Originally Posted by
prospector
And that surely is what the discussion has been all about, everybody, including the crew did not, for a lot of reasons, many of which have been aired on this thread, so to clain they are blameless is why I for one, and obviously many others do not agree with Holmes. Remember it was because of his publicity machine that this thread was started.
But what you are saying is incorrect - I repeat, the crew followed the information they were given in the briefing
to the letter. That NZCA's 6,000ft limit was effectively disregarded by the airline and briefed as such means that you'd have to have an excessively strict interpretation of the rules to put any level of blame on the crew. No matter what papers were found and presented, the fact remains that they were told the 6,000ft limit was to be disregarded if Mac Central offered them a lower altitude.
I don't follow the logic in saying the flight crew - the last link in the chain of events that had been set up by management, ops and nav section before they even departed, remember - should be blamed for not following a rule they were told to disregard.
@chris lz : To confirm what henry crun said, the TACAN was not capable of giving directional information on civilian equipment, and neither could the NDB even when it was operational (the clue's in the name
).