From Gordon Vette "Impact Erebus" page 213.
When I flew visually in the AntArctic I believed that there was no problem. Prior to m,y research on the AntArctic crash, I would have scoffed at this requirement. I am now firmly convinced that under certain lighting conditions an aircrew could fly into terrain, even with the terrain in the field of view and with plenty of time to take avoiding action. Therefor descent below the top of Mt Erebus, or other Polar terrain, even in clear conditions is hazardous. It appears to me that those of us who conducted the AntArctic flights may unwittingly have exposed ourselves, our passengers and crew, to a similar danger.
From the aviation expert who was supposed to be Mahon's technical adviser
Air New Zealand treated the flights as a picnic for senior captains. They asked to fly them and they went in order of seniority. The air force insists that potential Antarctic captains do at least one or two trips in the copilot’s seat, which is eminently sensible. But only the flight engineer (Brooks) had been there before and from the voice recording he was the only one concerned. The briefings for the captains were pathetic. I was horrified throughout the inquiry to realise that, in preparation for the flights, the airline had no contact with the RNZAF with their great fund of Antarctic flying experience.
Vette admits, after his research, that the research of CAA and Capt Gemmel made sense after all, the altitude restrictions were there for a specific purpose, not the story that was given to Mahon that they were irrelevant if VMC.
Going down to 1500ft at the invitation of the radar controller was not the most sensible thing to do, but it left a rod for the back of following crew who had different weather conditons entirely but were expected to show the pax the same scenery from the same altitude.
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Hubris kills and Air New Zealand were full of it.
And the previous quotes show how accurate that sentence is.