Holmes’ deliberately ignores the fact that the cause of the accident had no relevance in the Privy Council case. The issue was whether Mahon was entitled to go outside his terms of reference and make a finding that the Air NZ witnesses conspired together to commit perjury. The five judges who sat on the Privy Council were unanimous in holding that Mahon went well beyond his brief, but Lord Diplock took the opportunity to compliment Mahon on his investigative work. This is Holmes’ so-called “endorsement”, but it was nothing more than one judge sweetening a bitter pill about to be swallowed by another. (It’s similar to the praise heaped onto the airmanship of Captain Collins.) The Privy Council actually went further than it needed to, in that it found that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. This annoys Holmes:
“Despite this, Mahon’s ‘orchestrated litany of lies’ simply could not be proven, apparently. ‘There had been no material of any probative value on which to base a finding that a pre-determined plan of deception ever existed.’ (PC judgment p662) This despite their Lordships’ acceptance that they had not been there through the long 75 days weighing the evidence and hearing the witnesses in person, as Mahon had. Stuart Macfarlane, the Erebus researcher, says that in the end, if what the airline witnesses said was true, then the airline made 54 mistakes concerning the flight path of the airliner and 177 mistakes regarding altitude. It wasn’t possible for a commercial airline to make that many mistakes. Therefore, the airline was lying.” (Holmes p400)
The nincompoop’s argument is that there is an upper limit to the number of mistakes that an airline can admit to, above which, everything said by the airline becomes a lie. And to get to 177 mistakes regarding altitude, Holme’s relies on the work of a similarly-gifted intellectual powerhouse, being the deranged Macfarlane, who gets most of his 177 mistakes as follows:
“Not reading or becoming aware of the contents of the [President of McConnell Douglas’s] article after it was printed and distributed (eleven mistakes). (Mistakes 14-24)
Not becoming aware that the airline had printed one million copies of an article by the President on low level Antartic flights. Seven mistakes. (Mistakes 25-31)
Not being told by any of the airline executives on the Antarctic flights from 18 October 1977 to 21 November 1979 that they had been on flights under 16000 feet. There were 11 flights over two years, but there was no evidence on how many executives and their wives were on each flight, only Mr Thomson’s evidence that it was the usual practice. If one assumes, on average, one executive per flight (and I would welcome precise figures) that is mistakes by seven persons on 11 occasions (77 mistakes). … (Mistakes 32-108)” (Vette pp338,339)