@ampan - There are several good reasons not to trust Chippindale's version of the transcript, but I don't want to go back into that again. RNZAF training does not apply here - thanks to technology, line crews of the late '70s operated in an entirely different manner from line crews of the '60s, let alone miltary operations of the late '50s.
While I can't fault your reasoning, your arguments are based around an ideal-world interpretation of what they could and should have done, rather than what they were required to do in the real-world situation. For example, you state the fact that neither Collins or Cassin picked up on the 166E change as they were keying it in. This is because SOP did not require them to - it was designed to catch a mis-keying of the waypoints by way of reading the data, keying it in and reading it back - it was not designed to catch a change of waypoint from the briefing to pre-flight, and to cover that eventuality, all changes to the computerised flight plans were required to be notified to ops via a NOTAM. This was not done. In your ideal-world scenario they should have taken it upon themselves to check, but the real-world situation did not require them to. A coda to this is that the way you put it, the digit change was one of three, when in fact it was one of five - from 164.48E at the briefing to 166.48E at the pre-flight check. As they were not required to check the briefing co-ordinates against the pre-flight co-ordinates (unless they were notified of a change - which, and sorry to bang on about this point, they weren't) the only way they could have picked up on it would be if they had memorised the whole set of numbers and noticed a discrepancy - I do not think it is reasonable to have expected them to do so.
@chris_lz - In my experience pilots are split on the matter. If you look back over the thread there are more numerous posts from those who oppose Mahon's findings either partially or wholly, but the number of pilot users on here who do not feel that way are roughly equal (for the vast and sweeping majority the findings don't bother them one way or the other, but the revolutionary aspect of Mahon's approach to the investigation is still a model of it's kind).
I find the suggestion that as a lay person I must have been "taken in" by Vette's argument a little insulting. Any pilot looking at the network of circumstances that led to this accident would like to believe that they would have done things differently - in this way, assigning a degree of responsibility to the crew is comforting ("Well, even with all this other stuff going on, he broke the regs and went below MSA - I wouldn't have done that, so I'm OK"). I suspect that at that time and in that place with the prevailing aviation and company culture at the time, most if not all would have ended up with Collins on the slopes of Erebus.
The destination they were flying to was unusual, but by the time Collins and Simpson's crews attended the briefing they were regularly scheduled flights - the company had set up a series of extra safeguards because of the nature of the trip, but otherwise - as far as they knew* - it was just another day at the office. They took off believing that even if something went wrong those safeguards would protect them, but unbeknownst to them every single one of those safeguards had been defeated by pressing a few keys in on a computer terminal in Auckland only a few hours before they left.
The debate among the piloting fraternity will always go on regarding this incident because every pilot has his or her own opinion of what it was reasonable to expect the crew to do with the information they were given. It is that word - "reasonable" - that defines the difference of opinion.
[* - Allegedly the NZCA did indeed complain about the apparent busting of minima in the press reports, but this complaint never made it as far as the briefing room.]