An opinion written by Macarthur Job, a former Senior Inspector with the Air Safety Branch of the then Department of Civil Aviation. An ex flying doctor, charter and aerial work pilot, who has been pre-eminent in his work as an aviation safety promoter and educator.
Notwithstanding the airline’s lamentable role in the many factors that contributed to the accident, and the enormous integrity with which the Royal Commissioner went about his searching Inquiry, did his findings go too far?
Did they overlook fundamental principles of air navigation? The basic terrain-clearance philosophy of IFR flight; and the concept, inherited from generations of seafaring experience, of command responsibility? Will they pose problems of precedent that could one day have far- reaching implications?
For example, how valid can be an opinion, no matter how eminent, whose entire basis and background is essentially legal, on operational judgements made in a highly technical environment? What are we to make of a situation where a professionally qualified government authority, with statutory powers for the safe ordering of air navigation, can have its rulings overturned by legal but technically "lay" arbiters who do not carry that statutory responsibility?
Minimum Safe Altitudes are prescribed for air routes throughout the world to ensure aircraft are not put at risk by descent into areas of high terrain. Both Air New Zealand and the NZ Civil Aviation Division agreed that the MSA for the last 33nm of the route to McMurdo was 16,000 feet.
With terminal conditions at McMurdo poor, the sound navigational procedure would have been to remain at this height until within range of the McMurdo radar, checking over the last portion of the flight that the distance to run on the AINS was of the same order as the DME distance from the McMurdo TACAN.
But, the captain, having spotted a break in the cloud, decided to descend from FL180 when still some 43nm out and not yet identified on McMurdo radar. At this stage the aircraft was only some seven minutes’ flying time from the destination waypoint, when the McMurdo aids could have been relied upon for a safe letdown.
The crew thus contravened the MSA requirement by undertaking a descent without corroboration of position from ground based aids. The fact that no VHF transmissions of any sort were being received from McMurdo also did not assume the relevance it might have.
Airline flight crews are constrained by regulatory requirements. If a crew member transgresses those regulations, he can expect to be disciplined. It was thus surprising that the Royal Commissioner condoned the breaking of MSA requirements on the basis of the conduct of previous Antarctic flights, and the perceived need to provide sightseeing passengers with "their money’s worth".
Even so, it was the Royal Commissioner who succeeded in uncovering the unpalatable facts about the airline’s internal deficiencies and conduct, evidently missed by the technical investigation, which progressively and inexorably painted this unfortunate crew into a corner.
A major, technically complex investigation of this sort, where much hangs on the exact establishment of cause (and, inevitably, the apportioning of blame) is demanding in the extreme. Because of all that is at stake, it can also be subject to subtle but real commercial influences from various "interested parties". Political motives and media pressures for "instant answers" are also brought to bear.
For all these reasons it is plain that such an investigation requires both unfettered technical expertise and highly ethical "outside" objectivity — of the standard provided by Mr Justice Mahon’s Inquiry — if it is to arrive at the unbiased truth.
But could the Royal Commissioner’s findings in this particular case mean that the airline industry might eventually come to the point where the whole basis of command responsibility, as it has been traditionally understood, becomes outmoded? If so, who will then hold the ultimate responsibility for the safe conduct of an airline flight?
In an age when increasingly computerised operational technology is being imposed on the world airline industry — not without serious reservations in some cases — these questions still await answers.
It's interesting that the NAT tracks have been suffering a series of gross navigational errors as a result of errors in the nav data bases in recent times. Air New Zealand nav department come to mind?