Protecting who??
The Erebus disaster and Justice Mahon brought to light a number of things that are usually swept under the carpet with the convenient "pilot error" finding. These things often occur in lots of other organisations, all over the world.
We ignore them at our peril.
One that we should give thought to is the perceived integrity, and therefore effectiveness of company or other instructions. Often it appears that the instructions are mainly to protect people who are not in the aeroplane. I have seen this situation elsewhere, where the company instructions were impractical and were ignored. In one case there was documented evidence in company files that this occurred, and no-one discussed it. The regulator did not either. It was perfectly safe procedure, but was contrary to company instructions.
I believe the latest description is "normalisation of deviance".
Pilots are reluctant to discuss such matters as they fear being labelled "undisciplined" or some other such term, and lose career opportunities.
I do not wish to comment on the instructions given by Air NZ for antarctic flights. Justice Mahon did that, much better than I could.
But I still cannot accept the simplistic, conclusion that "pilot error" was the cause of the disaster. Surely we are smarter, and more sincere than that.