Further to my post about the Facebook story, I want to comment about an earlier piece aired on TV3 regarding the British Airways Boeing 777 crash at Heathrow airport. The story is littered with inaccuracies and stupidities.

First, an eye-witness tells of how the plane “banked” quite a bit. Clearly he is not an expert. If that plane had banked, it would not have ended up almost on the centre line of the runway. It pitched up. He then goes on to say “he probably did a textbook crash landing.” More expert testimony.

Second, a passenger who claimed the landing “wasn’t completely out of the extraordinary.” So, just how good/bad/unusual was the landing then?

But the best of all was the reporter herself, Rachael Smalley, who says “if you look up to the top of the flight path, you can see planes are literally queueing up to land” and then goes on to point out the three sets of lights which are aircraft heading for Heathrow 90 seconds apart. Well, I have personally stood out at Heathrow and watched the planes arrive on a typical day and all I can say is it must have been a dreary day when Rachael was there because normally you can see FOUR planes on approach, 90 seconds apart on any day of any week.

Of course the REAL congestion will be in the surrounding airspace and at other airports who are taking some of the diversions.

Where are the analyses of possible causes for the incident? Where are the subject matter experts? Where are the interviews with professional airline or rescue services personnel?

Why do they persist in claiming the crew were the sole reason for the plane making it to the runway. Whilst I have no doubt the pilot in command did an excellent job with the stricken aircraft, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what would have happened had the engines failed much more than the 2 miles out in this case. I am also surprised nobody has thought of the implications of the plane being very lightly loaded. One hundred and thirty six passengers is less than half full.

The final nail in the coffin of this ‘reporting’ was the question “what caused two engines to fail on the safest airline in the world”. Rachael, you pay as much attention to your words as you do to any decent research.

I vote for TV3 news as a strong contender in the next television awards – in the ENTERTAINMENT category. That’s clearly their charter.

PS. For real coverage, see the BBC’s stories here and here and for some decent pictures, both post-incident and in better days, see Airliners.net.