Bay Area TV station KTVU had a royal screwup on Friday when it erroneously reported the names of the pilots responsible for the crash of Asiana flight 214 last weekend. The news segment played out like an episode of “The Simpsons” where Bart prank calls the local bar asking for names like Seymour Butts or Amanda Hugandkiss. The news anchor called the pilots by clearly fake names and didn’t even realize it. Seriously, these were the names:
– Sum Ting Wong
– Wi Tu Lo
– Ho Lee Fuk
– Bang Ding Ow
Somehow nobody picked up that they had been fooled. What’s worse is that KTVU said in its apology that they actually did some legwork to confirm the names of the pilots, and that the National Transportation Safety Board actually confirmed those names!
[Video: KTVU screws up names of Asiana flight pilots]
Well, the NTSB wasn’t about to let themselves look like the biggest idiots in the world, so they did what any reasonable company would do — they blamed the screwup on the intern!
Here’s a statement issued by the NTSB on the matter:
The National Transportation Safety Board apologizes for inaccurate and offensive names that were mistakenly confirmed as those of the pilots of Asiana flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco International Airport on July 6.
Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft.
The NTSB does not release or confirm the names of crewmembers or people involved in transportation accidents to the media. We work hard to ensure that only appropriate factual information regarding an investigation is released and deeply regret today’s incident.
You buying that one? Maybe you do maybe you don’t, but we do know one thing is for certain: that intern just went from intern to ex-intern.
