Asiana’s luck continues with dodgy-tire delay

Asiana Airlines is struggling to normalize its services after the no-meal fiasco at the beginning of this month that left thousands of passengers flying hungry.

An Asiana Airlines plane departing from Frankfurt, Germany, to Incheon was delayed by over four hours due to damage to its tire, the company said Thursday.

The plane was supposed to leave the airport in Frankfurt at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday local time, but lost tire pressure while taxiing and returned to the gate to be checked. It turned out the tire lost air due to damage caused by an unknown substance that was on the runway.

The plane ended up taking off from the German airport at 10:55 p.m., over four hours after its departure time.

An Asiana spokesperson explained that “this incident has nothing to do with plane defects or maintenance problems,” and added it was a “problem related to the airport’s runway.”

However, even though the airline says this incident was just bad luck, customers are becoming increasingly concerned about flying with Asiana due to the growing number of delays and defects reported in the last few weeks.

On Thursday morning, a Hong Kong-bound Asiana plane leaving from Incheon scheduled to depart at 9 a.m. was delayed by about an hour because an evacuation slide was wrongly installed. This incident affected 244 passengers.

Last week, a New York-bound Asiana flight leaving from Incheon was delayed by about 10 hours while a flight to Rome was delayed by six hours, both due to plane defects in the braking system or fuel oil system.

Asiana employees claim the defects are due to a lack of investment in plane maintenance and demand the company spend more on airplane parts and maintenance. The airline says it has been maintaining a reasonable level of investment in plane maintenance.

BY KIM JEE-HEE [kim.jeehee@joongang.co.kr]