Asiana Airlines Inc. said Wednesday it has withdrawn its plan to file a defamation suit against a U.S. television station for damaging the carrier's reputation over the deadly crash of its plane in San Francisco.
"We decided not to proceed with the suit to concentrate all our efforts on dealing with the aftermath of the accident," the South Korea's second-largest flag carrier said in a statement.
The airline also cited an apology by the San Francisco Bay Area station KTVU Channel 2 for its abrupt about-face.
The decision came two days after Asiana Airlines vowed to file a defamation suit against the station for airing bogus and racially offensive names of the four pilots aboard the jet that crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport earlier this month.
The accident killed three Chinese teenagers and injured more than 180 other people.
The U.S. station issued an on-air apology on Friday for misidentifying the pilots, saying the names had been confirmed by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
The U.S. agency also apologized for the inaccurate and offensive names, which were mistakenly confirmed as those of the pilots of Asiana Airlines flight 214 by a summer intern.
Critics said the fake and offensive names caricatured Asian names and made a mockery of the Asiana Airlines tragedy. (Yonhap News)
