There were from memory 5 or 6 criteria required to descend below MSA on that flight. Didn't matter that the waypoints were changed, there was still a f*cking big mountain in the area whichever of the routes were being flown and the MSA was high for both routes accordingly.
They had 2 of the 5 or 6 criteria required, just 2.
I get that Vette did a lot to show that they didn't have the visual picture they thought they had and I thank him for that. And I get that other flights busted SOP and descended when they shouldn't have. So someone else was doing it so that made it ok? That's the kind of argument I have with my 4 year old.
And I get that previous flights that didn't descend had a bunch of unhappy pax who saw nothing but cloud tops for hours so the viability of the flight itself was in question.
But it doesn't alter the question as to what were they doing down there, that low, in the first place. The person in the LHS is the skipper, he operates the aircraft to the SOPs which is what the AOC is based on. The aircraft was, let's not forget, perfectly serviceable. If the crew had all got gastro half way to Antartica and ended up in the bathroom the aircraft would have happily flown all the way down to Antartica and all the way back to NZ without so much as a scratch.
To apportion none of the blame to the crew is ludicrous.