And how many following flights were there?? and just by the by, luck should not have any part of the process of moving people by air, even on a sightseeing flight.
Well none, obviously - the point I was trying to make was that the Collins flight was the first to be dispatched with a computerised track that entered Lewis Bay and crossed Erebus. If the computerised track had been entered correctly in the first place, then every flight from 1978 onwards would have taken that route - and if the pilots of those flights had descended and encountered whiteout, it could well have been they, and not Collins, who had the misfortune to hit the mountain. That's all I mean by "luck".
Workingman303, I'm not saying any of those things - for a start I can't say what I would have done as I am not a line pilot, and I was barely a year old when the accident happened - a lot has happened in the pursuit of airline safety in that time, and in fact Justice Mahon's expanding of aircraft accident investigation parameters had a lot to do with it. With 20/20 hindsight it's obvious that ANZ's operating procedures regarding these flights started out with the best of intentions, but they gradually slipped as the trips became commonplace. If ANZ wanted the rules strictly adhered to, then they should have enforced those rules and not allowed a culture to develop whereby pilots routinely disregarded those rules. Instead, they published and reprinted promotional articles that explicitly stated that low flying was the norm. In fact ANZ's behaviour *prior* to the accident was just as detrimental to the safe handling of those flights.
Regarding
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.
I imagine that the situation that Collins was unwittingly placed into would cause most pilots to break out into a cold sweat.
Ampan - I don't know where you sourced your copy of the briefing material from, but it should be pointed out that along with the audiovisual presentation, pilots being briefed on the route were also handed a folder of supplementary material. Included in this from 1978 onwards was a photocopy of the route down McMurdo Sound on an air navigation chart, which appears to have been plotted to the incorrect co-ordinates at the end of McMurdo Sound. In fact all briefing materials bar one show this route - that single sheet was included in Chippindale's report as Annex J. It is not proven whether Annex J was included in the briefing materials given to Collins and Simpson at their briefing, but certainly, all other supplementary material showed the McMurdo Sound route, and not the "official" track over Erebus.
While I can't say what "I would have done" - far too presumptuous for a non-pilot like me - I would hope that in a modern operation, the Chief Navigator would have felt safe to escalate his discovery of the error and get all appropriate briefing materials changed before another flight was allowed to depart instead of playing it down and changing the co-ordinates the night before departure with little to no notification of the change. In fact, even better to notify the whole company of how the error came about and to re-instate the "check, cross-check and re-check" mantra. Even if you don't consider Collins blameless, you have to admit that dispatching two pilots (Simpson and Collins) who had attended the same briefing with different INS flight plans was pretty woeful practise.