SR71,
It is a question that puzzles me regards this incident, but how/who changed the route? Who changed the coordinates and why was the route changed?
The initial route approval was directly over Mt Erebus and required severe limitations on descent.
The military route down the middle of McMurdo Sound was a far better idea, so the track was altered to conform with the military route.
Then in September 1978 steps were taken to print a flight plan for each Antarctic journey from a record stored in the Air New Zealand ground based planning computer. And it is at this stage that the longitude co-ordinate for the southernmost waypoint was fed into the ground computer as 164° 48' E.
"So as I say, I think it likely that the change of the McMurdo destination point was intended and was designed by the Navigation Section to give aircraft a nav track for the final leg of the journey which would keep the aircraft well clear of high ground."
Then the next revision of charts became due, but official approval for the change had never been sought from CAD, although it would have been granted.
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.. the next edition of the Ross Sea chart NZ-RNC4 would contain the official Air New Zealand flight path to McMurdo, and that the safest course would be to put the destination point back to the approximate location at which Civil Aviation Division had thought it had always been."
Small problem, though. The flight plans were now being transmitted to McMurdo ATC and showed the lat/long of the waypoints, and the changed waypoint would be obvious and they might not be happy with the change. Easily fixed. By typing in a special character the lat/long is replaced by just the waypoint name.
As usual a signal was sent to the United States base at McMurdo with advice that the aircraft was to fly to the Antarctic on 28th November and the flight plan for the journey. And in the list of waypoints appears the word "McMurdo" in lieu of the geographical co-ordinates which had appeared in the equivalent signal for the flight three weeks earlier
"In my opinion, the introduction of the word 'McMurdo' into the Air Traffic Control flight plan for the fatal flight was deliberately designed to conceal from the United States authorities that the flight path had been changed, and probably because it was known that the United States Air Traffic Control would lodge an objection to the new flight path."
So the waypoint was changed, and you know the rest.
The subsequent Court of Appeal after Mahon’s report came out successfully quashed Mahon’s attributing blame to the company, although his findings on the cause of the disaster were never challenged. The minority report of CA totally exonerated the company of any blame.
This kinda pissed off Justice Mahon, so he took his marbles and left the game.
His Way: A Biography of Robert Muldoon by Barry Gustafson p292
Mahon was shattered by the decision of the Court of Appeal and decided to retire immediately because he took the Court's finding to mean his credibility as a judge had been destroyed and that he was 'incapable of distinguishing truth from falsehood’. A few weeks later he wrote a longer, more formal letter again noting that 'my judicial position has been compromised bythe way in which the Court of Appeal handled this case’
He requested that the Government exercise its discretion and pay him a pension which be would supplement by part-time; university teaching because a convention prevented him returning to the bar. He also asked if the Government would appeal the decision to the Privy Council on the grounds that the Court of Appeal as a whole had 'misconceived the true nature of a Royal. Commission', and that Justices Woodhouse and McMullin should not, because of their family and other connections, have taken part in the appeal.
Woodhouse and McMullin had presented a minority report totally exonerating Air New Zealand of giving false evidence. Mahon had known in advance of the Court of Appeal hearing that Woodhouse and McMullin had children who were employed by Air New Zealand but when given the opportunity to object to their sitting had not done so.
Muldoon and Mclay diverged strongly over the Mahon report on the Erebus disaster and there wereheated exchanges between the two when Muldoon sided with Air New Zealand and Mclay defended Mahon. At one point. indeed. Mclay. who wanted to reject Mahon's offer to resign, nearly resigned himself when Muldoon favoured immediate acceptance. Mahon did resign and subsequently in 1983 the Privy Council also found that there was no evidence to substantiate Mahons charge that Air New Zealand's management had been guilty of a 'litany of lies' and a ‘conspiracy to deceive’. Nevertheless, there were many in the public who felt that Air New Zealand had been too quick to blame pilot error and to minimise other contributing factors to the tragedy and that Muldoon had been too partisan in defending the board and senior management of the airline.
It seems to me that Justice Mahon’s big mistake was to expect the justice system to apply the same high ethical and analytical standards that he had set. Justices Woodhouse and McMullin TOTALLY EXONERATED the airline of giving false evidence, fercrissake! I could understand some quibbling over details, but to me that is just unbelievable! 