Asiana Airlines Denies Insufficient Experience of Wrecked Aircraft Pilots

Yoon Young-doo, president of Asiana Airlines, denied that pilots who had landed on the Boeing 777 crash in San Francisco had insufficient experience.

Yin Yongdou said that we will only dispatch pilots with experience of landing at the San Francisco Airport to fly to the San Francisco International Airport (SFO). He does not think that pilot Lee Kang-guk has experience with the Boeing 777. He said that Asiana Airlines also trains pilots through simulators.

On Saturday, an Asiana Airlines flight from Seoul landed in San Francisco. The plane crashed into a breakwater, causing the rear fuselage and landing gear to break off and crashing into the runway. Two Chinese girls died in the incident and 182 were injured.

Deputy Commander Li Kangguo was born in 1967. This was the first time he had landed at the San Francisco International Airport on a Boeing 777 passenger plane. He was also the ninth pilot who drove the 777 landing. From 1999 to 2004, Li Kangguo had piloted other passenger aircrafts at San Francisco International Airport.

A South Korean Ministry of Communications spokesperson said that Lee Kang-kok had operated the aircraft for 5 hours before landing. He has 43 hours of actual, non-simulated 777 flight experience, equivalent to about three to four trans-Pacific flights.

There is not much disclosure about Li Kangguo's details. He joined Asiana Airlines as an intern in 1994 and obtained a pilot's license in 2001. His total flight time is slightly less than 10,000 hours. Lee Jeong-min (transliteration), the captain of the crashed aircraft, was born in 1964. His total flight time was 12,387 hours and the value of the 777 flight was 3,220 hours.