I read a thread about this last night on an aviation forum. Actual 777 pilots talking in there. It came down hard in a high nose up AOA and did hit right after the sea barrier rif-raf. The tail did break off. They believed that the two dead were stewardesses sitting at that bulkhead where it separated.
The pilots there talked about a known issue with some Korean crews. Apparently the co-pilots are almost completely incapable of taking the controls from the pilot even in the most severe of circumstances. They cited several examples and believe this could have been similar. Cultural issues not being addressed appropriately in the training and certification.
Apparently there were known issues with the runway too, that they were landing on and either this was not covered adequately by the pilots in their pre-flight, or the tower did not communicate effectively as they were coming in...maybe both. But the issue was known and published and should have been part of the landing plan. Either way, those folks believed the crew recognized the issue late and tried a late fly around, but had lost too much speed and energy and thus hit the ground at a steep AOA which broke off the tail.
It is fortunate that the entire aircraft did not disintegrate killing all or most of the passengers and crew.
Actually this is more of an airmanship issue, it is now customary that shortly after lift-off to punch the little green button and let "George" fly the airplane until approach or short final. The ELS was out, that is no biggie on a CAVU day, this whole incident occurred because the PIC failed to maintain flying speed/altitude and flared the aircraft short of the runway. This points to a system failure in the training regiman the pilots don't get enough stick-time to really have command of the aircraft in these low and slow situations, a lack of awareness of deteriorating airspeed, and the slow spool up of the turbine engine in general, all contributed to a failure of the pilot in command to "fly the airplane".
Joe can't say, "hey lets take her up and do some slow flight and approach to landing stalls", the corporate chain of command relegates all flight training to the simulator, no one goes up and "plays" with the airplane and that is absolutely essential to maintaining the kind of airmanship necessary to "put the airplane where you want it". The F/O taking the airplane is simply NOT DONE in any culture, ya don't want to tick-off the OLD MAN, and he will be P--- O--, Royally in fact, so you might hint, but with cockpit voice recorders, black boxes, their is simply too much data collection, IE SPYING, on the flight crew, they are locked into "failure mode", if you call it wrong, or even if you call it right and tick off the wrong people, you are history. Only the absolute minimum time is spent in the airplane during training, and if I'm not mistaken, most "Check Rides" are now conducted in the simulator......bad JU-JU, all the way around, pilots need to be in command of their aircraft, and half the recording garbage needs to be ash-canned, that KRAP causes people paralysis when its time to say, "F/O has the aircraft, Sir!". or Maam??? don't even get me started on that............brat
