US safety board to rule on Asiana crash

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) convenes Tuesday to establish why a South Korean jet crashed while landing in San Francisco last year, leaving three dead.

It's expected to set out a probable cause of the Asiana Flight 214 crash as well as contributing factors behind the first fatal commercial airline disaster in the United States since 2009.

The Boeing 777 was completing an otherwise routine 10-1/2 hour flight from Seoul when it clipped the seawall at San Francisco International Airport July 6 with its landing gear, skidded off the runway and burst into flames.

Surviving the crash were 182 passengers and crew, including captain Lee Kang-Kuk, a newcomer to the 777 after years flying Airbuses, and co-pilot Lee Jung-Min, who had only recently been certified to train new 777 pilots.

All three of the fatalities were young Chinese women. One of the dead was struck by a fire truck beneath a wing covered with firefighting foam.

In a press statement in April that echoed an NTSB investigative hearing in December, Asiana acknowledged the flight crew had failed to maintain "a minimum safe airspeed" on final approach, thus slipping below the proper landing approach angle.

It added that the pilots had been misled by "inconsistencies" in the highly automated cockpit of their Boeing 777-200ER which caused them to think that its auto-throttle was maintaining a set airspeed.