I see Prospector seems a little reluctant to link directly to the privy council appeal findings.
Maybe because this, the final official analysis of the investigation, completely demolishes his arguments that the crew were at fault.
Allow me to quote:
(836 onwards)
The Royal Commission Report convincingly clears Captain Collins and First Officer Cassin of any suggestion that negligence on their part had in any way contributed to the disaster. That is unchallenged.
Care to read that again slowly ?
The Royal Commission Report convincingly clears Captain Collins and First Officer Cassin of any suggestion that negligence on their part had in any way contributed to the disaster. That is unchallenged.
It continues on to explain why Mr Chippindale’s finding of pilot error was wrong:
The judge was able to displace Mr. Chippindale's attribution of the accident to pilot error, for two main reasons. The most important was that at the inquiry there was evidence from Captain Collins' widow and daughters, which had not been available to Mr. Chippindale at the time of his investigation and was previously unknown to the management of A.N.Z., that after the briefing of 9 November 1979 Captain Collins, who had made a note of the co-ordinates of the Western Waypoint that were on the flight plan used at that briefing, had, at his own home, plotted on an atlas and upon a larger topographical chart the track from the Cape Hallett waypoint to the Western Waypoint. There was evidence that he had taken this atlas and chart with him on the fatal flight and the inference was plain that in the course of piloting the aircraft he and First Officer Cassin had used the lines that he had plotted to show him where the aircraft was when he switched from nav track to heading select in order to make a descent to 2,000 feet while still to the north of Ross Island which he reported to ATC at McMurdo and to which he received ATC's consent. That on completing this descent he switched back to nav track is incapable of being reconciled with any other explanation than that he was relying upon the line he had himself plotted of the flight track on which he had been briefed. It was a combination of his own meticulous conscientiousness in taking the trouble to plot for himself on a topographical chart the flight track that had been referred to at his briefing, and the fact that he had no previous experience of "whiteout" and had been given no warning at any time that such a deceptive phenomenon even existed, that caused the disaster.
The other principal reason why the judge felt able to displace Mr. Chippindale's ascription of the cause of the accident to pilot error was that certain remarks forming part of the conversations recorded in the CVR of the crashed aircraft and attributed by Mr. Chippindale to the flight engineers had suggested to him that shortly before the crash they were expressing to the pilot and navigator uncertainty about the aircraft's position. The tape from the CVR which had been recovered from the site of the crash proved difficult to interpret. The judge, with the thoroughness that characterised him throughout his investigations, went to great pains to obtain the best possible expert assistance in the interpretation of the tape. The result was that he was able to conclude that the remarks attributed by Mr. Chippindale to the flight engineers could not have been made by them, and that there was nothing recorded in the CVR that was capable of throwing any doubt upon the confident belief of all members of the crew that the nav track was taking the aircraft on the flight path as it had been plotted by Captain Collins on his atlas and chart, and thus down the middle of McMurdo Sound well to the west of Mt. Erebus.
Then they confirm that Justice Mahon was correct in castigating the airline
The judge's report contains numerous examples and criticisms of A.N.Z.'s slipshod system of administration and absence of liaison both between sections and between individual members of sections in the branch of management that was concerned with flight operations. Grave deficiencies are exposed in the briefing for Antarctic flights; and the explanation advanced by witnesses for the airline as to how it came about that Captain Collins and First Officer Cassin were briefed on a flight path that took the aircraft over the ice-covered waters of McMurdo Sound well to the west of Mt. Erebus but were issued, for use in the aircraft's computer, as the nav track a flight path which went directly over Mt. Erebus itself, without the aircrew being told of the change, involved admissions of a whole succession of inexcusable blunders by individual members of the executive staff. None of this was challenged before their Lordships. No attempt was made on behalf of A.N.Z. to advance excuses for it.
OK. Are we all clear now ?
The privy council appeal verdict did not overturn any of Justice Mahon’s conclusions as to who was to blame for the disaster. It was the airline !
What the privy council appeal verdict did do was reluctantly agree that Justice Mahon went a bit too far in paragraph 377 of his report :
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"No judicial officer ever wishes to be compelled to say that he has listened to evidence which is false. He always prefers to say, as I hope the hundreds of judgments which I have written will illustrate, that he cannot accept the relevant explanation, or that he prefers a contrary version set out in the evidence. But in this case, the palpably false sections of evidence which I heard could not have been the result of mistake, or faulty recollection. They originated, I am compelled to say, in a pre-determined plan of deception. They were very clearly part of an attempt to conceal a series of disastrous administrative blunders and so, in regard to the particular items of evidence to which I have referred, I am forced reluctantly to say that I had to listen to an orchestrated litany of lies."
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Back to the Privy council :
These appalling blunders and deficiencies, the existence of which emerged piecemeal in the course of the 75 days of hearings, had caused the loss of 257 lives. Their Lordships can well understand the growing indignation of the judge when, after completing the hearings and for the purpose of preparing his report, he brought them together in his own mind and reflected upon them. In relation to the three matters that were principally canvassed in this appeal and upon which he based his finding that there had been a pre-determined plan to deceive the Royal Commission and a conspiracy to commit perjury at its hearings, their Lordships have very reluctantly felt compelled to hold that, in the various respects to which their Lordships have referred, the judge failed to adhere to those rules of natural justice that are appropriate to an inquiry of the kind that he was conducting and that in consequence it was not open to him to make the finding that he did in paragraph 377 of his report.
To say of a person who holds judicial office, that he has failed to observe a rule of natural justice, may sound to a lay ear as if it were a severe criticism of his conduct which carries with it moral overtones. But this is far from being the case. It is a criticism which may be, and in the instant case is certainly intended by their Lordships in making it to be, wholly disassociated from any moral overtones. In an earlier section of this judgment their Lordships have set out what they regard as the two rules of natural justice that apply to this appeal. It is easy enough to slip up over one or other of them in civil litigation, particularly when one is subject to pressure of time in preparing a judgment after hearing masses of evidence in a long and highly complex suit. In the case of a judgment in ordinary civil litigation this kind of failure to observe rules of natural justice is simply one possible ground of appeal among many others and attracts no particular attention. All their Lordships can remember highly respected colleagues who, as trial judges, have had appeals against judgments they had delivered allowed on this ground; and no one thought any the worse of them for it. So their Lordships' recommendation that the appeal ought to be dismissed cannot have any adverse effect upon the reputation of the judge among those who understand the legal position, and it should not do so with anyone else.
You can find the full report at
http://www.uniset.ca/other/css/1984AC808.html
It is compelling reading.
(Edited to correct spelling)