Plane ‘looked like paper torn in two’
THE Birmingham Post & Mail’s man on the scene was Neil White, one of a team of reporters scrambled to Kegworth to gather eight pages of reports for the next day’s paper.
Mr White remembers: “I was at home that night and saw a report on the news so I called the newsdesk and asked, ‘Do you want me to go?’
“I was there within about an hour-and-ahalf of the crash and was on one side of the carriageway looking over to the other side where the plane was embedded.
“I remember writing that it looked like paper torn in two. There was a phenomenal amount of activity going on around the plane and on the opposite side it was almost like a football terrace of journalists.”
He stayed until noon the next day, reporting on an impromptu press conference by then Transport Secretary Paul Channon and speaking with villagers in Kegworth.
Mr White went on to work at a national news agency before spending eight years at the Nottingham Evening Post and joining the Derby Telegraph.
He says: “When people ask, ‘What are the biggest stories you’ve worked on?’ Kegworth comes near the top of that list. As a serious news story it is without a doubt up there amongst the biggest stories I’ve ever been involved with.
“And in terms of actually witnessing something in front of your face, nothing comes close to that – and neither would I want it to ever again. I don’t think anybody who was there would be blasé about it.” He added: “It was the first of three plane crashes I reported on,” he recalls. “It was followed by one over the Coventry Air Show that narrowly avoided a housing estate, and a couple of years later there was another plane crash in Coventry near the airport. So I went through a long period where I had a recurring dream of watching planes fall out of the sky.”