I disagree. To me ( on a daily basis) it seems that is the primary role.
I want to fly with you
framer, being so omnipotent and all. Then again, perhaps not, you thinking that you’re so good.
^^^ wtf? Don't drink and post!
p.s are you aware of what controlled airspace actually is below 60" south?
Hempy, get off the sauce man. What has controlled airspace south of 60” got to do with anything. Think you mean 60°, not that it makes any difference, but when you’re in the state you’re in I understand.
So if they were cleared to 50' it would have been fine to do so would it?
If you were idiot enough to ask for it, and someone was idiot enough to give you clearance, I guess fill your boots. Flights had flown previously at 1,500 and less, though you will always get the argument that it was OK, despite being against SOP, because it was in really, really good VMC.
But answer, if you can, why Captain Wilson was briefing crews that it was OK to go below 6,000.
You would have thought that someone who had little experience operating in this area
And there’s the rub, the crews had zip, zero, narda experience in polar operations.
Could you advise where you found anywhere that any plotting was done?
You need a little comprehension
prospector. My post was quite plain, the plotting he had done the previous night. Perhaps I was not clear enough.
What approach plate are you referring to?
Ok, cloudbreak. They were never able to fly the cloudbreak procedure in IMC when the NDB was available, for the simple reason they wouldn’t have the RADAR monitoring that was demanded. As the US said, being able to provide radar monitoring was “absurd”.
Had they been able to fly the IMC cloudbreak, which they couldn’t, there was absolutely no guidance given should they find themselves in whiteout conditions ie able to see the base buildings, aircraft and vehicles on the runway, but nothing else. Scramble back to the MSA, after spending whatever time it would take to realise the predicament they were in, of which they have zero experience, and what escape route to take?
By a poster on another thread.
Descent below the LSALT of FL160 had to be made in VMC as you say. What advantages accrue from specifying the VMC descent to be made in the stipulated sector overhead McMurdo? Assuming the descent was made in the sector and did not go below 6,000 what weather parameters ruled operations from that point on? 7,000 foot overcast permissible? At no time were the operations immune from whiteout, the point of impact would just be 4,500 feet higher, that’s all. It matters not in the scheme of things (to my mind) where the descent is made if being made in VMC conditions. And there is no evidence that the aircraft was in anything but VMC from FL160 right up to the point of collision. The argument that the other aircraft had gin clear conditions is moot, VMC is VMC, you either are or you aren’t. The only problem being the crews had no business to be tooling around in VMC due to a complete lack of both experience and training. Had the flights continued in the manner in which they were being conducted it was just a matter of time before someone stubbed their toe. And it would not have been the crews fault, however much the apologists for management duck and weave.
With VMC flight we can imagine the aircraft as being at the centre of a bubble or sterile area, that is, a minimum height above ground or cloud, a minimum height below cloud, and a minimum distance horizontally from cloud or ground. All of that is achieved by estimation with the Mk. 1 Mod. 0 eyeball (the V in VMC). That pre-supposes that you do not need to know where you are, since any obstacle, it is assumed, will be seen. Normal obscuration’s to our vision are caused by such phenomena as smoke, dust, mist, fog, cloud or precipitation. Both the cause and degree of obscuration is easily discernible. That is a pilots real world experience, but there are always exceptions and caveats. The exception and caveat in this case is EXCEPT IN POLAR REGIONS. Mention has been made that other flights were made on gin clear days. Maybe so, but even in such conditions you may still very well fall afoul of the tricks of light and depth perception unique to polar operations. There is good reason the US military, in their wisdom, required crewmembers to have made three familiarisation flights to the ice before embarking on the adventure themselves.
There is a reason some operators do not permit VMC operations over the ice/snow when an overcast is present.
Collins let corporate pressure influence him and a false sense that his prior experience enabled him to justify the decisions he made on the day. Any commander has the right to operate outside of the SOPs as he sees fit, if and when required for the safety of his passengers and aircraft. In this instance Collins operated well outside the SOP for no justifiable reason and the accident occurred.
Amen to what you say. Except, it was the norm not to follow SOP on the Antarctic flights, and he may very well have been influenced by the actions of those who went before. The “Normalisation of Deviance” part. Couple that with the lack of adequate training, the failures of the nav department, briefings that didn’t comply with the SOP, failure to provide McMurdo with a copy of the now changed flight plan putting the aircraft over the top of Erebus, to which they would have objected. Had they known it was planned over Erebus the inference given is that the aircraft would have been cleared by a route clear of the mountain. What a missed opportunity.
Had the pilots done their own flight planning, and not relied on the nav dept, things may have been different.
All those bloody cheese holes. When applying Prof. Reason’s Swiss Cheese model to this accident there are so many holes as to lead one to believe that insufficient cheese remains to sustain one mouse for one day.
The operation was such a disordered mess that an accident was inevitable. Only three questions need to be asked,
When
Where
To whom
As Chippendale said,
There was no explanation of the horizon and surface definition terms in the operators’ route qualification briefing or pre flight dispatch planning, and only a passing reference to whiteout conditions.
The operator had not ensured that all significant information was included in the route qualification briefing and presented in an unambiguous manner.
As a result of questions put to some of the pilots of earlier Antarctic flights it was obvious that misconceptions were held about the minimum altitude to which the aircraft was permitted to descend in VMC and the actual topography below the flight planned track from Cape Hallett to McMurdo.
You need to be told to keep an accurate plot of your position????, especially before descending below MSA?
Chippendale had a comment about that. No one was plotting topography against INS, it took 14 months to detect the cockup.
The fact that a computer error of over 2° of longitude to the west could exist for 14 months indicates there was no regular valid comparison between the topography and the geographical co-ordinates by flight deck crews.
Last word by a young lady.
Janine Marsden-Brown, January 9th, 2005 at 6:47 am
On a very personal note, I would like to say that I do not believe it was pilot error, I believe it was one bad mistake after another leading to a catastrophe. I think the pilots did exactly what was expected of them and ANZ did pressure pilots to make it a fanastic scenic flight. ANZ tried to whole-heartedly blame the pilots from day 1 until the information about the flight data turned up.
After losing both my parents in the Erebus crash I have complete contempt for the way Air New Zealand handled the situation. Although I was only 16 at the time, I read every piece of information about the crash and every book that was written. Air New Zealand treated my 2 brothers and I with complete disrespect, it took 5 years, a team of lawyers and the NZ victims families had to form a consortium before we got any settlements. Since then several overseas people told me that ANZ settled with them a few months after the crash.
25 years later all I can say is I hope ANZ learned something from their mistakes of the Erebus crash.