Geenstijl
'Everyone pay attention. Just arrived, a VOS-1 at Schiphol. A so-called 'pan pan call', where the pilot indicated that something was wrong. According to Twitter users, a gate has been evacuated. Also Robocops on Segways with machine guns on their way to an airplane, together with the fire department. Martijn Winkler knows more about it.'
Several news sites (including ANP, nu.nl and vk.nl) had immediately taken over this sharp lead from GeenStijl. And I was a celebrity. Even though I didn't really know it myself.
Close to the news, far from the truth
I decided to send a message back into the ether. 'Does anyone know what's going on?' poland phone number list And after a while I received a link to a follow-up on telegraaf.nl: 'Nothing wrong, false alarm.' Said a spokesperson to the Telegraaf.
We – the passengers and staff of Schiphol and British Airways on site – had not heard the reassuring words of this spokesperson. At the gate there was still a lot of confusion and uncertainty. No one knew anything about the situation anymore, what was going on, whether it had been resolved, whether anything had been found. While the rest of the Netherlands could breathe a sigh of relief, we were still in the middle of the chaos of the moment.