After watching 4 Corners on Monday night and as a commercial pilot who has worked for 'max payload/min fuel' operators, I can honestly say it sent chills down my spine. I think most of us could imagine the pressure a company like PA would have put on this young captain. In saying that it doesn't excuse what can only be described as abysmal flight planning.
I have many personal friends who work for Airservices Australia and have talked at length at the actual FISO who took Doms phone call on that fateful day. What I took away from our conversation was the casual and ameture approach that was taken with the flight planning and briefing. I don't care if you were taught short hand by John D Rockefeller's personal secretary, you CANNOT obtain the comprehensive brief needed to conduct a complex, long distance flight like this that way. Not only would the PIC need a long brief, you would also require SIGWX, Wind and Temp or a synoptic chart to say the very least. I personally wouldn't depart on a transcontinental flight without that information let alone a transoceanic flight in the middle of the night!
The actual flight planning was another major failure. As it was mentioned on the documentary and from my conversation with the FISO the PIC couldn't give one of the four FIR boundary estimates needed for this flight. He just wanted to flightplan 'reversed' from the previous day. I am shocked but not surprised however that PA would send a crew and aircraft on such a complex
mission without support from a professional back in Oz.
One deficiency in the report and a agency who should carry partial blame
for this accident is Airways NZ. When the Norfolk Unicom operator called this agency to get them to pass on the deteriorating wx to the aircraft there was obviously a breakdown there also. Even if the aircraft was past it's decision point it still was vital information that wasn't made available to the crew.
The oversight from this agency has more ramifications to more pilots than they
realize. I know one of Greg Russell's master plans whilst at Airservices was to hand over the Tasman HF (SP6) over the kiwis. Thus putting these operators under more pressure to possible miss handing over some vital piece of information to another possible crew in this situation in the future.
I can see the holes lining up again already!