NTSB Blames Asiana 777 Crash on Pilot Actions

Stephen Pope

Tuesday, June 24, 2014 at 09:49 PM ET

Verified

** Investigators at the scene of the Asiana 214
crash.**

Key Takeaways:

The NTSB concluded that the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 was primarily caused by pilot error, specifically the flight crew's critical missteps in understanding and managing the Boeing 777's automated systems.
Key pilot errors included inadvertently causing the autopilot to attempt a climb, then switching it off and reducing power, which mistakenly put the autothrottles into an unnoticed "HOLD" mode, leading the aircraft to descend too low and too slow.
The investigation highlighted the crew's over-reliance on automated systems they did not fully understand, further exacerbated by pilot fatigue and poor cockpit resource management.

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The National Transportation Safety Board released its final conclusions about what caused the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 in San Francisco last July, blaming the pilots for making a series of critical missteps related to the Boeing 777’s automated systems.

At a hearing in Washington, D.C., this morning, the NTSB highlighted one mistake in particular for setting up the conditions in the cockpit that led the airliner to lose speed and crash-land short of the runway. Investigators say the relatively inexperienced captain who was flying the visual approach to San Francisco’s Runway 27L, concerned about being too high and too fast when 5 nm from the runway, changed the autopilot mode, inadvertently causing the 777 to start a climb back to the selected go-around altitude of 3,000 feet.