Drug tests skipped for Asiana crash pilots

AP

TRAGIC: Fire crews scramble to save lives Saturday after Asiana Flight 214 crashed in San Francisco owing to what seems to have been pilot error.

None of the four pilots on Asiana Flight 214 was tested for drugs or alcohol after the jet crashed in San Francisco, because foreign airlines aren't subject to American regulations following an accident on US soil, a top federal official revealed yesterday.

National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said there was no rule that the pilots employed by the Korean airline be checked for intoxicants following Saturday's deadly accident.

"US air-carrier crews are required to be drug and alcohol tested post-accident. For foreign carriers, there is no specific US requirement," she told a news conference. "The countries where the carriers are based have oversight over the operators and oversight over the pilot."

Hersman also offered the most detailed account to date of the moments before impact — as three pilots in the cockpit realized the Boeing 777 was flying too low and slow as it approached the runway, but didn't react quickly enough.

An instructor pilot, who was overseeing the flying pilot, "stated that they were slightly high when they passed 4,000 feet," she said. "At about 500 feet, he realized that they were low . . . He told the pilot to pull back."

In interviews with investigators, the trio said they relied on automated equipment to keep the plane flying at 137 knots, the target speed for safely landing the aircraft, she said.

Data from the plane's black boxes showed that it reached a low speed of 103 knots three seconds before clipping a seawall while approaching San Francisco International Airport.

Hersman said the pilot in command of the doomed craft — a Korean Air Force vet — was on his first trip as an instructor, overseeing another pilot who was at the controls even though he had only completed about half his training to fly a 777 and had never flown into San Francisco before.

"This was the first time that [the instructor pilot] and the flying pilot had flown together," she added.

Hersman also revealed that two flight attendants were ejected from the plane during the crash and were found nearby.

Both survived, but they "have gone through a serious event and have injuries," she said.

Two passengers — both 16-year-old girls from China — died, and investigators are probing whether one was run down by a rescue vehicle racing to the scene.

Additional reporting by David K. Li

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