Even if Collins wasn't on that trip, the RNZAF base that he was attached to would have accumulated some institutional knowledge of sector whiteout
I am quite sure that could be said of whiteout in the general term, but as Judge Greene said in his summing up when Gordon Vette gave his evidence in Washington expanding on his sector whiteout theory
Since Capt Vette was apparently the first person to have presented to experts in perceptual phsycology and to the world at large the theory of sector whiteout with respect to an aircraft in level flight the phenomenom was entirely unknown prior to the crash of FLT 901.