Korean Air will be banned from flying cargo flights to Shanghai for at least two years in a punitive action for the crash of one of its aircraft there two years ago, government officials said yesterday.

The South Korean government's Construction and Transportation Ministry took the action after China officially blamed pilot error and cockpit confusion for a 1999 Korean Air cargo plane crash that killed all the three crewmen and five people on the ground.

"As the Korean Air's error was found to have caused the crash, we plan to cancel the airline's license on the Seoul-Shanghai cargo route," it said.

A ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the punitive action would remain in effect for at least two years beginning on July 1.

The ministry will hold a hearing later this month to give Korean Air a chance to appeal the government decision, reported The Associated Press.

Chinese investigators, working together with U.S. and South Korean experts, have found that the ill-fated MD-11 cargo plane took off from Shanghai airport on April 15, 1999 with a control-tower instruction to climb to an altitude of 1,500 meters, the ministry said in a news statement.

When the plane climbed over 1,200 meters, the pilot asked his co-pilot to repeat the control-tower instruction and the confused co-pilot reported that the instruction was for 1,500 feet instead of 1,500 meters, it said.

That led the panicked pilot to drop altitude sharply, causing the accident, the statement said.

The cargo plane subsequently crashed into a residential area a few minutes after the takeoff.

Korean Air is the world's second-largest cargo carrier.

It handles 15.2 percent of cargo going through Shanghai's airports.

Government officials said the sanction against Korean Air would not cause congestion in air cargo traffic between Seoul and Shanghai, because another South Korean carrier, Asian Airlines, operates cargo service on the route.

Korean Air officials protested the decision.

"The flight recorder was destroyed in the crash. We believe the investigation could not have been conducted in a fair manner as it was based on insufficient data," said William Han, a Korean Air spokesman.

The world's 13th-largest airline has had one of the worst safety records of any major air carrier. In 1997, its flight 801 slammed into a Guam hillside, killing 299 people. As a penalty, Korean Air was banned from the Guam route for two years. The ban will end in November.

(Eastday.com.cn 06/06/2001)