prospector
Could you explain to me, logically, why it is when the crew requests descent VMC, accepts responsibility for their own terrain separation, and then flies into a mountain, they are devoid of any responsibility for that action?
You have come up with many thousands of words to get around this very basic fact, they ACCEPTED RESPONSIBILITY for their own terrain separation.
Flying VFR they certainly did accept responsibility for their own terrain seperation, but the problem is THEY HAD NO TRAINING OR EXPERIENCE IN POLAR OPERATIONS, particularly in regard to the white out phenonema. Are they then held to be at fault for not knowing what they don't know.
An analogy in my mind, as to the question of responsibily, is the British Airways 747 complete (all four engines) failure in the volcanic cloud over Indonesia. Assume for a moment that they had been unable to get a restart and ended up ditching (was night) with a great loss of life. Would we be saying the crew were responsible for the accident? They had, after all, ended up crashing, what up to a few moments before, was a perfectly serviceable aircraft, and it was their own actions, or inactions, as the case may be, that resulted in the loss of aircraft and loss of life. I would venture to say that had any helicopter pilot with experience of night flying in dust been on the flight deck he would have instantly twigged as to what was going on and 180'ed out of there. Why, because the rotors, travelling as they do at about .7 Mach, put up a very spectacular light show when operating at night in dust. Can we then blame the crew for experiencing something and not reacting properly to some thing that is out side their experience, training and knowledge base. To my mind, definately not.
My interpretation of this requirement would be first of all the flight would have had to have been identified on radar, and positon clearly established, before McMurdo radar could maintain separation between them and any other traffic.
There was no requirement for the aircraft to be radar identified. It was a requirement that had existed previously, but had been removed. Also, it was not McMurdo's role to maintain separation from other traffic, they had no controlling function. Their role was merely one of co-ordination as pointed out in my previous post.