Signs of Human Error Seen in Guam Jet Crash

Human error may have played a part in the crash of Korean Air Flight 801, the Boeing 747 that hit a jungle hillside on approach to the Guam airport and exploded into a fiery torch of death, the chief crash investigator said today.

George Black, the National Transportation Safety Board member heading the investigation into the tragedy, offered his analysis as an 18-member NTSB team began its first close examination of the wreckage. In about a week, the team was expected to start removing the wreckage and taking portions of it to laboratories for further study.

The plane hit a lush, green ridge known as Nimitz Hill during the early morning darkness on Wednesday in a squall of fog and light rain. It came to rest in a shallow valley on the hillside. At least 226 of the 254 people on board were killed. The jumbo jet carried vacationing families with children and several newlyweds. Guam is a favorite destination for South Korean honeymooners.

In Seoul, Shim Yi-Taek, vice president of Korean Air, said there was not enough evidence to speculate on the cause of the crash. He said he was upset that an NTSB official had done so publicly. “I will be lodging a complaint to the NTSB,” Shim declared. “They should not be making these speculations.”

Black cited human error because the flight crew seemed to have been in control of the plane when it flew into the hill. “Controlled flight into terrain is usually an error on someone’s part,” he told NBC-TV’s “Today” program. “It does have all the earmarks of controlled flight into terrain.”

Barry Schiff, a senior captain for a major U.S. international airline who has helped with a number of major air crash investigations, agreed. “It certainly smacks of pilot error,” he said. “Some sort of fundamental error.”

Black confirmed that a radio signal from the airport, called a glide slope, was not operating at the time of the crash. But he said a notice, called a NOTAM, was issued to pilots when the signal was taken out of service for maintenance two weeks ago.

Such notices are published, distributed to flight crews and posted on walls at flight centers. In addition, pilots approaching airports are required to listen to their radios for recorded messages that update them on airport conditions, visibility ceilings, altimeter settings and NOTAMs pertinent to the area.

A glide slope is a radio beacon received by a cockpit instrument that makes it easier to fly a landing approach when bad weather obscures the airport. It automatically accounts for how far away the plane is from the runway and how high the plane is.

A glide slope beacon is always coupled with another beacon, called a localizer, which signals direction to the runway. Together, these beacons are called an Instrument Landing System, or ILS. In airliners like the Boeing 747, an autopilot can fly the plane down to the runway for the pilot if the ILS system is working.

When there is no glide slope, the pilot has to work a little harder. The autopilot can no longer do all the work. The pilot has to use at least two other instruments in conjunction with a printed chart for the runway to assure that the plane is at the right altitude along segments of the approach.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, Flight 801 was cleared for what is called an ILS approach with glide slope out. This meant the pilot had to use two radio beacons--the ILS and a transmitter called a VOR. The VOR signal gives the pilot a direction and distance to or from the transmitter.

At Guam, this transmitter is on Nimitz Hill, along the approach path to Runway 6 Left, three miles from the runway.

With the glide slope out, the pilot should have used distance signals from the VOR to stage his descent in three prescribed steps from 2,600 feet, beginning seven miles before reaching the VOR beacon. Crossing the beacon, the pilot should have been no lower than 1,440 feet above sea level, or 1,184 feet above the ground.

Instead, he hit the ground next to the beacon.

Initial analysis of the cockpit-voice recorder and the flight-data recorder from Flight 801 showed that the pilot apparently homed in on the VOR signal from Nimitz Hill, mistakenly believing he was homing in on the airport runway, NBC’s “Nightly News” reported.

Then he made a straight descent into the hill, NBC said, quoting unnamed sources. The network said he lowered his landing gear before he hit, disabling an alarm system that would have warned him of the impending crash.

With the glide slope in operation, such an error probably would not have occurred because the pilot would not have relied on the VOR signal.

A South Korean newspaper, the daily Chosun Ilbo, said Park Yong-chul, 44, the pilot of Flight 801, was not given enough time to rest before taking off for Guam, and that he lacked familiarity with terrain around the airport.

The newspaper, citing no sources, said Park had flown back and forth to Australia, then to Hong Kong and back, and finally to Guam with only a few hours of down time.

Korean Air flight manager Kim Sin-jung denied the report, but he acknowledged that Park was assigned to the Guam route as recently as July 4. Before that, Kim said, Park had been flying other routes for three years.

Shim, the airline vice president, denied that Park had been fatigued. “There are regulations on all this,” he said, “and we abide by them.”

At a press center near the crash site, U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Marty Jamczak, in charge of rescuing survivors and recovering human remains, told reporters that eight of the survivors had left Andersen Air Force Base on Guam on a flight to South Korea.

They were admitted to Korean hospitals, Jamczak said, for further treatment.

He said their plane left earlier than planned because a typhoon was approaching the Korean peninsula and the pilot wanted to arrive before weather made the flight difficult.

The NTSB said it would interview all of the survivors, including those who were taken to South Korea.

The search for human remains resumed Thursday after being called off Wednesday afternoon. The hiatus brought complaints from Korean families.

Ko Jong Il, a Seoul restaurateur whose older brother died in the crash, said he was one of about 300 relatives of the crash victims who have flown from Seoul to Guam. “All we want is for the corpses to be found,” Ko said. “It’s a Korean tradition that one bury the dead and respect the dead. . . .

“We’re not sure, but we believe the search party is stalling. If something like this happened in Korea, we would have found all the bodies already, because we think the bodies are important.”

Ko said the relatives are aware that the bodies are burned and will decompose more quickly in the tropical heat and humidity. “We’re very scared,” he said, “that when we find the bodies we won’t be able to identify them.

“We do believe that the safety investigation is delaying the rescue operation. Koreans respect the bodies of the dead very much. They must have them.”

Chung Dong Nam, a retired military officer who has become a well-known South Korean television and movie actor, said he came to Guam to give the victims’ families higher visibility. “We understand the necessity of keeping the scene intact,” he said. “But does it have to take two days?

“In the summer, with the heat and the rain, bodies decay very fast,” Chung said. “The families want to confirm with their own eyes, before it’s too late.”

Both Jamczak and Black denied that the recovery of remains was being delayed unnecessarily.

“The recovery of remains is proceeding,” Black declared. “We did not delay the recovery in any way.”

Jamczak was asked why it was taking so long to count and identify the victims.

“The condition of the bodies would preclude an exact count,” he replied. “We’re doing all we can to preserve the remains. We’re doing all that we can to maintain the sanctity of the bodies.”

By midafternoon Thursday, more than 100 bodies had been recovered, but it was uncertain whether all the remains could be identified. “In some cases, not a whole body was recovered,” said Gary Abe, deputy director of the NTSB. “In some cases, it was two or three pieces.”

Dental records, fingerprints and other means will be used to help identify the remains, Abe said. Families also were asked to submit physical descriptions of their loved ones.

The search for remains was complicated by sporadic, very heavy tropical rain that cut visibility at times to 200 feet.

Hundreds of family members were on Guam. Many attended a brief prayer service at the press center.

The number of survivors varied in different counts.

Hospitals said 29 people survived, but the South Korean Health Ministry counted 28. The airline said the survivors included four Americans.

It identified them as Grace Chung, 11, of Marietta, Ga., and Hyun Seong Hong, Angela Shim and Jeannie Shim, whose ages were not available. The airline said they were from Guam.

Ben Hsu, 15, of Diamond Bar and Tiffany Kang, 8, of Glendale died in the crash.

Ben was headed to Guam for a long visit, and Tiffany was on her way to a family vacation.

Guam Gov. Carl T.C. Gutierrez, who faces a battle for reelection, posed for two television crews with Rika Matsuda, 11, a Japanese girl he rescued from the wreckage.

He sat on a sofa with Rika and her father, who came to Guam to take her home. Her mother died when the wreckage burned. The governor embraced Rika with his left arm and comforted her. She had bruises and scrapes on her face.

Only the two television crews were permitted to ask questions, and none were to be directed at her.

Rika did not say a word. She held onto a stuffed white rabbit.

Times staff writers Bart Everett, Richard O’Reilly, Peter Y. Hong, Ken Ellingwood and Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles also contributed to this story.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Focus on Flight Recorders

The National Transportation Safety Board said the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were virtually undamaged in the Guam crash. They were being studied.

WHERE THEY ARE ON THE PLANE

* (front of plane) Data acquisition system, which collects data from all over aircraft and sends it to recorders.

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BOEING 747-300

* Flight and voice recorders, in back of plane.

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WHAT THEY RECORD

* Speed

* Altitude

* Engine thrust

* Wing flap positions

* Fuel levels

* Flight control positions

Sources: National Transportation Safety Board, Allied Signal Aerospace, Times staff and wire reports