The crash of Asiana Flight 214 is giving the public an unprecedented front-row seat to the workings of federal accident investigators, and the new transparency has some people asking if the rush of details might lead to a dangerous rush to judgment.
Among those most incensed are airline pilots, a group understandably guarded against premature conclusions that the crash in San Francisco was the result of pilot error. The largest U.S. pilots union, Air Line Pilots Association, said it was “stunned” by the quantity of Asiana flight information made public this week by the National Transportation Safety Board. “The amount of data released publicly during the field portion of the accident investigation is unprecedented,” the union said on Monday, two days after the crash. By Tuesday, the union had faulted the NTSB’s “release of incomplete, out-of-context information” for the “rampant speculation about the cause of the accident.”
