The government of South Korea says its officials will inspect engines and landing equipment on all Boeing 777s owned by Asiana and Korean Air, which was the type of plane that crash-landed in San Francisco Saturday, killing two people and wounding dozens more.
The head of Asiana Airlines apologized for the crash and said that he didn’t think anything was wrong with the plane.
Though still waiting to seeing the results of the investigation, Flight Safety Foundation CEO Kevin Hiatt expressed confidence that this was true. "It has a great record. It's a very popular airplane," he said. "The last accident was in 2008 with the British Airways flight going into London, Heathrow, and that was attributed to a fuel problem on short approach. But other than that this aircraft has had a great record."
It was revealed over the weekend that the pilot of the crashed plane only had 43 hours of flight time with a 777, but about 10,000 flight hours altogether with other liners — a relatively high experience level according to Hiatt.
Hiatt said that the technology in the four-engine 777 compared to a two-engine 747 that the pilot had been flying before are similar. "There may be a period of time that the pilot finally gets to feel comfortable in the seat," he explained. "But by no means are they not qualified to be in the seat."
