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.

But Asiana is not thankful. It’s suing. Reports AP:

Asiana has decided to sue KTVU-TV to “strongly respond to its racially discriminatory report” that disparaged Asians, Asiana spokeswoman Lee Hyomin said. She said the airline will likely file suit in U.S. courts.

She said the report seriously damaged Asiana’s reputation. Asiana decided not to sue the NTSB because it said it was the TV station report, not the U.S. federal agency that damaged the airline’s reputation. Lee did not elaborate.

Meanwhile, Asiana is bolstering its pilot training program, which is good. See, these are the type of stories you want Google to push to the top of search results, not frivolous lawsuits.

While it’s at it, it could bolster its logo, too. A lot of times people say a “two-year-old” could have done something, and really, we know that’s a lie because two-year-olds are stupid, but in the case of this MS Paint job, seriously, a two-year-old:

(H/T Alicia)

UPDATE, 7/17, 8:30 pm: Asiana will no longer be suing KTVU. Reports Reuters: 

“Asiana Airlines has decided not to proceed with the case since KTVU has issued a formal apology and in order for us to focus all our efforts on managing the aftermath of the accident,” the South Korean company said in a statement.

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.

Uh. Wow.

The anchor said the names were confirmed by the National Transportation Safety Board, which… yeah, Ho Lee Fuk, indeed.

NTSB, you guys okay over there?

It released this statement that blamed the names on an intern.

Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft.

The NTSB does not release or confirm the names of crewmembers or people involved in transportation accidents to the media. We work hard to ensure that only appropriate factual information regarding an investigation is released and deeply regret today’s incident.

One more look:

Anyway, there’s been a bit of confusion recently about our Asiana posts, with some thinking I had “demanded” an apology from the Chicago Sun-Times for its “Fright 214” headline, and again after a Korean news presenter expressed relief that the two who died on the flight were not Korean.

Far from demanding anything from the Sun-Times or Channel A, I was merely predicting apologies would come. And I was right, but of course you knew that already, since the Sun-Times operates in a country where political correctness is valued, for better or for worse, and Channel A’s presenter let slip a pretty stupid utterance.

We’ll go ahead and make it three for three in apology predictions here. KTVU will be expressing its regret, and maybe throwing the NTSB under a huge-ass truck.

UPDATE, 3:54 pm: KTVU and its station have already apologized, which makes sense. They’re calling it a “hoax.” From Politico’s writeup:

KTVU apologized during its 6 p.m. newscast.

“First of all, we never read the names out loud, phonetically sounding them out,” anchor Frank Somerville said, adding that the station also didn’t ask the position of the person within the NTSB giving them the ultimately erroneous information.

The station also issued an apology on its website Friday evening.

“We sincerely regret the error and took immediate action to apologize, both in the newscast where the mistake occurred, as well as on our website and social media sites,” Tom Raponi, the station’s vice president and general manager, said in a statement. A full explanation of how the station acquired the names is not yet available, although the station is now calling it a hoax.

KTVU erroneously names Asiana crash pilots as "Sum Ting Wong" (something wrong) and "Ho Lee Fuk" (holy fuck) – pic.twitter.com/OKUtx6IoDM

— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) July 12, 2013

(H/T Kevin Collier)

Cai Fucking Qi

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.

SCMP reports:

“If they were still alive, Wang Linjia’s eyes would widen in surprise and delight, and Ye Mengyuan would jump up in disbelief, when they learned that Cai Qi, the head of the organisation department of the Zhejiang Communist Party Committee, had paid such close attention to them,” said an article published in China Youth Daily, a state-run newspaper.

Really. In surprise and delight that some no-name Communist official stopped chain-smoking long enough to spare an endearing thought? Not in surprise and delight because THEY ARE MIRACULOUSLY ALIVE?

Not saying Cai Qi is a dipshit and a careerist who’d totally take advantage of an international tragedy to have toadies write songs to his name — I don’t know the guy — but I highly doubt he’d know these girls’ names if they never died.

Let’s unravel that CYD sentence a little bit, then. “If they were still alive, Wang Linjia’s eyes would widen in surprise and delight, and Ye Mengyuan would jump up in disbelief, when they learned that Cai Qi, the head of the organisation department of the Zhejiang Communist Party Committee, had paid such close attention to their deaths.“ Modern gothic, everyone.

The reporter Zhuang Qinghong also wrote that Cai, one of the most powerful Communist Party officials in the province, had millions of followers on Tecent Weibo and the mourning message for the two girls had been read by tens of millions.

Oh if they could be alive to heap praise on Cai Qi, Orpheus of the CCP, for his magnanimity in mourning the dead. Fucking Christ.

Toadying to officials in Asiana crash victims article attracts criticism online (SCMP)

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.

Here’s Yoon Kyung-min, presenter of Channel A’s Sunday news show, as translated by WSJ:

“We just received an update that the two dead are assumed to be Chinese….We can say it is a relief at least for us,” Channel A presenter Yoon Kyung-min said on a news broadcast for the cable news channel on Sunday.

“Us”? South Korean news couldn’t possibly be more nationalistic than Chinese news, could it? We found the video above, for those who speak Korean. (Perhaps you can also help us answer the preceding question.)

Meanwhile, as Korean viewers expressed their discontent (“If it had been China who made such a comment, [Korean internet users] would have probably started an online war against China”), Korean media went into spin control as it emphasized the crew’s rescue efforts while deemphasizing the fact that pilot error likely caused the crash. According to WSJ, “Only one major South Korean daily prominently raised the question of potential pilot error in the crash, with a headline on its front page that read: ‘Pilot of Crashed Plane Only Had 43 Hours of Flight Experience on B777.’”

Channnel A did apologize for Yoon’s comments though… sort of. In a released statement, it said:

“The comment was made to emphasize the fact that there is no Korean dead in the accident, which is a relief for us. We apologize for not running the live show smoothly.”

Meanwhile, here are the two Chinese hosts of the talk show Shuo Tian Xia (说天下, Talk Under Heaven) rebuking Yoon:

You might think a Chinese broadcaster calling out any journalist is a pretty extreme case of pot calling the kettle black, but I’m with them on this one. You have to be awfully stupid to say what Yoon did on national TV, especially right after a tragedy. Nationalism has no place here.

Newscaster’s Comments Spur Anger (Korea Realtime)

UPDATE, 9:16 pm: China’s CNTV getting into the act:

“Lives have the same value no matter what nationalities they are. Reports can’t be like that. The reporter might have made a mistake during an emergency report,” a South Korean journalist said.

“The nationalities of the victims are not important. We should feel sympathy while reporting such accidents. No matter if it’s a mistake, reporters should be very careful while reporting such sensitive issues.”

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. First, AP (which lists Ye’s age as 17):

The two Chinese teenagers who died in an Asiana Airlines plane crash in San Francisco were student leaders who excelled in their studies and in the arts – one was a calligrapher and the other a pianist.

Wang Linjia, 16, and Ye Mengyuan, 17, were students at Jiangshan Middle School in eastern China who were travelling on a summer camp programme organised by the school to visit universities in California, state media reported on Monday.

The group included 29 students and four teachers from four schools in the city of Jiangshan. They were to visit Silicon Valley, Stanford University and University of California’s campuses in Los Angeles and Berkeley as part of an English-language programme, according to the Youth Times, an official newspaper in Zhejiang province.

And NY Times:

Online, Wang Linjia had posted that she hoped time could dilute “the thick coffee in her cup,” perhaps easing some sadness about separating from her classmates for the coming school term back home. Ye Mengyuan had written just days ago that she was “gloomy,” but other posts hinted at a brighter side: a love of dogs, of animation and of Japanese, Korean and American television.

The girls and their classmates were part of a wave of thousands of affluent Chinese children who come to the United States each summer for language study and cultural immersion, many passing through California on their way to tour Ivy League campuses, go swimming, eat chili dogs and practice their English.

“Those two could’ve easily been girls coming to my camp,” said Steve Haines, who runs Horizons USA, an immersion camp for international students near Philadelphia. “I have plenty of girls just like them.”

Meanwhile, the latest report is that one of the victims might have died after getting run over by an emergency vehicle. Reports Reuters:

San Francisco’s medical examiner is now conducting an autopsy to determine the cause of the girl’s death, fire department spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge said.

“One of the deceased did have injuries consistent with those of having been run over by a vehicle,” Talmadge said. “Many agencies were on the field yesterday.”

The president of Asiana Airlines, Yoon Young-doo, has apologized to the passengers: “I sincerely apologize over the accident, and to the passengers on board and their families.”

Others were not so sensitive, such as a South Korean TV host who reportedly said it was “lucky” that the dead passengers are Chinese and not Korean. Reports Sina:

This appalling comment has sparked strong criticism from Korean TV audiences, with many found it to be improper and questionable, and some even accuse the host of being “inhumane.”

Not surprisingly, the South Korean host and his remarks have also stirred the anger of Chinese people. He is currently the target of Chinese Internet users, many of whom demand an official apology.

That apology should definitely be forthcoming. UPDATE, 7/9, 12:48 pm: As predicted, Channel A has apologized.

(H/T Alicia, image Reuters)

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.”

CNN also interviewed Hayes about what he saw:

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.

In any case, expect an apology soon. We’ll give the Sun-Times the benefit of the doubt and call “Fright 214” an error in carelessness, but it’s an error they’ll regret nonetheless.

You’re Kidding Me, Right? Check Out This Headline in Chicago Sun Times. ht/ @jfdulac (AsAm News)

UPDATE, 7/9, 7:37 pm: Via Kotaku:

Sun-Times Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Jim Kirk told the Asian American Journalist Association that his staff didn’t even think about how the headline could be perceived as insensitive.

“There was nothing intentional on our part to play off any stereotypes. …If anybody was offended by that, we are sorry,” Kirk told AAJA. “We were trying to convey the obviously frightening situation of that landing.”

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.

The Los Angeles Times has a breakdown of the nationality of those onboard:

John Martin, director of the San Francisco airport, provided a breakdown of passengers’ nationality: 77 South Koreans, 141 Chinese, 61 with U.S. citizenship, one Japanese and 11 from other countries.

Officials from the Chinese Consulate were visiting Bay Area hospitals to learn what they could about the condition of Chinese citizens on board, said Wang Chuan, a spokesman for the consulate.

“We are trying our best to help them,” Wang said.

UPDATE, 11:51 pm: The two deceased have been identified as 16-year-olds Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, students at Jiangshan Middle School in Zhejiang province, reports SCMP.

The cause of the crash is under investigation, though initial reports suggest the pilot simply overshot undershot the runway.

UPDATE, 10:57 pm: A technology that helps pilots avoid missing runways was not turned on, reports Reuters:

Glide Path is a computerized system based at an airport that calculates a plane’s path of descent and sends it to pilots in real time.

San Francisco International has turned off the system for nearly the entire summer on the runway where the Asiana flight crashed, according to a notice from the airport on the Federal Aviation Administration’s Web site. It showed the system out of service June 1-August 22 on runway 28 Left.

Kevin Hiatt, chief executive of the Flight Safety Foundation and a former Delta pilot, said it was common for airports to take instrument landing systems offline for maintenance on clear days. Pilots use several other instruments and visual cues to land in clear conditions, Hiatt said.

“All of those are more than adequate to fly an aircraft down for a successful landing on the runway,” he said.