Korean Air Flight 801

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Korean Air Flight 801
KOREAN AIR Boeing 747-3B5 (HL7468 22487 605) (5687222614) .jpg

The accident machine at Tokyo Narita Airport , 12 years before the accident
Accident summary
Accident type Controlled flight into terrain
place GuamGuam Nimitz Hill , Guam
date August 6, 1997
Fatalities 228
Survivors 26th
Injured 26th
Aircraft
Aircraft type Boeing 747-300
operator Korean Air
Mark HL7468
Surname KE 801
Departure airport Korea SouthSouth Korea Gimpo airport
Destination airport GuamGuam Antonio B. Won Pat Airport
Passengers 237
crew 17th
Lists of aviation accidents

The Korean Air Flight 801 ( Flight number : KE801) was killed on 6 August 1997 on the approach to the airport Antonio B. Won Pat on Guam . 228 people were killed in the accident involving the Boeing 747-300 and 26 others were injured.

accident

Animation of the last 64 seconds of the flight

The aircraft took off from Gimpo Airport on August 5, 1997 at 8:53 p.m. local time . The crew consisted of two pilots, the flight engineer and 14 flight attendants . There were also 237 passengers on board. A total of six children under the age of 12 were on board, including three small children. An Airbus A300 was normally used on flight KE801 . However, since this was to be used to fly Guamian athletes to the Pacific Games in American Samoa , a Boeing 747-300 was used instead . The aircraft had an accident on Nimitz Hill during the approach.

The flight was under the command of the 42-year-old Captain Park Yong-chul, who had completed around 9,000 flight hours by then. Originally, Park was supposed to fly to Dubai , United Arab Emirates . However, since he did not have enough break to fly to Dubai, he was transferred to flight KE801. The first officer was Song Kyung-ho, 40, who had flown more than 4,000 hours. The cockpit crew was completed by the 57-year-old flight engineer Nam Suk-hoon, a former pilot with more than 13,000 flight hours.

Despite some turbulence, flight KE801 ran without any further incident. The crew began preparing for the landing around 1 a.m. Due to heavy rain on Guam, visibility was reduced, which is why the crew wanted to perform an instrument landing. However, the runway's instrument landing system was out of order. The master was not informed of this fact and assumed that the system was functional since he was able to receive a signal at 0135. The flight engineer informed the master that the signal did not come from the instrument landing system. The crew also made the captain aware that the airport was not in sight. Nevertheless, the captain continued the approach. At 1:42 a.m., the aircraft collided with Nimitz Hill, about 3 nautical miles (5.6 km) from the runway, at a height of 200 meters above sea level .

Burning wreckage of the aircraft

228 of the 254 people on board were killed in the crash. Because of the weather and the terrain, the rescue work was carried out under difficult conditions. The emergency vehicles could not get to the scene of the accident because a pipeline burst due to the impact, and there was confusion about responsibility, as the area of ​​the accident site belonged to the United States Navy , but the civil authorities wanted to investigate the accident. Eight hours after the impact, the fire, fueled by the kerosene, was still not extinguished.

Investigation and cause

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) carried out the aircraft accident investigation after the accident and presented the results on March 24, 1998 in Honolulu .

The NTSB report concluded that the airport's altitude warning system was not working properly, so that an aircraft below the minimum required altitude could not be detected. The possible cause of the accident was the poor execution of the approach procedure by the master, in this case a non-precision approach. Another cause was the deactivated instrument landing system at the airport. According to the final report, other factors were the pilots' fatigue and the inadequate training of the pilots for such dangerous situations, as well as the fact that they were equipped with outdated flight maps that contained a minimum approach altitude that was more than 100 meters too low. The airline Korean Air is criticized in the report for it.

Passengers

Most of the passengers were people who wanted to go on vacation or on their honeymoon .

Dead and injured

nationality All in all Deceased
Korea SouthSouth Korea South Korea 235 213
New ZealandNew Zealand New Zealand 1 0
United StatesUnited States United States 13 10
Unknown 5 5
Total: 254 228

Of the 254 people on board, 223, including 209 passengers and 14 crew members, died at the scene of the accident.

Of the 31 people found alive, two died on the way to the hospital; another three died there from their injuries. 16 survivors were burned. Of the 26 survivors, twelve were treated at Guam Memorial Hospital and 14 were transferred to the US Naval Hospital . Because of the severity of the injuries suffered, twelve patients were transferred to hospitals in South Korea ; four passengers with severe burns came to the US Army Burn Center in San Antonio , Texas .

All victims brought to San Antonio died from their burns. One patient only died from her injuries a few weeks after the accident and is statistically listed as surviving because there were more than 30 days between the accident and her death.

Of the survivors, seven passengers and one crew member were in first class at the time of the accident ; another crew member was in the Prestige Class . The rest were in economy class .

After the accident

Memorial for the aircraft accident

After the accident, Korean Air provided special flights for around 300 relatives who wanted to fly to the scene of the accident.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ NTSB Report, pp. 11, 23
  2. ↑ a b c d NTSB Report, pp. 45, 57
  3. ^ A b " Transcripts Between Guam Airport Tower and KA801 before Crash ." Government of Guam .
  4. ^ " Official Guam Crash Site Center - Korean Air Flt 801 ," Government of Guam
  5. ↑ a b http://ns.gov.gu/guam/indexmain.html
  6. ↑ http://archives.starbulletin.com/98/03/25/news/story1.html
  7. ↑ a b c NTSB Report, pp. 3, 15
  8. ^ In Asiana Crash Investigation, Early Focus Is on the Crew's Actions The New York Times July 8, 2013
  9. ↑ " PUBLIC HEARING IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTIGATION OF AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT KOREAN AIR FLIGHT 801, B-747-300 AGANA, GUAM AUGUST 6, 1997 ( Memento of August 5, 2004 in the Internet Archive )" from March 24, 1998. National Transportation Safety Board . Retrieved June 29, 2011.
  10. ↑ " PUBLIC HEARING IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTIGATION OF AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT KOREAN AIR FLIGHT 801, B-747-300 AGANA, GUAM AUGUST 6, 1997 ( Memento of January 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive )" from March 25, 1998. National Transportation Safety Board . Retrieved June 29, 2011.
  11. ↑ " THE INVESTIGATION OF KOREAN AIR FLIGHT 801, B-747-300, AGANA, GUAM AUGUST 6, 1997 ( Memento of January 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive )" from March 26, 1998. National Transportation Safety Board . Retrieved June 29, 2011.
  12. ↑ a b c NTSB final report, section 3.2 "Probable cause", page 175
  13. ^ " Honeymoon flight that ended in horror ." The Independent . Thursday August 7, 1997. Retrieved August 30, 2010.
  14. ↑ " List of passengers aboard Korean Air Flight 801 ." CNN . August 6, 1997. Retrieved August 30, 2010.
  15. ↑ " Airplane Crash in Guam, August 6, 1997: The Aeromedical Evacuation Response ."
  16. ↑ Gillert, Douglas J.  ( Page no longer retrievable , search web archives ) “One Crash Victim Dies, Three Cling to Life at Burn Center.” United States Department of Defense@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.defenselink.mil
  17. ↑ " Safety Recommendation Date: January 27, 2000 In reply refer to: A-00-19 and -20 ." National Transportation Safety Board
  18. ↑ Coleman, Joe. " Survivors recount the fiery last moments ( memento of the original from March 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . " The Associated Press at the Savannah Morning News @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / archives.savannahnow.com

Coordinates: 13 ° 27 '21 "  N , 144 ° 43' 55.2"  E