Originally Posted by
Brian Abraham
I'm afraid you still don't get it prospector, the traps that lay with whiteout.
Given all those facts I would have thought anybody or perhaps I should say any reasonable person, would accept the Company and CAA had done their bit to ensure a safe operation.
They had nothing of the sort.
I'm struggling to understand this 'sector whiteout' argument in regards to this accident. Undoubtedly the phenomenon was not widely known about amongst civilian pilots at the time of the accident. It's probable that no one on the tech crew knew of it's nature. They thought they were in VMC but the conditions meant that the rising ground in front of their mis-identified position was impossible to spot visually against the cloud/horizon..
So what?
If they had stayed IFR above the MSA (F160) until they were radar identified (as per every other flight, and company procedure), not only would have they discovered the gross navigation error (as they appeared on the scope overhead Erebus), but the 'sector whiteout' would have been irrelevant.
They were flying into a potentially inhospitable environment, with much more to worry about than sector whiteout. In conditions other than perfect blue to MSL, and with a 12 thousand foot mountain close to their elected flight path.
VHF radio is line-of-sight. So is primary and secondary radar. Clear comms dropping out on descent, and lack of radar identification well within the expected coverage of both was the first little whiff that something wasn't quite right.
Yet the crew decided to descend. Anything after this was always going to be in the lap of the God's...all of the preset safety measures were redundant as soon as they dropped below 16,000".
Are you suggesting that had 'sector whiteout' been a commonly known phenomena that ANZ would have amended the SOPs for descent below MSA? or that ANZ should have known about this phenomena and push more stridently in their SOP's for radar identification and VHF with McMurdo prior to descending below MSA? Or are you suggesting simply that Collins would not have descended until he was identified had he known about 'sector whiteout'?
What's the relevance? They plowed into a mountain at 260 kts and 1500". The argument seems to be that they didn't see the mountain and had no way of knowing it was there. Well fk me, of course they didn't see it. That's the whole point..