Scotbill
I think you're being very harsh on ham phisted. The reason, in my humble opinion, that PPRUNE has the reputation it has, among professional flight crew at least, is the uninformed nonsense that you see written from people who clearly are NOT pilots. I am not advocating that PPRUNE be restricted to pilots but it gets frustrating, at times, to see ill informed comments that indicate the poster's ignorance of modern airline operations.
There's nothing wrong with the general public asking questions and seeking to understand a complex subject but making judgements when they lack the facts is unwise - only my opinion of course. For example, the eye witness on the BBC who said the: "the plane was going in and out of cloud". What does that add to our understanding? However, a passenger on board who says he saw the cowling come lose at such and such time will be invaluable to the AAIB.
The discussion about whether to divert to STN/LTN is a case in point. I imagine that very few airline pilots will have problems with that because we understand the workload in a diversion to somewhere unfamiliar. Of course it may turn out that STN was an option but we don't have the facts yet. In this absence of good info I vote the crew a "well done".