Flight 214 pilot was a trainee

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San Francisco: Asiana Airlines on Monday confirmed that the pilot flying the Boeing 777 that crashed in San Francisco was in training, raising the possibility that human error caused the deadly accident.
Two teenage Chinese girls were the only fatalities in the fiery crash Saturday, though six of the 307 people aboard the flight remained in area hospitals in critical condition.
Chinese state media identified the two dead passengers as Ye Mengyuan, 16, and Wang Linjia, 17, high school classmates from eastern China's Zhe-jiang province.
The footage showed the plane with its nose up and its rear hitting the ground. The plane then hit the tarmac, abruptly bounced upward, and spun around 180 degrees.
The plane’s tail section was torn off in the crash. In Seoul, Asiana said pilot Lee Kang-Kuk had just 43 hours of experience in piloting the 777 and was still undergoing training, although he had more than 9,000 hours of flight time experience.
An Asiana spokeswoman told AFP he was accompanied by an experienced trainer, who acted as co-pilot. Choi Jeong-Ho, the head of South Korea's transportation ministry's aviation policy bureau said it was too early in the investigation to say that pilot error was a factor. 
The twin-engine Boeing 777 is one of the world's most popular airplanes used for long distance flights. According to aviation safety databases, the two dead teens are the 777's first fatalities in the plane's 18 year of service.  
Jet was flying slower than ‘target speed’
The Asiana Airlines jet that crashed at San Francisco airport was travelling much slower than recommended, US investigators said Sunday, as the carrier confirmed that the pilot was being trained to fly the type of aircraft involved.
The flight data recorder showed that as the Boeing 777 approached the runway its pilots were warned that the aircraft was likely to stall and asked to abort the landing.
Seconds later, the plane struck the ground, bursting into flames, killing two people and injuring 182. The request to abort the landing was captured on the cockpit voice recorder 1.5 seconds before the plane crashed, National Transportation Safety Board chairwoman Deborah Hersman, who is leading the probe, said on Sunday.
The plane was landing at a speed well below the recommended 137 knots, Hersman said. “We are not talking about a few knots here or there. We're talking about a significant amount of speed below 137,” she said.  
Next: Was survivor run over by fire truck?

Was survivor run over by fire truck?
One of the two Chinese girls who died when the Air Asiana Flight 214 crashlanded at San Francisco, may have been run over by an airport fire engine rushing to the scene, San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White told reporters. Hayes-White did not identify the victim.
“Based on the injuries sustained, it could have been one of our vehicles that added to the injuries, or another vehicle,” Hayes-White told the San Francisco Chronicle.
San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault told the newspaper that the other girl appeared to have died from injuries suffered as she was hurled out of the plane when its tail broke off in the crash. Asked about the accidental death report, Beijing's foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, “We are still trying to verify the situation.” 
Elsewhere, recalling their ordeal, Fei Xiong said she and her eight-year-old son sensed something was wrong as the flight was coming in low over San Francisco Bay.
“My son told me ‘The plane will fall down, it’s too close to the sea.’ I told him, No, baby, it’s OK, we'll be fine.’ And then the plane just fell down,” Xiong said on Sunday, moving gingerly from a plastic brace on her injured neck.
Within moments, the aircraft was hurtling out of control, its rear portion ripped off. Baggage tumbled from the overhead bins onto passengers, dust filled the plane’s carcass and the oxygen masks had dropped down. People all around her were screaming.
Xiong, of China, was sitting in the middle of the plane when she felt the strong jolt and her neck flung back and forth violently. After the plane came to a rest, she grabbed her son and headed for the nearest door, which was open. She said the emergency chute had not deployed, so they jumped to the tarmac.
In the first comments by a crew member, cabin manager Lee Yoon-hye told reporters that when the captain ordered an evacuation, she knew what she had to do. “At that point, my head became clear,” she said on Sunday night at a San Francisco news conference. “I was only thinking about rescuing the next passenger.”
Lee said she was calm despite the flames: “I didn't have a moment to feel that this fire was going to hurt me.”
Near the rear of the aircraft in seat 40C, Wen Zhang said she thought the landing gear had failed when she felt the tail slam against the ground.