Originally Posted by
Arnold E
it was obvious that the plane had crashed because the tail broke off'.
Maybe this statement wouldn't look quite so bad if an apostrophe was added in the appropriate place, poor editing if that is the case though
Arnold, listening to it live (it's been long enough I don't recall exact words) it was clear that he was saying the tail breaking off was the cause of the crash - not the result of the crash. Pretty much as I was hearing this I was looking at aerial views of the tail and debris field - and it was bleeding
obvious that there had been some sort of impact that had caused the tail to depart.
Besides, it doesn't take an aeronautical background to know that if the tail had broken off on final, the crash would have been far worse (not to mention, why exactly would the tail fail just prior to touchdown on a calm summer day?). It was quite simply one of the most preposterous things I've ever heard on TV news (and I've heard some whoppers).
Granted, some of the eye witness reports that the aircraft had 'flipped over' seemed rather preposterous at the time, but at least became understandable when video of the event surfaced.
Anyway, my opinion of news channel "expert commentary" was never very high, but after that it was pretty much zero. If I can readily see how pathetic their experts are when they talk about something where I have some knowledge, why should I expect it to be any better when they are talking about things I don't have knowledge of?