Regarding the rulebook we're banging our heads against here - we need to take into account the fact that the majority of ANZ flights to the Antarctic descended to levels between 3,000 and 1,500 feet. There is no definitive proof of the weather conditions on those flights either, and if your position is such that the regulation should have been followed to the letter, then you should at least concede that ANZ were remiss in not identifying this as a problem and disciplining the pilots concerned
So you are saying that the other option, because the requirements were so stringent it was unlikely that the aircraft could ever descend so the pax wouldn't have got much of a view so the flights would have been eventually canned. That this option wasn't possible? Are you going to pull out a leaked memorandum showing that crews would be demoted if they didn't bend the rules?
The crew had to break the SOPs that were there in the first place to provide a degree of safety that the company and CAD was happy with.
So why bother having any requirements at all that allowed descent below MSA, why not just say, "Hey, you have flown lots of time to LA you go ahead and descend as you see fit" which is precisely what the crew in this instance did.
Hitting the hill was irrelevant, the cause of the accident was what Chippendale was required to find and that was the crew's decision to descend below MSA.
No-one here is denying that Air NZ's behaviour subsequent to wasn't the greatest but I have yet to hear anyone here say they would have done eactly the same as Collins and crew did given the same set of circumstances.
So Dozywannabee you would have happily busted the SOPs, descended IMC, relied utterly on the aircrafts INS and never actually checked the coordinates and change in heading with each track change as a regular part of your operation?
So we have a dangerous mix of weather conditions, a company SOP's that take this into account, an aircraft that is lost because the SOPs are not applied and the crew are blameless because the weather conditions are hazardous. The SOPs are there because of the weather and somewhere there Collins is paid to make command decisions. I have no idea how Morrie Davis could have forced Collins to descend.
What amazes me is that all Vette did was bring whiteout to the attention of the general flying community, the US military had known about it for years as had most likely any operator flying to Antartica. Except Air NZ was never supposed to get an aircraft into a situation where whiteout could be a factor, the SOPs should have protected the paying public from that.
The only way that Collins can be exonerated is if you say he was way outside his level of experience once he descended and yet this is precisely why the SOPs were written as they were for the Antartica flights.