JU aviation Prof. Wayne Ziskal discusses fatal San Francisco crash on WJXT Morning Show

Wayne Ziskal, a Jacksonville University aeronautics professor with extensive experience as an instructor pilot and check airman for Boeing 777s, provided insight on the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash as a guest July 15 on the WJXT-TV Morning Show.

The Asiana flight was traveling well below its target speed for landing July 6 when it crashed short of the San Francisco International Airport runway, the National Transportation Safety Board said.

“It looks like it’s a human factor — an automated dependency problem, which means, basically, that they relied on the automation,” Ziskal told the Jacksonville television station’s Jennifer Waugh. “It got way too slow. The automation and the aircraft performed as it should have.”

Three high school students from China were killed and more than 180 people were injured after the jet struck a seawall and slammed into a runway. The Associated Press quoted Asiana officials as saying the pilot in charge of landing the Boeing 777 was in training for flying that model of jet.

In the TV interview, Ziskal said it is important for pilots to be adequately trained on all aspects of aviation, including basic airmanship. JU’s state-of-the-art regional passenger simulator is a critical tool for providing that instruction, he said.

“The question is not so much the hours of flying time; it is the quality of the flying time,” Ziskal said. “Many airline pilots today are trained just to rely on the automation.”

Here is the WJXT-TV interview:

During careers with the U.S. Air Force and American Airlines, Ziskal accumulated more than 26,000 hours of flight time and has made more than 2,000 Atlantic and Pacific crossings. He carried more than 850,000 passengers to all of the inhabited continents, logging more than 6.8 million miles.

Click here to read Ziskal’s bio.