Originally Posted by
Perdita
Emmerdale has been criticised for its upcoming helicopter stunt, with a member of the Clutha Trust charity branding it "very insensitive".
The ITV soap is preparing to air its biggest scenes of the year this week as a helicopter crashes into the village hall on Debbie and Pete's wedding day.
However, the upcoming storyline has sparked controversy due to its similarities to a real-life helicopter crash tragedy in Glasgow in 2013 that claimed 10 lives at Clutha Vaults in the city.
Billy Coyle from Clutha Trust - which was set up to support young people in music projects - has said that relatives of victims had contacted him due to anxiety over the storyline.
Speaking to the Evening Times, Coyle branded the plot "insensitive", saying: "I've had survivors and family members say they are dreading it. The producers didn't even speak to anyone in the Clutha to let them know it was happening."
"It was just a week ago we opened the Clutha, and it's still raw. A lot of the family members and survivors were sitting there together and that was very brave of them to come back to the Clutha.
"Now this has come along and the families are contacting me to say they don't know how they'll cope."
Kerry McGhee, whose father Samuel lost his life in the crash, signed a petition calling for the Emmerdale storyline to be axed.
Speaking about the petition, she said: "I'm signing because my father was killed in this accident and I find it disgusting that people want to use it as a storyline."
Emmerdale producer Kate Oates acknowledged the similarities to the Glasgow tragedy at a press event last week, but insisted that the decision to air the plot was considered carefully.
"Editorially, whenever you're looking at any storyline or any potential disaster scenario, you have to do it very carefully," she explained.
"We were really careful to show what the cause of this disaster is. It's set up in a scrapyard, it's a marital dispute and it's a gas canister that explodes [into the sky], so it's a chain of events.
"It was something we considered, but our intention is always to entertain people, to give them a good story, to thrill them, and to upset them in some ways.
"But it would never be our intention to mimic something like that, so we kept it very deliberately far apart. It's not something that we were concerned about because we made the decision very carefully."
The problem is that any storyline will have happened in real life at some time ...
