South Korea's Civil Aviation Bureau (KCAB) - also criticised in the report for not adequately monitoring the carrier - quickly announced operational penalties would be imposed on KAL.
The carrier will be banned from starting new international services for one year, and will also be barred from operating on Seoul-Guam and Seoul-Saipan routes for two years.
The NTSB's report into the 6 August, 1997 crash, which killed 228, says the probable cause was the captain's failure to adequately brief and execute a non-precision approach. The first officer and flight engineer also failed to effectively monitor and cross-check the captain's execution of the approach, it says.
KAL is also criticised for inadequate flight crew training, and the FAA for the fact that the airport's minimum safe altitude warning system was not working at the time of the accident.
KAL responded by detailing improvements it is making in terms of flight safety. It has also indicated opposition to some of the NTSB's findings, saying: "Korean Air does not deny human factor issues in the Guam accident; however, there are usually many factors that contribute to the cause of aircraft accidents."
KAL has been silent on the KCAB's operational penalties, which add to an existing one-year ban on increasing current frequencies or launching new domestic routes for one year.
Those penalties were imposed by the South Korean Government in May after an investigation into a March Boeing MD-83 landing incident at Pohang isolated pilot error as a main factor. The aircraft was declared a write-off after it skidded off the runway, injuring at least 20.
At the time KAL was serving out an earlier penalty for a series of domestic landing incidents. The initial penalty forced it to cut frequencies on ten domestic routes from October 1998 for six months.
Source: Airline Business
