[brettnak]

This should help a little:

-400: Likely the 747-400. One of the variants of the 747

UAL: United Airlines

Asiana: This is the airline of the plane that crashed at SFO.

Right Seat: First Officer / Co-pilot's seat.

Left Seat: Captain / Pilot's seat.

Standards Captain: Probably means he was one of the people who would have final say in whether or not a pilot was certified to fly a specific aircraft. I believe there are two different standards, one for pilot and one for copilot, but I'm not sure.

Upgraded by Phenomenal Growth: The airline grew so fast they didn't have enough pilots so they had to promote copilots to pilots faster than they were probably qualified.

*edited to correct information based on the comment below.

[rdl]

-400 is almost certainly a Boeing 747-400, i.e. the model of 747 flown by virtually everyone now. There isn't a 777-400 yet.