Originally Posted by
27/09
While there is no doubt some blame must rest with the crew...
I doubt it wholeheartedly.
Could they have done more? Possibly - but they did everything it was in their power to do and in complete accordance with how the flights were managed and regulated. Would they have done more, or done things differently if the information was presented properly and completely as opposed to systematically withheld from them? Almost certainly.
By "systematically withheld", I mean the following. If Collins knew that he would be entirely reliant on INS, visual fixes and US Navy controllers and had been informed :
- That the nav computer co-ordinates were changed overnight,
- that conditions existed whereby it would be possible for Erebus to be lost in whiteout - even in clear air, and
- that the US military flights did not consider those controllers reliable
then there's no way he'd have made the descent under those conditions.
This was a company for which a lot was at stake and one which was not in the rudest of health - companies in that situation tend to cut corners. As such, ANZ shaved the safety margins year on year, but didn't bother telling their line crews they were doing so, after all - had the crews known that barely 2 years prior there were SOPs that stated 2 Captains were to be carried and that no-one was allowed to command an Antarctic flight without first taking on a familiarisation flight - both of which had been quietly dropped, then you might have found some crews unwilling to go.
Qantas were about to start their own Antarctic flights with larger and longer-ranged aircraft (747s), which would almost certainly have put a dent in ANZ's profits - Mahon notes this, but it doesn't get brought up very often.
For their part, NZCA never said "Hang on a minute, we authorised these flights based on your assurance that you would stick to these conditions - you're now degrading those conditions, so we should take another look at it".