Be wary of basing blame from Chips transcript
As I mentioned earlier, hopefully the Washington transcript will shortly be published next to Chippendales so you can see the differences.
The reason this is so important is that in the Washington transcript there is no indication that the crew has any uncertainty of where they are until the last moment. Whole words, phrases and sentences have been added, deleted or changed in the final transcript that Chippendale himself edited. Almost all indicate uncertainty of weather or position. Sometimes just a question mark indicates questioning tone where there was none according to the Washington team (which I have found included at least 4 NZers to help with accents and voice ident).
Also as to 411A's comments, just to clarify, the crew weren't unsure of their position till the very last moments, and did believe they were in clear air - this is also backed up by photos taken by sightseers right up to the last moments. Sector whiteout is not cloud or fog or low visibility. This is something that the public often don't understand and it is a bit frustrating.
I do understand that it if you read the Chippendale transcripts and accept it as correct you would assume these things. That is something I am about to try and change. I believe the Washington transcript should be the official version. You should be aware that there was a representative of the Air Accident Investigation team in that Washington group that signed off on every word, then got overruled by his boss when he got home.
If I cannot get the Washington transcript published in the papers, I will copy it here, and offer it to every other website that has Chippendales version, if it takes me the rest of my life.
Don't judge the pilots without all the evidence, or on skewed evidence. I cannot express how hard the company & government at the time tried to make it look like their fault. This means that there is a limited and skewed amount of information to make your judgement on. I realise no-one can just take my word for it, but all I ask is that you keep an open mind, a seed of doubt in the integrity of some of the information pointing at pilot error. That's all I ask.
I do feel as if I'm dominating this thread - apologies if so...I just can't seem to let these misinterpretations go unreplied...