San Francisco Crash Pilot 'Blinded By Light'

San Francisco Crash Pilot 'Blinded By Light'

news.sky.com

The pilot of a plane which crashed at San Francisco airport, killing two people, may have been temporarily blinded by a bright light as he came into land.

Lee Kang Kuk, who was making his first landing at the airport and had just 43 hours' experience at the controls of the Boeing 777, said he saw a bright flash as he approached the runway.

It happened around 35 seconds before impact when Asiana Airlines flight 214 was around 500ft (150m) off the ground - the point at which the aircraft began to slow down and drop steeply.

Deborah Hersman, who chairs the National Transportation Safety

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This is very strange. I have head reports that there was a fear the terrorists could use laser pens to blind air craft pilots too distract them when they are comming into land but this is the first time I have heard of and actual case of it happening after a incident like this. I have posted an article from 2011 from the RT New website bellow about Terrorism and Laser pens.

Here is a youtube video of a laser pen from the cockpit.



news.sky.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

They were already in trouble prior to him being blinded, and there were two other pilots in the cockpit. Ultimately I don't think this will play a role in the crash.

People have been shining lasers into cockpits for years, because they can. To immediately say terrorists may do this is unnecessary, and unlikely.

Wrong type of light.

Not a laser.

I am pretty sure pilots are trained to "fly blind" anyway. If you can't land a plane because something flashed in your face you shouldnt be getting 100k a year

This is a recent upload, and the photo evidence alone makes me wonder what happened with that flight:

There's not enough description of the light to tell if it is or is not from a laser, but especially if it was a laser, there were other pilots who could see.

Originally posted by ItsEvolutionBaby
This is a recent upload, and the photo evidence alone makes me wonder what happened with that flight:

How can you come to any other conclusion from watching that than the guy has a few screws loose?

He's obviously no structural engineer and has no idea how to calculate exactly what stresses were applied to the wing during the crash to determine if the wing should have been ripped off or not, yet he ignorantly claims the wing should have been ripped off. Then he comments on the 3 foot high grass seen in the ground photo is not seen from the aerial photo where the ground looks brown. It looks pretty brown from the ground too. It's just sad his cognitive abilities are so distorted he can't recognize a real plane crash when he sees one.

reply to post by jroduk


Everything I've read on this is pilot error, sounds like he's trying to pass the buck to me, if I'm wrong then I stand corrected but that's how it appears.

And, I didn't see no flash on the video I watched

..it looks like we've reached a critical point in the whole "conspiracy" scene,

nobody believes anything anymore..



(..something to be said here of building upon a strong foundation)

sounds like he's trying to pass the buck to me

...dancing in the cockpit of the concordia?

Originally posted by UNIT76
..it looks like we've reached a critical point in the whole "conspiracy" scene,

nobody believes anything anymore..

(..something to be said here of building upon a strong foundation)

sounds like he's trying to pass the buck to me

...dancing in the cockpit of the concordia?

edit on 11-7-2013 by UNIT76 because: wordplay

Do ships have cockpits?

I get the meaning and the Captain of that ship was pathetic

I'll be the 1st to agree with parts of the video and say I was blown a bit back by some of the " Foam " Errors I saw on the videos from the news. Sometimes the foam was there, but no passengers were foamy, the fire seems to of happened after the passengers got out, yet we had foam pics were some of the 1st to be on the news, I can agree with the foam and the sequencing, as for the other things, jet's are pretty tough even if they are made of fiberglass or even plywood they are made to handle the turbulence of wind an are sometimes as flexible as a gymnast.

reply to post by Tranceopticalinclined


The fire didn't start until after the evacuation started. It started in the engine that was laying next to the airframe, and eventually spread to the fuselage.

As for flexibility, an aircraft is flexible (somewhat), but what does that have to do with anything? It's also strong in the ways that it's designed to be. A prime example is American 587 in New York. When the aircraft went into a flat spin, the engines separated. The engine struts are designed to hand stresses that go up and down, not side to side. You put a lateral stress on it, and the mounts will snap much quicker.

Although flexibility had nothing to do at all with this crash.

Blinded by the light…. Lol

Someone put these words into pilot’s mouth; they both have 10k+ hours (pilot) and 9k+hours (co-pilot) flight experience and this never happened before in their entire career!

Then this laser pen terrorist… lol again, lasers are so focused that one should be in “right attitude, right weather condition and right time to fire the beam of light into cockpit, right to the eyes of the pilot (simply not enough time to fire it again into the co-pilot eyes) …!

Where the hell was the co-pilot in this case..? 34 sec before landing..? look at airport the surrounding area.. do you see any mountain near enough for someone climb up and fire lasers to pilot’s eyes..??

This story is BS…

reply to post by Zaphod58


The guy said in his video, the wing should of came off. I was stating that the aircraft is flexible, it has to be to handle wind currents, of course its not litterally as a damn gymnst, it's a plane. In the main video the plane was basically on it's side doing a flail from the angle of landing, if the aircraft wasn't flexible it would have sheared the right wing off causing a gross amount of jet fuel to become atomized and therefor a great fireball.

I wasn't agreeing with the video guy 100% just on a few statements he spoke of, if that's understood maybe we can carry on.

An Aircraft is just a Bottlerocket with wings and people on it, think of it that way.

reply to post by Tranceopticalinclined


He has no clue what he's talking about. Right from the start that was obvious. I made it as far as "they started the fire" about 7 minutes in before I couldn't stand it anymore. Of course Asiana 214 didn't leave after July 4th. It doesn't leave as 214, it leaves as 213, and returns as 214 (of course he couldn't even get the website name right, so I'm not surprised).

You are right about the wing however. The wing spar is one of the stronger portions of the aircraft, and designed to flex up and down, up to 150% of the aircraft weight. Since the impact was taken mostly at the strongest part of it, it held (it's probably broken inside, but the wing remained attached).

reply to post by amkia


You don't have to "be up on a mountain" to shine a light into the cockpit. Even a glancing glimpse of it could be blinding to someone. There were several incidents where pilots were hit by lasers, and there was nothing tall around them for someone "to climb up on" to blind them. The laser was fired from the ground in those instances.

FAA: Pilot was "wrapped up like a deuce, another runner in the night."

Originally posted by Briles1207
I am pretty sure pilots are trained to "fly blind" anyway. If you can't land a plane because something flashed in your face you shouldnt be getting 100k a year

Not sure if serious...

Flying blind does not mean a blind pilot. It means flying with an obscured view outside the plane, i.e. in fog, in the dark etc. It's flying a plane based on instrument readings.

I'm sure plenty of pilots are familiar enough to find their controls even when they themselves can't see at all, but in that case they still couldn't see their instrument readings, and you need to do that to 'fly blind' especially for landing.

They're pilots, not Luke Skywalker.

Originally posted by 11andrew34
FAA: Pilot was "wrapped up like a deuce, another runner in the night."

Originally posted by Briles1207
I am pretty sure pilots are trained to "fly blind" anyway. If you can't land a plane because something flashed in your face you shouldnt be getting 100k a year

Not sure if serious...

Flying blind does not mean a blind pilot. It means flying with an obscured view outside the plane, i.e. in fog, in the dark etc. It's flying a plane based on instrument readings.

I'm sure plenty of pilots are familiar enough to find their controls even when they themselves can't see at all, but in that case they still couldn't see their instrument readings, and you need to do that to 'fly blind' especially for landing.

They're pilots, not Luke Skywalker.

edit on 11-7-2013 by 11andrew34 because: typo

I bet Darth Vadar could fly blind

Originally posted by Briles1207
I am pretty sure pilots are trained to "fly blind" anyway. If you can't land a plane because something flashed in your face you shouldnt be getting 100k a year

You're quite off on pay scales. I know they start around 35k a year. Yes, some pilots, the exception to the rule actually, make 100K plus a year. Probably less than 10% of commercial pilots worldwide are in that pay range.

Now if you get into good private companies or law/fire then you can make good money. My best friend is a LAFD Heli Pilot/Paramedic and he makes about 120k a year without overtime. Another friend who flies for UPS makes about 150K a year. The trade off is both of these guys have families that they are away from 50% of the year.

Pilots in the very high pay ranges are usually ex-military/law enforcment who served as officers and were pilots, have graduated from college, typically a masters with some type of aviation degree and have thousands of hours of operating time.

This pilot had 43 hours of operating time for a 777 and it looks like he was paid the equivalent of 9k a year USD.

That video guy has fell out of his tree. First of all they were 'actors' and in the next breath they were taking out their belongings because there was no danger from fire, what a load of carbolics.