Korean Air Flight 801 crashed on August 6, 1997 on approach to Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport, Guam.

The Korean Air Boeing 747-3B5 jet, designated HL7468, was en route from Seoul, South Korea to Guam. It departed Seoul's Gimpo Airport at 8:53 PM (9:53 PM Guam time) on August 5. It carried 2 pilots, 1 flight engineer, 14 flight attendants, and 237 passengers.

The flight was uneventful until shortly after 1:00 AM on August 6, as the jet was preparing to land. The weather at Guam was inclement at the time (heavy rain), so visibility was significantly reduced and the crew was attempting an instrument landing. At around 1:40, the jet was cleared to land at runway 6L. At 1:42, the jet slammed into Nimitz Hill, about 3 miles (5 km) short of the runway, at an altitude of 660 feet (201 meters). Of the 254 people on board, 228 were killed, most of them by the ensuing fire; only 23 passengers and 3 flight attendants survived.

The rescue effort was hampered by the weather, terrain, and other problems. Emergency vehicles could not approach due to a fuel pipeline destroyed by the crash and blocking the narrow road, and there was confusion over the administration of the effort; the crash occurred on land owned by the United States Navy but civil authorities initially claimed authority. The hull had disintegrated, and jet fuel in the wing tanks had sparked a fire which was still burning 8 hours after impact. The Governor of Guam, Carl Gutierrez, personally rescued an 11 year-old Japanese girl named Rika Matsuda.

The National Transportation Safety Board investigation report stated that the flight crew did not realize that the glideslope ILS for runway 6L was out of service and that the Minimum Safe Altitude Warning (MSAW) was also malfunctioning. The captain failed to brief his non-precision approach and prematurely descended to decision height. Contributing to the accident were the captain's fatigue, Korean Air's lack of flight crew training, as well as the intentional inhibition of the Guam ILS. The crew had been using an outdated flight map, which stated that the Minimum Safe Altitude for a landing plane was 1770 feet (540 meters) as opposed to 2150 feet (656 meters). Flight 801 had been maintaining 1870 feet (570 meters) when it was waiting to land.

On August 6, 2000, the third anniversary of the crash, a black marble obelisk was unveiled on the crash site as a memorial to the victims.

References

• NTSB: Korean Air Flight 801 Final Report, including animations and hearing transcripts
• Government of Guam: Guam Crash Site Center - Korean Air Flight 801, photographs, passenger manifest, scanned news articles, and related links
• PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer: "Tragedy on Guam," August 6, 1997