The one thing we can surely all agree on (unless we happen to be journalists pretending to be pilots) is this amply demonstrates just how really sloppy reporting is.
In the early hours after with limited facts that might be forgiveable but almost every report several days on is peppered with things which self-evidently are wrong and would have taken a few seconds to correct from the obvious online sources.
This demonstrates that reports are not written by people either with knowledge or any desire to get them right. It’s consistent with a dinner I once had with a group of journalists, one of whom was from the FT, some from the Express (the former was my friend!) where I was amazed when I made the passing comment that in my job I need to be right when I say something and every story I have read where I know the facts even the basic details are wrong - instead of them saying “we know it’s embarrassing, people should try harder” they all vehemently brazenly defended it saying “you don’t understand you don’t have time to worry about facts we just have to write a story”.
So the telegraph today refers to it as a turbine. It refers to a social media post by the pilot saying I might be a bit rusty on the ILS “thought to refer to the plane’s instrument landing system”.
So when a paper as esteemed as the sun refers to three “take-off attempts” rather than speculating as to how it might have got briefly airborne then safely landed and taxied back in remaining runway, let’s just assume that’s pure twaddle - it might mean the pilot went off to empty his bladder or got out to recheck something prudently, or nothing at all.
People are instinctively keen to find guidance - at the pub on Tuesday after playing football my friends asked me for my opinion and I could have spouted any outlandish rubbish pet theory or said in hushed tones I’d heard it was deliberate but can’t say where and it would have been taken as authoritative and the more outlandish the more it would spread- I actually said at the time it seemed odd that what I had read (on here I think!) was the pilot was experienced at ferry crossings and it was an IFR flight plan so I thought it was surprising if he got suddenly disoriented and didn’t make a mayday call as notwithstanding the aviate navigate communicate rule if I were in a single there at night and had engine trouble I would be instantly making a mayday call as I pointed straight back at Alderney and hoped S&R got there before I froze and anyone who didn’t panic was likely to do similarly.
The UK is currently a much less United Kingdom and likely to be in a terrible mess for a long time to come as a result of people simply taking at face value people who seem authoritative by without checking their assertions and journalists with an agenda printing plain rubbish. Let’s always not forget when speculating about a disaster that absent independent verification even consistent press reports may be a complete fabrication as well as the possibility of “having something to them”, and them being completely accurate is sadly unlikely!
Having said all that the meta picture emerging by filtering the various reports is that the pilot may have been less experienced or qualified than optimal for the conditions and this may well have contributed both to the unexplained disappearance and failure to make a mayday call when getting into difficulties.
Of course another possibility is that a sudden electrical failure perhaps due to having all the lights, deicing equipment overloading an electrical system with an underlying fault and aged battery with underperforming alternator perhaps coupled to an unheralded engine failure happened without reasonable warning soon after a perfectly reasonable decision to descend to 2300 into clear air and a well executed glide to ditch was then performed in complete silence and darkness. No information that is currently available or likely to emerge or makes good reporting is around to support this, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t exactly what happened, pilot legality aside!