following your orders" computer attitude.

Stick shaking at a stall isn't enough.

reply to post by mbkennel


There's an interesting blog post on Flightglobal today that talks about too much automation in flying anymore, and how flight training hasn't caught up to it yet. And another article that talks about changes to flight training.

Automation and flying

The article about the upgrade to flight training requires a log in, but it's free to join their club. It's at flightglobal.com.

reply to post by Zaphod58


thanks for your input, much respect for your avionic knowledge on this forum

blinded by runway lights because he is flying too low

Originally posted by milomilo
blinded by runway lights because he is flying too low

I don't think that pilots can get blinded by runway lights...kind of defeats the purpose. They are used to help the pilots navigate.