Asiana pilot very stressful prior to San Francisco crash

The pilot at the controls of a South Korean airliner that crashed in San Francisco in July said he felt "very stressful" about making a non-instrument landing, according to documents made public Wednesday. Three passengers died when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 clipped a seawall with its landing gear, skidded out of control and burst into flames at the tragic end of an otherwise routine flight from Seoul on July 6. Another 182 passengers and crew aboard the Boeing 777 were injured, in the first fatal commercial airline crash in the United States since 2009. A summary of Captain Lee Kang-Kok's interview with air accident investigators was released Wednesday at the start of a day-long public hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Washington. "We have the opportunity today to ensure that the lessons of this tragedy are well-learned and that the circumstances are not repeated," NTSB chairwoman Deborah Hersman said, opening the day's proceedings. According to the written NTSB summary, Lee told investigators he felt "very stressful" about making a visual approach into San Francisco, where the instrument landing system was down for servicing on an otherwise perfect summer day. Asked about whether he was concerned about his ability to perform a visual approach, he said, 'Very concerned, yea'," the summary said. "Asked what aspect he was most concerned about, he said 'the unstable approach" -- the ability to set up an airplane for landing at a precise speed, direction and rate of descent. "He added, 'exactly controlling the descent profile and the lateral profile, that is very stressful'." A non-smoking father of two who jogged daily and favored yellow rice and vegetables for his meals, Lee had flown Airbus A320s for Asiana from 2005 until February this year, when he began training to transition to the bigger Boeing 777. He had 9,700 hours of flight experience, but only 35 hours in the Boeing 777. In the co-pilot's seat was Lee Jung-Min, a flight instructor for Asiana and former South Korean fighter pilot with considerable experience flying the Boeing 777. Prior to San Francisco, Lee Kang-Kok had made four round-trip training flights in the "triple seven" -- to Los Angeles, London and twice to Tokyo. Earlier in his career, he told investigators, he had twice landed at San Francisco, once manually, as a co-pilot of an Asiana Boeing 747. Bill English, the NTSB investigator leading the Asiana probe, said the autopilot was switched off about three miles from the runway, and that the airspeed eventually dropped to 103 knots, or 34 knots below the desired final approach speed. Wednesday's nearly 12-hour hearing was supposed to be a two-day affair, but its scheduled start Tuesday was postponed due to foul winter weather in Washington. NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said a final report into a major accident typically takes a year to complete. "This is just one phase, a fact-gathering stage," he noted. None of the four pilots, 12 flight attendants and 291 passengers, many of them South Korean and Chinese nationals, were scheduled to testify in person. Instead the hearing at an NTSB conference center in Washington had lined up sworn expert testimony on such issues as cockpit automation in the Boeing 777 and the training of Asiana pilots in its operation. It was also set to dwell on the effects of automation on pilot performance in the moments prior to an accident, airport emergency response and the crashworthiness of aircraft interiors. Retired Boeing test pilot John Cushman said the aim of cockpit automation was "to aid the pilot, not replace the pilot," who at all times remained the final decision-maker in every stage of a flight. All three of the dead were young Chinese women, including one who was fatally hit by a fire engine as she lay stricken near the runway. Coming in to land just before noon on a clear and sunny Saturday, Flight 214 had been cleared by air traffic controllers for a visual landing on Runway 28 Left. Dramatic amateur video of the moment of impact showed the aircraft's nose up, and its rear hitting the ground first, before it bounced abruptly then spun almost 360 degrees, shedding its tail. Large sections of the fuselage were gutted in the ensuing fire ignited by oil spilling onto the right engine. San Francisco airport is among the busiest in the United States, handling more than nine million international and 33 million domestic travelers in the year to June 2012. Asiana has defended the two pilots at the controls at the time of the July 6 accident, Lee Kang-Kuk and Lee Jung-Min, saying they were "competent" veteran aviators whose experience included dozens of flights to and from San Francisco. It also said in July that "there were no engine or mechanical problems" on the aircraft, which it acquired in 2006.