Let's get this out of the way first: crash-landing on a San Francisco runway seriously damaged Asiana Airlines's reputation.
KTVU, a Bay Area news station, damaged its own reputation by saying the names of Asiana's pilots were "Captain Sum Ting Wong," "Wi Tu Lo," "Ho Lee Fuk," and "Bang Ding Ow." If anything, Asiana should be sending KTVU a bouquet for deflecting attention from the real, shitty pilots who flew Flight 214 into the ground.
A Bay Area anchor who works for Fox affiliate KTVU announced on Friday, out loud and on-air, that the names of the four pilots of Asiana 214 were Captain Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk, and Bang Ding Ow.
A paragraph in a recent China Youth Daily article about the two victims of Asiana Flight 214 seemed to take undue pride in extolling a Chinese government official, which makes just no sense at all.
The Wall Street Journal has a follow-up to a Chinese state media article we linked to yesterday, in which a South Korean broadcaster, while trying to express relief that the two girls who died on Asiana flight 214 from Shanghai to San Francisco via Seoul were not Korean (as if nationality matters in these tragedies), used utterly regretful phrasing.
Family and friends have begun to mourn the loss of 16-year-olds Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia of Jiangshan, Zhejiang province, the only two fatalities in the Asiana Airlines 214 crash on Saturday in San Francisco.
The New York Times and Associated Press both have stories worth reading on this matter.
Fred Hayes was plane-watching at San Francisco airport when Asiana Flight 214 came in much too low, and the video he captured is the only one so far that shows the plane's moment of impact with the ground. It skidded to a stop before bursting into flames while Hayes could only say, over and over, "Oh my God."
Okay, this looks bad -- replacing an L with an R in a story about a flight from Asia in which two Chinese teenagers died. But no editor could have possibly done this intentionally, right? Make an L-R confusion joke amid a tragedy, I mean. Spoonerisms really aren't even very clever.
Asiana Airlines flight 214, carrying 291 passengers and 16 crew members, crashed during landing at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, killing two Chinese nationals. The Boeing 777 was flying from Seoul via Shanghai.