Asiana Confuses The Source Of Their Damaged Reputation

Everyone probably had already heard anyway, but I mentioned yesterday how a television station made a major boffo in releasing fake names of pilots from the crashed Asiana flight that were racially offensive. In an interesting twist, , claiming that their reputation has been damaged.

I think Asiana is confused.

The boffo over the fake and racially offensive pilot names has certainly hurt the reputation of the news station involved (KTVU) as well as the anchor and the NTSB. However, I’m pretty sure that the main current damage to Asiana’s reputation came from the fact that ONE OF THEIR PLANES JUST CRASHED!

Seriously? How is some news station getting punked like this supposed to have hurt Asiana’s reputation? Is there much that can really be hurt right after a crash?

“Hey, Rob. Let’s book us a flight on Asiana.”

“No, Neil. Somebody got tricked into thinking that they had pilots with racially offensive names. Let’s pick another airline that’s recently had a plane crash. I’d be much more comfortable with that.”

This just boggles my mind. By the way, apparently the intern at the NTSB did not make up the fake names, just falsely confirmed them without authority. That really raises the question, where the hell did these names come from? More interestingly than why the intern confirmed the names without authority, why did the intern confirm those names? They definitely weren’t right.

Regardless, I’m amazed that Asiana thinks this is where their reputation took a hit. I’m even more amazed that they are considering suing over it, particularly considering that the ability of crash victims to sue Asiana is so up in the air.