Investigators yesterday were focusing on bad weather, a faulty airport guidance system and pilot error as possible causes of the crash of a Korean Air (KAL) 747 on Guam that killed at least 225 people. Some of the survivors said the landing approach appeared to be normal before the aircraft slammed into a mountain 5 km from the airport. The aircraft was trying to land in heavy rain in the middle of the night. The glide slope transmitter, a navigational aid, was inoperative due to maintenance work. KAL yesterday blamed these conditions for the crash.
Boeing, the US aircraft manufacturer, said it was waiting for the results of the accident investigation before commenting on the crash. The Boeing 747, which first went into service in 1970, is the world's biggest passenger aircraft. It has a good safety record, suffering 1.6 serious accidents for every million journeys.
Yesterday some aviation analysts criticised the KAL pilot for attempting the landing in bad weather if he knew the navigational aid was faulty. "I can make it," he was reported as having told the control tower just before the crash.
KAL might be forced to increase compensation payments to victims' families if it is found to be negligent because of pilot error. The last fatal crash of a KAL aircraft occurred in 1989 when a DC-10 crashed while trying to land during fog at Tripoli, Libya. The Korean government ruled that the cockpit crew had committed a "preposterous error" by ignoring three warnings before crash-landing the jet and killing 72 passengers. The pilot was jailed for two years.
KAL has had a relatively high accident rate over the past decade, according to the International Airline Passengers' Association, a US consumer group. It said the airline had an accident rate of 1.91 per million departures against the global rate of 0.581 per million.
Yesterday's crash brought to five the number of fatal accidents involving KAL aircraft since 1980, including the shooting down of a Boeing 747 over Sakhalin by a Soviet jet in 1983. - (Financial Times Service)
Keith Harper adds: The latest crash has called attention to a grim prediction: air fatalities worldwide could increase more than fivefold by 2025 without concerted action to reduce the annual figure of 800, according to a senior US government official.
Mr Christopher Hart, a safety administrator with the Federal Aviation Administration, the US airlines regulatory watchdog, said larger aircraft and the anticipated growth in commercial air traffic would lead to more than 4,500 fatalities a year by 2025.
"This is clearly an unacceptable result. While the fatality rate is low, it has remained stubbornly constant since the 1980s."
Mr Hart said the only acceptable goal for the aviation industry was "zero accidents". The key to achieving this was through the worldwide sharing of safety information and the identification of safety concerns, he said. - (Guardian Service)