Last July, the crew of Asiana Airlines Flight 214, which crash-landed in San Francisco, stayed aboard the aircraft until the end and heroically guided their passengers to safety. Female flight attendants carried injured male passengers on their backs off the burning airplane. What was the difference between these two groups? Rigorous training. Asiana and Korean Air are both well-known for the exhaustive safety training their flight crews receive. New crew members must go through several weeks of safety training on an aircraft simulator, practicing emergency evacuations, water landings, fire safety protocols and emergency medical treatment. The airlines enforce mandatory annual refresher courses for their flight crews. By contrast, throughout all of last year, Chonghaejin Marine Company, the owner and operator of the Sewol, only spent about $520 on safety education for its employees. (Their entertainment expenses, on the other hand, were about $59,000.)