Originally Posted by
prospector
I hope my replies have not come across as vehement, my interest in this thread is to put forward my belief that Ron Chippendale's report was in fact correct
And I hope my reply stating my belief that it was not was not construed in any way as disrespectful.
All this has been pounded to death many times on this site, as well as others, I would suggest you try and get hold of books, and reports penned by people who have many thousands of hours aviating behind them. All who disagree with Mahons findings.
I've read the relevant extracts from most of those as well as several taking the other side over the years, and in my experience opinion seems fairly evenly split. My opinion is based on the fact that Chippindale's interpretation of the CVR was incorrect (no "Bert" on the flight deck, mixing together of statements that are unidentified, some of which are clearly from outside the flight deck), his apparent willingess to allow ANZ to be privy to processes they had no right to be involved with and a belief that his interpretation of the regs was too severe, especially given that every single prior flight either broke or skimmed very close to the limits of those same regs. Add to that the fact that he went to his grave believing they were in cloud despite no supporting evidence and I can't take the conclusions he drew without a significant pinch of salt. But I don't blame him for it - he was "guided" towards a set of conclusions without being privy to contradictory evidence.
I'll always think there was something fishy about the radar situation. What you say is correct about the positioning, however, given that the crew (I believe including the F/Es) had every reason to think they were over McMurdo Sound, they had a minute or less to work out why the radio had gone dead and if the transponder had stopped coding, why it had done so. They were in clear air according to the weather reports, they had not been briefed on that particular whiteout scenario, and they started an escape maneouvre almost as soon as anyone first raised any serious concern. I can't see any reason to conclude that they did anything less than the best they could with the information they had at the time.