The mistakes before, the attack after
Prospector, when I speak of the attack of the pilots I do not speak of the myriad reasons they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I agree that AIr NZ's policy of sending pilots inexperienced with antartic conditions was unwise, although sector whiteout was still unknown at the time. I also agree they should have had full training on flying in antarctic conditions as do the military. I'm somewhat amazed but encouraged that we agree on this.
However, the attack I speak of came not before, but after. From government and airline the cries of pilot error started early and loudly. Almost every shred of documentation, charts, notes, diaries that the pilots had left behind was stolen, misplaced or shredded. Thus the company was able to say that the pilots were fully informed because there was no information on what exactly had been in their briefing. For a long time they still insisted that the nav co'ordinates had not changed either. I'm not sure exactly what was in those papers, I'm not even a pilot, although I do know that their route was on it. I also vaguely remember that the chart that Captain Collins was given of the Ross Shelf was so small he had to go find a better one in an atlas to do how own research on where he was going.
My point is, there could have been many things in those papers for me to show a man such as yourself to show that they were not well informed, that they were told where to lower down, or that perhaps the importance of going low was stressed to them, perhaps ways to stay in VMC-I'm saying all this off the top of my head, but I'm sure you see my point. We'll never know-the only thing that we do know is that those papers had information that was important enough to be shredded, misplaced, stolen...
I have no idea if Sector Whiteout would apply at 17000 feet. Also I believed they dropped through a high layer of cloud to clear air beneath where they had a look but I have to admit to being a bit hazy on that-as a non-pilot it is hard to follow the transcripts, esp when I only have the Chippendale one at the moment. Bob Thomson mentions going up if you are unsure-if you are going off Chippendales transcript I am not surprised you thing they were unsure. I suggest that if it is published all interested should have a good read of the orginal Washington transcript - believe me, the differences are almost all ones that make the pilots look lost.
But I do agree, it is a tragic shame that the valuable knowledge of an experienced artic pilot like Bob Thomson was not shared with other crew. One does of course hope that airlines around the world have learned from these mistakes.