The U.S. Department of Transportation on Tuesday fined Asiana Airlines $500,000 for failing to assist families following the crash of Asiana flight 214 in San Francisco in July.
The Korean airline was
slow to publicize a phone number for families, took two full days to
successfully contact the families of three-quarters of the passengers
and did not contact families of several passengers until five days
following the crash, authorities said.
The half-million-dollar
penalty is the first time the DOT has issued a fine under a 1997 law
that requires airlines to adopt and adhere to a "family assistance plan"
for major accidents.
Three of the 291
passengers were killed and scores were injured when the Boeing 777
struck the seawall at San Francisco International Airport and tumbled
down the runway.
"In the very rare event
of a crash, airlines have a responsibility to provide their full support
to help passengers and their families by following all the elements of
their family assistance plans," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx
said in a statement. "The last thing families and passengers should have
to worry about at such a stressful time is how to get information from
their carrier."
In the DOT order, Asiana
said its job was complicated by the limited number of workers at San
Francisco's airport and other circumstances. Injured passengers were
sent to 13 different area hospitals, and there was no list prepared at
the time to help the airline track passengers.
Hospitals also were reluctant to release information to the airline due to privacy laws, the airline said.
Asiana released a
statement after the DOT fine was announced saying that it "provided
extensive support to the passengers and their families following the
accident and will continue to do so."
Under the Foreign Air
Carrier Family Support Act of 1997, foreign air carriers assure the
Department of Transportation and the National Transportation Safety
Board that they will adhere to a "family assistance plan" in the event
of aircraft accidents resulting in a major loss of life.
Among other things,
airlines must publicize and staff a toll-free telephone number to take
calls from families, notify families as soon as practical and commit
sufficient resources to carry out the family assistance plan.
According to the DOT,
Asiana failed to widely publicize any telephone number for family
members of those on board, and the only number generally available to
the public that family members could call was Asiana's toll-free
reservations line.
Asiana publicized a phone number established by another entity 18 hours and 32 minutes after the crash, the DOT said.
Locating this phone
number on Asiana's website required significant effort, the DOT said,
and the reservations line did not include a separate menu option for
calls related to the crash, requiring callers to navigate through
cumbersome automated menus.
Asiana also took two
days to send a sufficient number of trained personnel to San Francisco,
and initially lacked an adequate number of staff able to communicate in
the languages spoken by the flight's passengers, the DOT said.
According to the DOT,
$400,000 of the penalty is due within 30 days. Up to $100,000 will be
spent on multiple industry-wide conferences and training sessions to
provide others with lessons learned from the Asiana crash aftermath.
