African misadventure

I was busy tracking down a story yesterday. Reports had emerged that a Jet Airways Boeing 737-800 from India had run off the end of the runway at the airport serving the town of Bor in southern Sudan. A Jet Airways 737-800 in southern Sudan?

My initial assessment was that the story must not be true. Why would a Jet Airways 737 be in southern Sudan? Jet doesn't serve Sudan.

But the reports said the aircraft was doing an ad hoc passenger charter. Then I thought maybe the report is true so I put in a call to Jet Airways' in-house PR person Srirupa Sen.

She checked with Jet Airways' charters department who responded by saying they have had no 737s flying to Sudan.

So I left it at that. But then later in the day a news report appeared with a photograph purporting to show the Jet Airways 737-800 off the end of the runway at Bor.

So I quickly called Srirupa and pointed out that the local news website that had the photograph, with the story, showing the Jet aircraft off the end of the runway.

Several hours later here is the response I got.

Leithen:

The image displayed on the publication Miraya's website is from our B737 incident in Dhaka in Aug 2009.We are writing to the publication to carry a corrigendum.

Thanks for sharing same with us.

Best wishes,

Srirupa

I have to say thank you to Srirupa for helping me to get to the bottom of this. It is also a valuable lesson in journalism. You can never always believe what you see.