Hard landing in 21st century

At the scene of the British Airways crash landing at OR Tambo, officials threw a fit about people taking pictures. It’s a silly response

Airport officials seem to be just as paranoid as President Jacob Zuma about what appears on the front pages of newspapers, if their reaction to this week’s British Airways “crash” at OR Tambo airport is any clue. But, if anything, the incident provided an eloquent argument for why Zuma’s plan for an iron-fisted media tribunal to reframe the “negative narrative” won’t fly.

Rather thrillingly, I was on that flight returning from Port Elizabeth when an otherwise uneventful trans-city dash turned, quite unexpectedly, into a white-knuckle landing onto the runway in Jo’burg.

This is what happened: as the plane touched down, there was an almighty clattering, and the cabin began to shake so badly that oxygen masks dropped out above some seats at the back.

Still, the pilot managed to wrestle the aircraft to a halt quite smartly. She ruefully told the passengers afterwards that “this is a first for all of us”.

It probably looked worse than it was, because the plane had effectively crashed on the runway and was balancing, lopsided, on its roughed-up wing.

Apparently, the landing gear had spectacularly collapsed, and then detached. This meant the plane, which was still moving at high speed as it landed, fell onto its left engine and produced a shower of sparks as it skidded along the ground. Firemen arrived almost immediately to extinguish any fire and help the passengers off the plane.

So, there wasn’t so much as a broken nail. Not many people get to live through such a heartpumpingly benign plane crash.

Naturally, many of the 94 passengers, immediately after being helped off the aircraft, wheeled around to get a gander at the wreck.

Their instinctive reaction on seeing the skewed aircraft resting on its left wing was to lift their iPhones or Samsungs to snap a picture.

However, this seemed to give the airport officials a conniption.

They swooped in, lifting their hands in front of the phones, and chanting “no pictures, no pictures”. Their extraordinary above-and-beyond bid to prevent any pictorial evidence made it seem as if they were auditioning for the job of royal guards at Kate Middleton’s outside shower.

One official explained with a straight face that if people sommer take photos, they’ll just leak out to the press, who will probably just publish them. (This was obviously meant as a damning critique on the culture of mass media irresponsibility).

Now, if he’d said that airports are national key points (which they are) — well, that’s at least something of an argument.

“There’ll be a press conference later,” he said, ushering everyone onto buses. Which seems a tad over-dramatic for a storm in a teacup, given that exactly nobody got hurt.

Comair’s Erik Venter said it wasn’t his company that wanted a blackout. “We have no concern about pictures,” he said.

Perhaps you can understand that companies like Acsa don’t like nasty headlines about the airports. Especially after it hiked “airport taxes” by large amounts in recent years — 18,5% in 2009, 33% in 2010, 34,8% in 2011.

But an iron fist doesn’t work any more when it comes to controlling the media. Within half an hour, pictures of the aircraft were doing the rounds on Facebook. The next day, these pictures were emblazoned across the front page of The Star.

This is something Zuma’s apparatchiks apparently don’t understand, as they make their soft-boiled case for the Kafkaesque media tribunal, which is really more about controlling the message than anything else.

You can understand where Zuma is coming from. Running a country is so much easier when you don’t have journalists telling you how you messed up on visa rules — or, even worse, debating how you paid for your house.

But in the 21st century, you’re better off engaging, rather than putting a blackout on, the bad news. In the 21st century, sadly for Zuma’s politburo, you can’t hide a plane crash.