Boeing 747 Airplane Crashes Near Runway in Guam

When a Korean Airlines (KAL) Boeing 747 crashed just short of the runway at Guam Airport in August 1997, only 20 people survived.

We represented some of the victims, including one of the survivors who described the horror of hearing tires exploding and sailing over his head. After the incident, he watched the aircraft burn throughout the night before being rescued from the rough terrain covered with sawgrass. He and the others carried from the jungle were taken to an American naval hospital and Guam Memorial with significant burn injuries.

The cockpit voice recorder revealed that the co-pilot asked the captain if he had heard the aircraft’s automatic ground proximity warning telling the crew in a recorded voice to “pull up, pull up.”

The result was a change in KAL cockpit culture that encourages the first officer/co-pilot to speak up and question the captain when something is clearly going wrong.

AWARD: Confidential settlement