Airline Might Sue TV Station Over Prank Names

Asiana Airlines might someday be defending itself in court in the wake of the fatal San Francisco crash, but its lawyers are playing offense, too. The airline says it might sue KTVU after the TV station got pranked and aired fake pilot names that were actually crude racial jokes such as "Sum Ting Wong" and "Wi Tu Lo." The airline also might sue the NTSB over the incident, because one of its summer interns inexplicably confirmed to the station that the names were correct, reports CNN.

"The reputation of the four pilots and of the company had been seriously damaged by this report," says an airline statement. Both KTVU and the government agency have apologized, and it's still not clear who punked the station in the first place. The Christian Science Monitor notes that while the NTSB has typically been criticized as being too slow to release information about crashes, the opposite has been true in this case—and the pilot "confirmation" is the latest example. The Air Line Pilots Association, for instance, says the agency has been too quick to release data suggesting that the pilots of the plane were at fault. (More Asiana Airlines stories.)