Tuesday, July 16, 2013

(OT) Asiana Airlines to Sue California TV Station for "Racist Fake Pilot Names"


According to CBS News (7/15/2013):

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.


Here are the names that "disparaged Asians":

Captain sum ting wong (something wrong)
wi tu lo (way too low)
ho lee fuk (holy f..k)


From the comment section:

Asiana: Don't insult yourselves. Concentrate on flying airplanes safely. I can absolutely guaranty you that suing the media will not improve your reputation.

I find this also almost as hilarious as the names of the flight crew. I am an aircraft mechanic for a major airline and I have to say most of us laughed so hard when we saw this we all wanted to buy this NTSB intern a steak dinner. This is just good old fashion humor and was done wonderfully. I am worried that we as a people have become so judgemental that everything is offensive and everything is a law suit. it is my proffesional opinion that these names being in some way able to make Asiana look bad is a complete joke.

Every Asian I've talked to thought the KTVU report was very funny. Admittedly it's not a huge sample, one spouse (Cantonese), one dentist (1/2 Cantonese, 1/2 Japanese), and one dental assistant (Filipino). I need to talk to my niece when she returns from Korea, she flew out out on Asiana from SFO this past Saturday.

Asiana is free to sue KTVU, but it's ill-advised. They will draw more attention to themselves and further damage their reputation which was damaged not by a bogus report of pilot names, but by the actual pilots.

I think Asiana Airlines damaged their own reputation by crashing.

Yes, these names damaged Asiana's sterling reputation as a world leader in "almost landing planes"


What's not very funny is that a government agency like NTSB handling the on-going investigation of the crash lets an intern handle PR without supervision.

("Racism" the word by the way is very much loved in Japan; they love it so much that they use it in transliteration, as "reishizumu" (except, alas, the "r" sound that doesn't exist in Japanese except in some dialects with rolled "r" sound). I wonder how many know the word starts with "r" instead of "l".)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

"They will draw more attention to themselves and further damage their reputation which was damaged not by a bogus report of pilot names, but by the actual pilots."

that's a bit wordy, how about: 'another boeing 777 down in flames'.

same plane, same circumstances (loss of engine power in the last few moments) - see these re: a crash at heathrow in jan 2008 and also an 'incident' on a 777 flight from shanghai to atlanta:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/12/heathrow-crash-fuel-icing-delta
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7598267.stm

"The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in the US has warned there is a "high probability" of it happening again. This afternoon its UK counterpart, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, called for a probe into fuel icing after warning that industry guidance on the problem was based on 50-year-old research."

"With two of these rollback events occurring within a year, we believe that there is a high probability of something similar happening again," said the NTSB acting chairman, Mark Rosenker.

Rolls-Royce has said it expects to have a redesigned engine component ready within 12 months. Rosenker said: "We are encouraged to see that Rolls-Royce is already working on a redesign."

boeing would rather have us talking about racism than flaws in their aircraft.

(i admit i don't know if the asiana plane used the rolls royce engines. otoh, that 'aircraft mechanic' was pretty quick to blame the pilots, absent even an initial faa crash report)

Anonymous said...

Anonymous:
Right on! The "racism card" is an old one. A diverting tactic away from the failure of Asiana to use SAFE engine/battery parts....

Side bar: the Japanese do not substitute "l" for "r" or vice-versa. l/r are the same sound--an allophone.

What IS interesting is that in Japan any NEGATIVE word ("racism", "Harrassment", etc.) is always used in it original form. After all, "racism" just couldn't be a Japanese word because the Japanese never practice it...Ho-hum....

Anonymous said...

Don't see any merit of this lawsuit, other than it sure damage Asiana's company image even more. A typical hot tempered Asian reaction, without thinking through.

Everyone knew there was something wrong with the TV report and suspected the Fox affiliated reporter was making things up or being down right ignorant. People laughed but they were laughing at the TV report.

With this lawsuit, Asiana is drawing more attention to itself, telling to the world that it is a reckless, self-centered, unsafe airline company who cares only about themselves and nothing about the accident victims, since there have been no words about the Asiana's responsibility and remedies to the passengers, at this point.

netudiant said...

Although the accident does have some resemblance
to the British Airways London crash, anonymous@1:19 is mistaken in his inference.
The Asiana plane had Pratt and Whitney engines made by United Technologies, not Rolls Royce motors as on the British plane and fuel icing was not a factor.
The most immediate cause seems to be a misunderstanding about the functioning of the engine auto-throttle, which normally keeps the plane at a set speed. It does not do so in the landing mode the crew selected, but because the crew had become used to it holding speed, they did not notice the speed loss until too late.
The problem would not have arisen had the SF airport's ILS (instrument landing system) been working, as that would have alerted the crew to the problem, but that system is out for some time for maintenance/upgrade.

Anonymous said...

Not the Lithium batteries reaching the dew point and shorting out,outgassing and combusting then.

Anonymous said...

I thought it was more sad than funny. Nobody noticed the silly names, and the person responsible for the whole thing was making a little too much light out of an actual disaster. I heard they are even sacking the news reporter for reading what she was told to.

Regardless, a lawsuit is kind of pointless and irrelevant. If I could sue someone everytime they were racist to me, I would have been the richest being in the galaxy at age 7.

Anonymous said...

"Japanese word because the Japanese never practice it...Ho-hum....
"
Trying to(WRONGLY) accuse Japanese of being a racist nation without any evidence to back up any systematic nationwide abuse is racist itself.


JAPANESE racist? last time i checked it was the USA who shoot unarmed black men in the back and avoid jail time.....ho hum


about the lawsuit.pathetic pathetic sweet ttongsul drinking koreans always do this. They also try to sue Japanese gov because they want MORE money for the WWII korean whore prostitutes who worked in brothels.

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