My beef was with Anthony Klan's article, which looked like it was thrown together from a bunch of half-grasped ideas, and in which he quotes Thomas as an aviation expert. There's a lot more garbage in there but I picked on a few to address. Here's what I wrote to the Aussie; if you haven't seen Klan's article, have a read - I think any pilot will cringe, and it's not because he's written it in terms the public will understand, it's because he clearly doesn't understand what he's writing about (with an assertion of authority) himself.
Subject: Letter to the Editor – Weekend Australian Newspaper
Dear Sir or Madam,
Anthony Klan’s speculative, poorly-researched and error-filled article on the crash of flight QZ8501 (‘Storm detector might have saved doomed AirAsia flight’, 3/1) should not have been published. His implication that an improved weather radar would have saved the flight is plain wrong – the flight crew were clearly aware of the storm cell in front of them, having requested a climb to avoid it, but would have been better off trying to go around rather than climb over a severe thunderstorm.
Mr Klan states that it is most likely that a severe updraft sent the flight into an aerodynamic stall, and that excess weight can significantly lower the speed at which a plane stalls. In fact, the exact opposite would be true in both cases – updrafting air tends to increase airspeed, lessening the likelihood of a stall, and the heavier an aircraft is, the higher its stall speed will be. A stall may very possibly have been involved in the accident, but not for the reasons put forward in the article.
Other clearly incorrect assertions from the article are that traffic collision and avoidance systems ‘automatically take over the controls of collision-bound planes’, or that the lack of an emergency locator transmitter (ELT) signal indicates that the impact with the ocean wasn’t severe – in fact, it might suggest the opposite, that impact forces were severe enough to render any ELT or its associated antenna unserviceable.
Mr Klan is not wrong in suggesting that flight through a severe storm led to the loss of this aircraft, but he should heed the advice of the AirAsia chief executive whom he quotes in his article as saying it would be improper to speculate on the cause of the crash, particularly as he appears to have only a tenuous grasp on aviation-specific matters.