SmilingBoy

Watching BBC News 24 - why do they do the interviews in front of a road parallel to the perimeter fence? Very noisy! They could just do it in the studio - the wreck in the background is hardly visible anyway...

Petrus

Because they are 'Creatives'. I worked in the creative side of Television, in Britain by the way, and some of these creatives lack common sense and logic. And make you laugh as they come up with the most absurd ideas.
Lets not get started on Freelance producers... DYKWIA syndrome x 1k.

100% certain they chose that spot to add to the "drama". Hint of the crash site, noisy with traffic and AC's and it all adds to the excitement.

N830MH

http://news.sky.com/skynews/livenewsevents

Hopefully BA will have more investigators during crash landing into runway yesterday. Thanks all!

railways

I find it hard to believe that there is no contingency for this:

(from BBC website)

"Mr Tamburro said he and his two travelling companions had to leave their hand luggage in their overhead lockers on the aeroplane and so had no money or personal belongings on them but nobody was able to help them.......
He claimed when the passengers asked how they were supposed to get home without any money at all and asked BA for some petty cash, staff refused to help them."

AJLondon

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7196128.stm

Any comments bealine?

SmilingBoy

I wonder why they did not simply put the BA38 passengers in a Terraces lounge (which as I understand was closed anyway due to the incident), where ample food and drink and comfortable surroundings would have been available.

DocH

Five Live's pertinent comments on the press conference were almost limited to a comment that "the captain is in news terms what is known as a "Dish""

chucko

Today's New York Times (print edition) squeezed the whole story into a photo caption on p. 3. Barely a notch above the standard wire service two-paragraph Third-World-bus-plunge dispatch.

Cyba

I'm surprised by passenger Mark Tamburro's comments (in the BBC link, above). At the moment of course we have no way of knowing the degree of accuracy of his statement.

This has nothing to do with BA staff on site. They can't be expected to pay out of their own pockets. If true it sounds like BA made no provision for how to handle survivors as part of their serious event procedures. I find this unbelievable. Is there some legal issue with handing monies over? If so, it sound petty.

As for counselling, again, I'm surprised. Usually these people would be amongst the first to arrive on site. Is this all being exaggerated?

What happened with connecting passengers btw? Does anyone know? Wouldn't BA have put them up in a hotel somewhere?

AJLondon

Exactly. That would have made a lot more sense.

And just giving them "rationed" water, but no food or tea/coffee. Now that is cruel! Some sweetened tea or other hot drink is prob ideal to calm people down somewhat after such a shocking experience. And it is not even as if there is any shortage of food and drink at LHR. And as you suggest, it is available in the Terraces without any extra charge to BA.

nimeta

I have just watched the statement by the Pilot on Sky News. The CSD looks like she is still in shock. Hope they knew what they were doing before parading her in front of the media like that. She really didn't look ready for it IMHO.

WHBM

I don't believe the ground staff were in any way deliberately antagonstic, but am quite prepared to believe that incident handling training was dropped long ago for economy reasons, and nobody has any responsibility any more for doing things like disbursing petty funds to those directly involved.

Once upon a time the BA station manager would have had carte blanche to spend what he liked how they liked at times like this, to all be sorted out afterwards. Not any more.

Was it really beyond the wit of someone from the hundreds of managers in BA finance at Waterworld, a 5 minute drive away, to go over there with appropriate cash and start arranging for pax who had lost everything to be got on to where they were going ? No, thought not.

It is interesting that the fire service are able to think this through and send a support vehicle loaded with refreshments for the fire crews as part of their standard procedures (you can see it in the background of the pictures) but nothing could be done for those directly involved.

knifeandfork

Seems to me that the BA spin machine wouldn't have allowed the crew to speak in the way they did if they weren't absolutely sure that this wasn't a case of pilot error.

Though the pilot was dignified and paid proper tribute to his team, I felt a bit sorry for him being wheeled out to face the media barely a day after the incident. The backdrop of suitably cheering and applauding Waterworld employees was a bit much, don't you think?

ageson

True

BA should have the courtesy to provide some sort of refreshments (tea, biscuits, something, anything) in the event of an accident like this though. They should also have enough sense to realise that those passengers are going to be talking to the media pretty soon after they've left the airport - so spending a couple hundred quid on keeping them a bit sweet isn't such a big expense.

I think airlines have a tendancy to shutdown on people in this kind of situation. They're probably so used to dealing with whining people that are experiencing delays and making unreasonable demands/shouting/being annoyed that they go into "we're not liable and aren't going to bend over backwards for you or we'll have to be doing it for all these other thousands of passengers" mode

astralclouds

There is a tendency with traumatic events such as this for those involved (but not significantly) to elevate the perceived degree of their involvement by embellishing facts.