Uganda Airlines ‘no fuel’ and the ‘lost truth’ on airplanes

Author: Odoobo C. Bichachi is the Nation Media Group (NMG)-Uganda public editor. PHOTO/FILE.

What you need to know:

  • Mr Odoobo C Bichachi says: Just what is “yellow journalism”? It is “journalism that uses sensationalism and exaggeration to attract readers...

Uganda social media was this week lit up by a rather sensational story published online by several local and regional news websites (all deliberately not named) as well as broadcast on some online televisions. The story? A Uganda Airlines airplane reportedly ran out of fuel in Tanzania on Monday! 

Ideally, one would have expected to find in the stories details of how the airplane fell out of the sky or the dexterity of the pilot in ingeniously gliding out of the sky to a safe emergency landing! Would the pilot not be a national hero? Well, there was no such detail! Instead, the stories simply said the fuel supplier failed to refuel the plane on schedule, delaying the flight for hours.

That the airline had apologised for the logistical challenge and the delayed flight, promising to do everything to ensure this never happens again.

As usually happens, the story was chewed up by the hoi polloi on social media with images (and memes) of motorcycles being turned upside down (like boda boda riders typically do) so the little drops of fuel in the tank move to another chamber that the engine can pull, and yes, the five-litre jerry-can totting motorists running to a nearby fuel station to add a drop into their tank!

“Tuswadde nyo!” (this is embarrassing), an online TV presenter said.

In the process, Uganda Airlines got a lot of muck for “embarrassing” the country! Ironically, the media also came off as bad; demonstrating ignorance about aviation! The only “winners” were the masses on social media that consumed and enjoyed the memes, condemned, ranted, etc. And the biggest casualty was the truth!

Which truth? As Matsiko Kahunga shared: “Airplanes take in fuel for the journey at hand and refuel before take-off. So what does running out of fuel mean?” In short, an aircraft cannot run out of fuel when it is on the ground! It can only be without fuel! 

I went to Quora.com, one of the most popular question-and-answer websites to get an explanation to share with readers as to why airplanes refuel at nearly every stop. Chuck Hunter, who described himself as an F-14 fighter jet pilot, had a good one. 

He wrote: “Most commercial jets will refuel before each leg…fuel is one of the heaviest things that you carry and additional weight takes more fuel and hence costs more. Also, the heavier you are the longer the takeoff roll because you have more weight to accelerate and when the aircraft weighs more, your takeoff speed is higher. Both these things make it dangerous.

That has the same effect on landing. Heavier landing means higher speed, more mass to stop once you land, and more stress on all the landing systems. You will often notice that when a plane has an emergency, they will dump fuel or fly around until the aircraft is light enough to land.”

Journalists need to always be alive to details of practice in an industry they are reporting about. In this case they would have answers to the question of why Uganda Airlines simply didn’t fill the tank at Entebbe with enough fuel to fly to and from Dar es Salaam.

Or why it had to refuel in Tanzania before flying back to Uganda? Then the framing of the story would be different. Or there would be no story!  

That said, from a general perspective, two maladies of the media (not confined to Uganda) are apparent in this story: “yellow journalism” and “stampede journalism” (my phrase). Both are not good for journalism or the public that deserves well processed news.

Just what is “yellow journalism”? It is “journalism that uses sensationalism and exaggeration to attract readers. It is usually not well-researched and often only tells one side of the story.”

How about “stampede journalism”? It is journalism that reports in flocks. As typically happens in a stampede, only the first person knows why they start to run.

The rest simply join the run! This has been rising on the Uganda media scene and was most noticeable in the coverage of Crane Bank vs Bank of Uganda whereby one story would be replicated on nearly all news websites with same approach. 

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