Originally Posted by
Dream Land
Leave the tours, to tour pilots!
Well, as I said in my earlier post, when ANZ started the Antarctic flights they did their homework - researched the limits of INS (as IGh says, enforcing GRID mode) - which is partially why the course was manually navigated until 1978, and included in the protocol two directives - that each flight should carry two Captains, a First Officer and two Flight Engineers, and that in order to command an Antarctic flight, a prior familiarisation trip was mandatory. Between 1977 and 1979 both those directives were dropped, in favour of a Captain, two F/Os and two F/Es, and losing the familiarisation requirement. Whether this was down to the flights becoming routine, cost-cutting or other factors will never be known. I have my suspicions however - at the time ANZ appeared to be a successful multi-million dollar flag carrier, but under the surface it was almost entirely reliant on government subsidy following the National acquisition. Qantas was about to start offering their own Antarctic flights, which would have eaten into ANZ's market share considerably.
Originally Posted by
stepwilk
Aren't TACANs typically co-located with VORs?
Typically? If you say so. In the vicinity of the southernmost active volcano in the world? It certainly doesn't look like it at the time. Remember that the only flights down there prior to the mid-70s were military flights supplying McMurdo and Scott Base.