Originally Posted by
3 Holer
Piggy Muldoon was a tough old bastard (read his autobiography). Trouble with Piggy, on this occasion, he couldn't pick a winner. Ron Chippendale was a gentle giant and true gentleman and was therefore, obviously intimidated by Muldoon. He had to side with Air NZ (Morrie Davis was a big mate of Robby) and the government of the day. He just went too hard with the "pilot error" verdict which stirred up Gordon Vette and eventually resulted in the Mahon Inquiry. Again, Piggy couldn't pick a winner. He was sure Mahon would come the same conclusion as Chippendale. Alas, Mahon was an incredibly honest judge with a keen eye for the truth.
Here (AGAIN) ends the lesson.
So with zero air accident investigation experience and zero widebody transport flying experience a Judge in the space of a few months knew as much about flying the DC10 as anyone on the flight deck. Mahon’s explanation of the INS and his snippets of knowledge on flying and airmanship were downright embarrassing as was his idea that it was perfectly acceptable to forget about a Tacan lock and descend anyway. Mahon was way out of his depth.
Still challenge all those “professional aviators” on here to tell me Colins wasn’t somewhat to blame because in a GPWS they would also do nothing after stooging around 12000 feet below safe MSA. Which would have been on the chart, if they’d looked. The sad part is the idea on the podcast that because the crew died they can’t be held accountable for their actions, in which case nothing is learned.
Prospector is 100% correct. Curious for anyone on the AirNZ DC10 was it SOP for FE to yell out Rad alts? or more likely was the FE so concerned about the flight in IMC and the fact that they stated they had no idea where Erebus was that he knew the GPWS wasn’t spurious and called the Rad alts to try to get the crew to do something and quick.