pakeha-boy,
Don't forget the
sector white-out....
Tomorrow when you drive to work and you crash into something you didn't or couldn't see, are you responsible?
When your insurance company says, "You should have known
it was going to be there!", tell me you won't be p***ed off? Especially if it was a 911.
I don't have an axe to grind one way or the other. I'm not a Kiwi with connections one way or the other. Just a professional pilot trying to make sense of an accident which I believe I probably would have had if I'd been at the controls.
I'm reserving judgement, though, as I'm only partially acquainted with the issues unlike many of the distinguished contributors here.
prospector,
With the benefit of hindsight (i.e., your extensive research), it appears that your mindset now makes it difficult for you to understand the crew's mindset?
Was it any more unreasonable to believe that locking back onto the nav track would keep them safe than to believe that sporadic VHF comms, no DME (The NDB was no longer operational, perhaps the TACAN was experiencing a temporary non-NOTAMed outage?) or radar identification meant Erebus was in the line of sight?
I'm not sure even with the luxury of time to reflect...