Don't mean to hijack the thread but Porch Monkey made a good point.
Porch Monkey said - "It really is a pity that the idiot reporting it puts his own spin on it, and months after the fact. Maybe he's been in hibernation or something??"
Australia has journalists, and aviation journalists, ie the like of Scott Rochford, Geoffrey Thomas et al. From the generic brand of journalists I expect rubbish to be written about aviation. From our aviation journalists I expect some journalism based on fact with aviation thinking applied. Sadly not so.
This story in last weeks Australian is a case in point. And Rochfort dragged up a story two weeks ago about Tiger losing money which was months old, and Geoffrey Thomas's appearance on Sunrise yesterday regarding Qantas being shepherded across the Pacific was shameful.
He was asked by Professor Mel - "So in essence they were flying totally blind across the Pacific without any idea of where they were going?"
I expect a response of "NO, navigation was fine, they knew where they were and where they were going, but they lost the ability to detect on the radar significant weather, and thus be able to effectively avoid it."
But Thomas's answer "Yes absolutely - they were flying totally blind." So Joe the plumber sitting at home thinks the expert has confirmed they couldn't see where they were going and they were lost.
No hope for us.