ZQ146: "leave it ALONE" ? Shouldn't that comment be directed to NZALPA?
As to the changed waypoint, so what? That was a bad error by the navigation section, which was disclosed at the outset. No-one is suggesting that the airline was blameless.
The point is that waypoint issue was a live issue before the flight even took off. The oral presentation at the briefing said that the track went direct to McMurdo Station. The co-ordinates on the handout said otherwise. So there was a contradiction. Yet the captain and the F/O simply assumed that the handout was correct, and then descended to 1500 feet in reliance on it. That was a very bad error, by an allegedly blameless crew.