Crew blamed for Pusan air crash
By Cao Desheng (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-05-09 22:09

Pilot error has been cited as the likely cause of the crash of an Air China Boeing 767 three years ago near Pusan in the Republic of Korea (ROK), which claimed 128 lives.

The crew mistook the severity of the weather conditions as they came into land in heavy fog and rain and thus gave up lifting the aircraft again, a report from the Korea Aviation-Accident Investigation Board (KAIB) concluded.

"The flight crew exercised poor crew resource management and lost situational awareness during the circling approach to the runway," the report said.

"They did not execute a missed approach when they lost sight of the runway, which led them to strike high terrain (a mountain) near the airport," it said.

The flight data recorder, crash-site searchers and mock flight tests by experts were examined, leading the board of investigators concluded that a mistake by the pilot caused the plane to crash. ROK accident officials were joined by Chinese and American aviation experts during the three-year investigation.

Chinese aviation officials who took part in the investigation say the airport's air traffic controllers were also to blame.

Added in an appendix to the report are paragraphs stating that Gimhae airport's automatic altitude warning system might have been contributing factors.

Officials from the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC) have demanded this information be included in the main report.

The plane, carrying 153 passengers and 11 crew members, crashed into a hill near Gimhae airport when it attempted to land on the airport. 25 passengers and crew survived the crash in April 2002.

The plane continued flying low under driving rains before smashing into a small hill near the airport, Channel NewsAsia quoted the report as saying.

"Investigations about the causes of the air accidents involve a lot of complicated issues and experts have to find enough evidence before drawing a conclusion," said the CAAC press official yesterday who prefers not to be named.

"So it takes time, maybe a few months, or two or three years or even longer time," she added.

Meanwhile, probes into the causes of the air accident in Baotou of North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region are still going on, the official said.

The small CRJ-200 aircraft, supplied by Canadian-based Bombardier Aerospace, crashed shortly after it took off from Baotou in December last year. All 47 passengers and six crew members aboard were killed in addition to two people on the ground.