Just Marvelous,
A "professional" opinion from a 28 year old ground bus driver with a hand held who has two posts on pprune!
Son,
When "Homo-trons" start tripping busses because some young goof left his toolkit bouncing around down in the E&E who knows what systems a pilot can loose? Who cares about talking to the tower or squawking?
It's just not important. These guys obviously had a major failure, were lost and it was all they could do to get lined up with some pavement before the fuel was exhausted. In an emergency they don't need permission from anyone to do anything.
Maybe that tower should be re-staffed with people who understand what their job is. It's not to chew out flights under distress. Since you can see everything from your hand-held, why didn't you or Atc pick up the phone and tell the local towers to quit watching HBO and look out the window for this guy?
I have no idea. I wasn't there.
.