Originally Posted by
prospector
Yes, there was a precedent set by people who should have known better, but it still did not make it legal. Since when does an invitation by a radar operator overule a regulation set by CAA?
When the CAA effectively endorses it by not keeping the national airline under the close observation it warrants.
Ron Chippendales qualifications and experience have been documented many times, they were impeccable.
In aeronautical and military terms, certainly - in terms of understanding corporate politics and the tendency for civil operations to develop "grey areas" over time, he was little more than an ingenue.
Mr Mahon had never had anything to do with anything aeronautical, and I could just as easily state, with a lot more veracity, that Mahon was led around by the nose by members of ALPA, some of whose members surely had a vested interest in Mahons findings ending up the way they did.
Mahon knew that. He didn't just take NZALPA's submission as read - he states himself that he wasn't entirely convinced by the "false horizon" part of their theory and crucially, when he went to the Antarctic himself he asked the RAAF pilots of the Hercules that flew him out to demonstrate a whiteout effect in the same manner as he experienced with the NZALPA representatives - this time on a snow ridge rather than Erebus. Only when it was confirmed by a party with no interest in the outcome was he entirely convinced.
Did they? many who have a knowledge, and experience of things aeronautical certainly did not.
How many of them had a personal relationship with either Chippindale, Morrie Davis or Rob Muldoon?