Briefing documents
The problem with the material handed out at the briefing was that almost all of it was borrowed from the military (ie, the airforces of NZ, Australia, and the USA). The only documents prepared by AirNZ were the two maps for the passengers (Vette pp 40,41) but these had no navigational significance.
The military aircraft, obviously, went to Antarctica with the intention of landing – and the Byrd Reporting Point was selected for that purpose: If you turned left at Byrd you had a nice straight approach to the runway at Williams Field.
Assuming that Capt. Collins plotted the nav track the night before the flight, he probably assumed that the point of Dailey Islands waypoint was to get him into the vicinity, whereupon he would fly visually for the allocated time, and make sure he was back near the Dailey Islands as the available time was getting close to running out.
At first glance, it’s difficult to reconcile Capt. Wilson’s evidence with what actually happened: the aircraft was flown into Erebus in nav mode, so how is it possible that Capt. Wilson told the crew that the nav track went to the NDB at McMurdo Station? But 19 days is a long time – far too long. You’re getting close to the point at which you might no longer rely on your own memory. But you don’t need to rely on you own memory, because you have a printout of the flightplan. So the night before the flight you plot it on your atlas and discover that the nav track is down the sound and that it doesn’t go to the NDB at McMurdo Station. It seems a little strange that the briefing officer said otherwise, but maybe you misheard him? After all, it was 19 days ago. The following morning, you meet the F/O, who also recalls Capt. Wilson saying that the nav track was to the NDB at McMurdo Station. But you tell the F/O that you retained a copy of the flightplan and plotted it out and it goes down the sound. So you and the F/O proceed to manually enter the waypoints, assuming that they are the same as on the flightplan used at the briefing – and so you don’t check the McMurdo waypoint against your chart.
SR71: You ask why you should be getting your charts out before take-off. Normally, you shouldn’t be mucking around with charts. But what about in the situation outlined in the previous paragraph? If you had this vague memory in the back of your brain about Capt. Wilson saying that the nav track went to the NDB at McMurdo Station, then there is a potential issue re that final waypoint, and I suggest that having been alerted to a potential issue, you would check, either before take-off, or on the way down.