If these flights are inherently dangerous why are they still being carried out by another airline??
Because at no stage do they ever descend below 16,000. Done the trip and highly recommended.
If he decided to disregard the SOP's, CAA requirements for descent
Really?? The brief said,
THE LOW FEQUENCY NDB APPROACH AT MCMURDO, WHICH PREVIOUSLY PROVIDED OUR ANTARTIC FLIGHTS WITH AN AUTHORISED CLOUD BREAK PROCEDURE TO 6000 FEET, HAS BEEN WITHDRAWN, CONSEQUENTLY THE LET-DOWN BELOW THE COMPANY SECTOR SAFE ALTITUDE OF 16,000 FEET, IS STRICTLY VISUAL AND PERMISSION HAS BEEN GIVEN TO DESCENT TO 6000 FEET QNH IN VMC.
It is agreed that previous non conformity with the requirements laid down for descent should have been cause for reprimand, but they were completed without any problems, so they were not. This may have had an influence on the decision of Capt Collins but it should not have, he was faced with the conditions they experienced and his safety margin was supposed to be provided by the descent requirements, which he ignored.
As far as I read it he complied exactly with the descent requirements, save the 6,000 feet. - further below.
Chippendale got it right when he said,
The pilot probably assumed that he would be able to see any and all obstructions clearly with a 2000 foot cloud base and 40 miles visibility below the cloud. It is not likely that the potential whiteout hazard indicated by the reports of horizon and surface definition was appreciated by the crew.
Their lack of appreciation comes from the fact they had never been exposed to the conditions previously. Book learning is OK up to a point, but at some stage you have to experience it to make sense of it. It is not for nothing that VFR operations (helo) down on the ice cease if there is an overcast. The one exception to that rule is if they are operating on the coast where surface definition between land/ice/water is available.
Nor is it for nothing that the aircrew who operate down on the ice go through an extensive hands on training program (besides the book learning) before being let loose on their own.
Spent the last week camping with a group of friends, one of whom commanded the first RAAF C-130 to go into McMurdo, and was responsible for training all RAAF crews who followed. He commented that he was "staggered" (his word) that on his first trip to the ice (with another C-130 operator), they permitted him to be the PF. Felt thrown into the deep end, even though the Captain, Nav and FE were all old ice hands providing the mentoring.
"But he was visual", says NZALPA.
No, he wasn't - and he knew he wasn't.
The captain himself told some "simple bloody lies" during the final 30 minutes of his life, given the various references to VMC.
Thats about as libellous as you can get.
There is absolutely no proof that the descent below MSA was carried out in anything other than VMC conditions. That the descent was continued below 6,000 is moot, had the cloud base been 4,000 feet higher in order that the 6,000 minimum could be complied with, the accident site would merely be 4,000 feet higher up the mountain side. The Flight Operations Manager said it did not occur to him that knowledge of whiteout and altered perception could be of help to a pilot at 6,000 feet to decide whether he was in VMC. From my own experience on the one trip to the ice I found it impossible to tell that we were VMC in whiteout conditions at 18,000 feet. The only give away was the shadows of isolated cloud on the ice/snow. You could not see the cloud of course, just the shadow, yet visibility was to the horizon - I say to the horizon because we flew for approx 30 or 40 minutes on that particular leg at 18,000 and could detect isolated cloud shadow continuously.
Yes, other captains went below MSA. So what? They were visual.
Just as Collins was, though in "better" conditions.
We seem to have a misunderstanding to some degree about what VMC is. In VMC an aircraft can be considered to be at the centre of a sterile bubble whose vertical and horizontal dimensions are laid down by authorities. It relies upon the pilots vision to detect any intrusions into that sterile bubble, whether it be terrain, fog, cloud, smoke, aircraft, rain, radio antenna, snow, or whatever other obscuration you may think of. All detection systems have limits, whether it be radar or anything else, and the eye is no exception. Whiteout is one of those limitations. It only detects a very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and would be of great help if it could pick up infra red in this situation.
The basic tenet of VMC is that you can pluck a pilot and place him in an aircraft anywhere in the world without a map, or him knowing where he is, and he can fly all day as long as his fuel and bladder can hold out. The only time a map comes in handy is knowing where an airfield is when the fuel gauge starts bouncing on "E", or the bladder needs draining.
Much is made about the use of radar in the mapping mode, and the crews apparent lack of use. Once again a simple question to a complex issue. The interpretation of ground returns is once again a skill that is not in the average airline pilots bag of tricks, beyond the delineation of surfaces with markedly different dielectrics eg land/water. Should you wish to delve into the complexities of interpretation when ice/snow are introduced, have a read of a good primer, "Radar Reflectivity of Land and Sea" by Maurice W. Long.
Not for nothing do military crews use radar maps so they can make sense of what's showing on the screen.
Brian Abraham is steering the argument from one he can't win towards one he can. Yes, Reason Model, Swiss Cheese, etc, all good stuff - but what's the relevant issue?
You need a new crystal ball my friend, because your current one is giving you static. As to asking "what is the relevant issue" displays a total lack of understanding how accidents come to be just that. You might redigest
grip pipes excellent post reproduced below.
If I had to select one particular AirNZ employee who has to shoulder most of the blame, it would be Captain Collins.
Once again a statement that shows absolutely no understanding of accident causation. Everyones hands are sullied, regulator, airline and crew. Unfortunately the crews actions on the day were tainted by the flagrant lack of adherence to SOPs by nearly all who went before, and an underwriting of the lack of adherence by all within the airline and the regulator.
A house built on poor foundations.
I'm not in the business of picking a particular employee to blame, as there is more than enough humble pie to be served, but a question I would have raised would have been regarding the route from Hallett to McMurdo. Why directly overhead Erebus, and not following the RNC route down the sound?
Overflying the crater of an active volcano, with frequent Strombolian eruptions known to toss bombs up to 3 metres in diameter a kilometre into the sky and 700 metres laterally, does not show due diligence by whoever was responsible for route planning. There is a reason the RNC route runs down the sound well clear of Erebus.
Lets assume Captain Collins maintained his sanctioned 16,000 feet overflying Erebus, and took a lava bomb which caused the destruction of the aircraft. Does he carry the ultimate responsibly as argued by some? Or might it fall elsewhere?
Gentleman, your strong condemnation of the crew is of concern to me as the issues that resonate most about this tragedy, concern what was known and what was not known and thus inform us about the probable state of mind of the PIC of this flight. That was what Justice Mahon was on about, the reasons not just the acts. Chippendale's version is about the acts not the reasons. Neither Commission of Inquiry or Accident Investigation is comfortable or pleasant reading.
In defence of the crew on the day there are a lot of presumptions made but none really known except what we found out later from the hard physical facts of the evidence that remained. There are a lot of assumptions about safety systems and CRM and there are a lot of assumptions about SOPS.
The issue of deception is critical to understanding what went on that day.
The deception caused by the change in the route coordinates. The deception of time and place and geographical illusions combined with visual illusions. The deception that comes from a reliance on SOPS which were inadequate and poorly thought out.
What was not known was the change in the nav coordinates by AIR NZ flight planning, what was not known was that the changes placed the aircraft in a perilous position at a critical phase in flight where it was expected that the aircraft would be visual, positive of the position and positive about what they were seeing. They were deceived about where they were going to fly.
They were decieved by what they saw. So you think you are one place,your somewhere else, you look out the window and it looks the same, it appears to look like it should ice and sea about the right shape and orientation, but you have never seen it before, you look out the window and it is a sodden grey-white sky with a sodden grey-white surface below. What you may have expected to see and what you were actually seeing may have even been quite incomprehensible except to a trained and experienced eye.
They were deceived by the complacency that was created by past flights operating below MSA without problems in the most inhospitable place on the planet.
The overall deception of safety that was created by the view that it was just another charter flight.
The deception of what to expect and see created by not having current and relevant visual photographic materials and charts properly put together as a briefing aid.
The deception created by the reliance on visual identification to a person who was not part of the flight crew nor an experienced aviator.
The deception of how to to do it when you got there created by not doing sim sessions, where white-out could be experienced and phases of the flight practiced, particularly if a crisis or emergency arose. So a descendng high speed visual fly up into a funnel of rising terrain in an area guaranteed to be probelematic due to visual illusions became an acceptable current airline operational practice and was not practised.
So when a critical decision was finally made to climb out to safety in the right direction was made, the crew were completely and thoroughly deceived and hence not clear about what they were doing and where they were doing it and they forgot how to do it. The leisurely way in which the crew reacted tells you everything about the state of complacency brought about by the deceptions which lulled them into that place in the first place and which promptly killed them and everyone else.
So you would hold Capt Collins responsible for his and this deception?
I cannot.
I can hold him accountable for his mistakes but not the debauched way in which he was led to make them.
The flights should never have been conducted as they were in the first place. The flights should never have been authorised or approved by either the Airline or the Regulator. They were not properly planned, briefed or practised. The aircraft carried no appropriate survival or safety equipment. There was no appropriate alternate place of safe landing once past 60 degrees south.
Those failures of responsibility belong to the Chief Pilot and the Chief Check Pilot and the Operations Department and the Airlines management. They were all responsible.
So no one really asks the critical question:
Is it really a safe thing to do to fly a commercial airliner carrying 257 passengers over the Antarctic and past or near to a mountain range and a volcano that is 12,500 ft high into possible white-out conditions that virtually coincides with the PNR without safety equipment and alternatives ?
And the answer to that is a simple - No it is not and as the events show it was not. The outcome was always predictable, if it had not been Captain Collins and his passengers that day, then it would have been another Captain and another crew another day at some time.
So it is my view that no one is absolved of blame in this one, no one.
On the money
grip pipe, well said.
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." - Galileo