Asiana Airlines safety record

Asiana's last fatal accident was flight 214 in July 2013, a 777 from Seoul that came in too low and too slow on a visual approach to San Francisco and hit the seawall short of the runway. Three of the 291 passengers lost their lives; the other 304 people on board survived. The US investigators found the crew mismanaged the descent, the pilot flying unintentionally switched off the automatic speed control, and the go-around came too late. They named the complexity of the autoflight system, and how it was explained in Boeing's manuals and Asiana's training, as contributing, and asked Asiana for stricter cockpit call-outs, more hand-flying practice and better preparation of new instructor pilots.

Two fatal accidents came before that. In July 1993 flight 733, a 737, hit a hillside near Mokpo on its third attempt to land in bad weather, at an airport with no precision approach; 68 of the 116 people on board lost their lives. In July 2011 a fire broke out on cargo flight 991, a 747 freighter from Incheon to Shanghai, and it came down in the sea off Jeju; its two pilots, the only people on board, lost their lives. Korea's investigators found the fire began on or near pallets carrying dangerous goods, among them lithium-ion batteries, but could not find what set it off.

Two later events were not fatal. In April 2015 flight 162, an A320, came in too low at Hiroshima, hit a landing-aid antenna array short of the runway and veered off the side of it; 28 people were slightly hurt. Japan's investigators found the captain kept descending without the runway in sight and the first officer did not call a go-around. In May 2023 a passenger opened an emergency exit on an A321 on approach to Daegu; the aircraft landed normally, a dozen people were slightly hurt, and Asiana stopped selling some exit-row seats.

Asiana was founded in 1988 as South Korea's second full-service airline. Korean Air took control of it in December 2024, and Asiana is due to merge into Korean Air on 17 December 2026, when its flights take Korean Air's name and it leaves Star Alliance. Until then its record is counted on its own. Air Busan and Air Seoul, its low-cost affiliates, fly under their own names and are not counted here; no one lost their life when an Air Busan A321 caught fire before take-off at Busan in January 2025.