From my days on the commercial side, I seem to recall that it was noise. It was, IIRC, 7 degrees right from the start, and there were a lot fewer obstacles in those days. Come to that, a lot less passengers as well...
Meanwhile,
"Airplane Seconds From Disaster Near Canary Wharf"
www.flickr.com/photos/birdlike/346725016
"The stricken plane barely missed a building where "The Sisters Of Posterior Cleavage", Nuns of a little-known religious "construction order", were working on an extension to a hospital and orphanage.
Aviation experts suspect that discarded ice from a gin and tonic may have contaminated the petrol, a child using MSN Chat in South Ockendon may have inadvertantly typed "Fokker", paralysing the aircraft's Windows 98 "flying wire" systems, or the pilots may have been distracted by polaroids of the Chief Pilot, taken in a Humberside bed and breakfast in 1991. Other investigators suggested that the doomed craft had inadvertantly lined up with a high-speed exit at nearby Heathrow".
(Did anyone else get bored with the 'MM ballyhoo? :-) )
By the way, this chap's photos of London City ops are outstanding, as, indeed, are his others. Not typical "airliners.net" spotter fodder...
r