Russian plane crash: After a disaster, state the facts or stay quiet 2015..

Russian plane crash: After a disaster, state the facts or stay quiet The misinformation from Egypt and Russia is a textbook case of what not to do after an air crash If there were a rule book setting out how to handle a disaster that has claimed hundreds of innocent lives, Egypt and Russia on Saturday 

contrived to ignore every page. Nowadays, information is instant, as everyone, including governments of the most recalcitrant nations, knows. Within minutes of the Airbus 321, which was

 being flown by the small Russian airline Kogalymavia from Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg, falling out of the sky, the internet’s flight-tracking tools revealed to the world its last moments: a line heading north-east from Egypt’s premier seaside resort before straightening and aiming for the Mediterranean. Then, at a mid-point above the Sinai peninsula, as it flew over the villages at the centre of an increasingly vicious insurgency by Isil militants, the line stopped. At this point, the rule book would state, the authorities should alert the public to the plane’s disappearance and say the matter is being investigated. Officials in the aviation industry are trained to assure the relatives of passengers and all of us for whom flying is a regular activity that they know what they are doing. They make sure that they say what they can be certain of, say the same thing, and above all do not spread confusion and distrust by passing on rumours and their own individual theories as fact.