Crikey‘s aviation blogger Ben Sandilands passed away on Friday after a long illness. He had written the Plane Talking blog for almost 10 years for Crikey, and had previously been an aviation reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald, with almost 60 years experience.
The loss of Ben Sandilands was a huge shock. He has been a presence in Australian journalism for decades – many readers would have read his work growing up – and perhaps we’d just assumed he would always be with us, always there to answer questions about aviation, to quash a conspiracy theory, to offer a guide to the arcane world of regulation and safety, to tell us what pilots and engineers were saying about incidents around the world. When disaster struck, Ben was the journalist we turned to, because we trusted his expertise and his judgment. Now he’s gone, and he leaves a huge, probably unfillable, gap.
There aren’t enough journalists like Sandilands around any more, and the impact on our media, and what readers and audiences get from the media, is palpable. Ben knew his subject area as well as any expert, and better than most. But more than his expertise and his contacts, accumulated over decades, he had two gifts – an appropriate journalistic scepticism of anything he was seeing and hearing, and a capacity to render often impenetrably complex technical issues into not merely readable but engaging analysis. His ongoing coverage of the tragedy of MH370 – particularly his capacity to separate lurid conspiracy theory from intriguing possibility – was probably the best in the world.
It’s pro forma when a journalist passes to laud their work. But the loss of Ben is a painful reminder of what we’re losing more broadly in the media. As the media business model collapses, we have fewer and fewer journalists like him; specialists who retain a good journalist’s capacity to tell stories that engage the layperson are a luxury few outlets can now afford, and we’re all the poorer for it.
Ben will be remembered in a more detailed obituary in the coming days. If you knew Ben and would like to speak to Crikey journalist Sally Whyte, she can be contacted here.
What a terrible shock! I was unaware of his illness and will sorely miss his informed and well-written journalism. The aviation industry will not be held to account in the same way without his committed erudition. Vale indeed.
And now we are really stuffed. In the last few years I’ve been having regular email chats with Ben Sandilands. He was a private man who wanted his battle with cancer kept from the media.
Don’t worry, on your behalf –and on behalf of everyone in the industry– I let him know, often, that he was the most respected journo in the field; and that all of us were so grateful to have a journo who actually took the time to understand our business and what makes pilots tick.
His wisdom and intellect, and inability to suffer dickheads; but more importantly, dig out the key point of a story; meant that I have a file of Ben Sandilands stories which I will treasure forever.
Now he has left us. And we are really stuffed.
Thanks to his family, for sharing him with us. We were so lucky that he chose us to write about.
My highest honour in aviation was received with the sign-off in his last email to me:
“Take care, we both need to prove persistent
and irritating for some time yet.”
Let that be his challenge to everyone who picks up a pen.
James Nixon – Retired A380 Captain, (proudly) one of Ben’s Snitches, Author: The Crash Of MH370
Sad day. Was Plane talking that brought me to Crikey , always looked forward to a new article from Ben. His writing will be sorely missed.
Jo Dyer’s words say it all. Comfort to all family and friends. Will truly be missed.
As a regular flyer and closet aviation junkie I have been an avid reader of Ben’s all the time I have been reading Crikey. This is a big shock and I am at a loss where to go for this now. Condolences to his family and the Crikey team.