Phone jammers "brought down 777"

20 Jan 2008 | 13:49 GMT

By Tony Dennis

Yet another unbelievable conspiracy theory

WE'VE HEARD of conspiracy theories but this one – taken from the Daily Telegraph – takes the biscuit. Security forces jamming mobile phones around the British Prime Minister's motorcade accidentally disrupted a Boeing 777's control systems.

The claim comes after a British Airways flight from Beijing crashed landed as it was attempting to set down at London's Heathrow Airport.

By an amazing co-incidence – or was it? – the stricken aircraft flew only about 25 feet above Gordon Brown's Jaguar as it headed towards the airport along the Heathrow perimeter road.

One suggested theory is that – in an effort to protect Mr Brown – the police might have turned on phone jamming equipment.

The INQ has long argued that mobile phones don't affect the operation of an aircraft in the first place but these phone jammers would have had to possess a range of at least two miles because that is how far away the plane was when both its engines failed.

Even the Torygraph's own expert, John Ling, the head of transport at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, dismissed the theory.
"I am sure other people would have noticed and more than one plane would have come down," commented Mr Ling.

Still, we wouldn't want a few facts to get in the way of a jolly good conspiracy theory, now would we?