After carefully considering the media reports of the stowaways on the BA54 flight from Johannesburg to London Heathrow, I have come to the conclusion that I obviously need to rename this blog to more accurately represent just how far I actually am from civilisation:
Sky News:
Guardian:
Henceforth, 6000 miles… will be known as Oops, my mistake. Apparently, it’s actually more than 8000 miles from civilisation…
I’ll sort the URL as soon as I get the new domain name registered.
It seems that the plane must have taken a 2500 mile detour. As some wit remarked:
The deceased probably would have survived the standard length journey.
It’s actually 5645 miles from Joburg to London Heathrow (and 6022 miles from Cape Town).
Flightradar24 reports that the flight in question left JNB at 21:17 and landed at LHR at 07:02. That’s 10¾ hours (allowing for the 1 hr time difference), meaning that if the distance was “over 8000 miles”, the plane must have been supersonic for more than 95% of the journey. Pretty impressive for a 747. (Actually, pretty impossible for a 747.)
Please note my neat sidestepping issues of desperate emigration, airport security and any other serious and awkward issues that this story raises.
UPDATE: The Independent as well
And the BBC:
“Churnalism”.