Precisely doubledolphin
Uhm, did they interview the Captain ? Apparently not, and I'd imagine that he just filed an ASR, went home, put his feet up, and thought no more of it - just another normal day at the office.
What might seemingly have occurred is that the media interviewed some hysterical woman, i.e. she (apparently) admitted herself that she was on the verge of panic, and of course her 'panicking' would really have helped, wouldn't it ? ....... and just to think that these people can vote too ! ....... and from which her (maybe muddled) recollections are then portrayed as the facts of this (apparent) incident.
Now w.r.t
'the autopilot had taken over'.
What utter codswallop ! I.e. unless Air2bobs QRH (aka. the emergency checklist) is different to everybody else's, the normal Boeing one says something akin to this for a TCAS RA (whilst not in the landing configuration) - assuming that this is what occurred:
TCAS RA (RESOLUTION ADVISORY)
For TCAS RA except "CLIMB" in landing configuration:
If manoeuvring is required, disengage the autopilot and smoothly adjust pitch and thrust to satisfy the RA command.
Nb. The TCAS is not linked to the autopilot - but if it determines that a risk of collision might exist it (the TCAS) suggests either a pitch or V/S range (depends on the system fitted) to resolve the conflict between the aircraft. It's up to the pilots to make their aircraft comply with that commanded pitch or V/S.
So BBC et al, we know that you monitor PPRuNe and it's something from which you get a lot of info. Could we therefore ask you to please reciprocate some of our goodwill by desisting from publishing sensationalistic stories where none is warranted, i.e. lets have FACTS not fiction, because doing the latter ultimately does neither you, nor the travelling public, any favours. .... E.g.
Airline pilot puts passengers lives at risk !
It'e been reported that an airline Captain has blown his nose.
We've since had it confirmed, by Mrs Snodgrass of Purley, an experienced first time flyer, that mass panic broke out amongst the passengers when the full reality dawned that this reckless pilots action might have led to him suffering a potentially fatal nose bleed.
Mrs Snodgrass later commented that, "Something really must be done to prevent such an atrociously dangerous incident from happening again, and as such I'm also thinking of taking legal action against the airline for blatently endangering me in such a negligent way".
Neither the CAA, or the airline in question, were available for comment.
STOP PRESS........
Subsequent passenger comments have included this from Mrs P Ikey of 'The Travellers Site, Camdem':
"It was horrible it was. We just went fasta and fasta down that runway thingy, know wot I mean, and, well, then we were in the air ! I didn't have a clue wot was hapnin, know wot I mean. It's not right it ain't, know wot I mean. I fink somefink should be dun abart it !"
and this, from Mr S. Panking from Chipping Soddom:
"Look that pilot fella is dangerous ! There was a point, quite late in the journey, when we just seemed to drop, and all the passengers knew that the engines had stopped. About fifteen minutes later there was all this noise, nobody told us what was going on, although they seemed to have got the engines going again, but we were definitely getting closer and closer to the ground - I really thought we were all going to die, even babies were screaming - but somehow we managed to land on the runway"
Yeah, it's crap ! - but people read it, and I'm afraid that sh!t sticks - so let's stopping publishing such crap.