The other night I was flicking the television and saw the documentary for Miracle of the Hudson Plane Crash- (Ch 4). I was in two minds about turning to yet another re-run or stick this one out. I checked the info; it was an hour long, a bit lengthy. I wondered how they’d spin it out for that duration. Their technique unfortunately was to over-punctuate it with adverts. The most irritating interruption was during the last 7 minutes which happens to be the only relevant and semi-interesting part to the entire programme.

The plane crashing into the Hudson River in New York was big news. It was covered around the globe as the front page story and subsequently overleaf for the ensuing days. The most remarkable part was that the pilot, quite rightly hailed a hero, navigated his failing craft to an emergency landing and evacuated every single passenger and crew member to safety.
Since the crash the voice recording of his communication with air traffic control has been played on the news and online. His calm and ‘cuss free’ professionalism in the face of imminent danger only furthers the praise.

Therefore it is a story of courage and hope, yet the documentary failed to focus on this angle. Instead it opted for a reporting style as though it were breaking news adding a dramatic pulsing audio beat and continually looping the sound-bite “I thought we were going to die”. It played out the next 45 minutes as though the audience had no prior knowledge to the survival rate. The big question: did anyone get out alive? Well yes Channel 4 they all did that’s what made it so news-worthy.

Particular attention was paid to the micro-story of two passengers; a father and son who were separated during the incident. The producers used a nice bit of footage of the fathers’ reaction on being informed his son was rescued and the interview with the son was used to conclude the section. I assume this was timed to generate a sense of relief with the viewers; he survived, but knowing the outcome to the event, there was little to get too concerned over. Not that their story wasn’t one of consequence, but in failing to deliver a documentary about the people of the crash, they instead gave us a poor attempt at high-drama in a situation that should have taken an uplifting, positive but informal approach- and not just slapped the flight reconstruction ‘science bit’ onto the last few minutes.