The captain of Korean Air Flight 801 was not supposed to be on it. He had not had enough rest for his scheduled trip to Dubai, so he was given the shorter run from Seoul to Guam. He was 42, a former Korean Air Force pilot. His first officer, 40, had also flown in the Air Force; the flight engineer, 57, had been an Air Force navigator.
Over the Pacific, the cockpit voice recorder caught the captain saying, “eh…really…sleepy.”
The glideslope at Guam, the radio beam that guides a jet down at the right angle, had been out of service since July 7 for reconstruction. The captain had mentioned it in his short briefing, but he expected to land by sight. At 1:39 a.m. local time on August 6, 1997, the flight engineer asked, “is the glideslope working? glideslope? yeh?” The captain answered, “yes, yes, it’s working.” The first officer said, “not useable.” Two minutes later the captain asked, “isn’t glideslope working?” The recorder has no sign that anyone answered.
The captain took the jet below the step-down altitudes for that part of the approach, 2,000 feet and then 1,440 feet. Nobody challenged him. At 1:41:59 the first officer said, “not in sight?” The terrain warning called “five hundred,” and the flight engineer said “eh?” in an astonished tone. Then came “minimums minimums” and “sink rate.” The first officer replied, “sink rate okay.”
At 1:42:19 he said, “let’s make a missed approach.” The flight engineer said, “not in sight.” The first officer said, “not in sight, missed approach.” The flight engineer said, “go around.” A second later, so did the captain.
At about 1:42:26 the 747 hit Nimitz Hill, about three miles from the airport. Of the 254 people on board, 228 were killed.
The National Transportation Safety Board blamed the captain’s failure to brief and fly the approach properly, and the first officer’s and flight engineer’s failure to monitor and cross-check him. It also cited the captain’s fatigue, Korean Air’s inadequate crew training, and the FAA’s intentional inhibition of a low-altitude warning system at Guam. The first officer had properly called for a missed approach six seconds before impact, it said, but had not challenged the descents earlier, when the captain would have had more time to respond. The board could not tell whether the two men were poorly prepared, missed the errors, or were unwilling to confront him. It called problems with subordinates challenging a captain “well known”: in its study of crew-involved major accidents at US airlines, more than 80 percent happened with the captain flying. The report does not name national culture as a cause.
In 1999 two Korean Air cargo jets crashed, one at Shanghai and one at Stansted Airport near London, and the airline’s place in a code-sharing alliance with Delta and Air France was suspended. According to the New York Times, a team of Delta executives investigated that year. The Times added that most of the pilots were Air Force veterans, that senior pilots tended to ignore warnings from copilots, especially their former Air Force subordinates, and that junior pilots were discouraged from speaking up.
In January 2000 Korean Air hired David Greenberg, a retired Delta vice president, to run its operations. He brought in new training and testing standards and what the Times called “cockpit culture” changes for the airline’s 1,700 pilots, and based promotions on merit rather than connections. In the fall of 2001 the US Federal Aviation Administration restored South Korea’s top safety rating. In February 2002 Delta and Air France approved Korean Air’s return to their alliance.