3 Holer said
They would have to have been taken from the cockpit. Get with the program, that comment was made before. Pity we can't get the crew to verify.
That's pure gold right there. 3 Holer has contradicted Mahon. Someone had better call the crisis line (or at least send them an email flagged with high importance) because Mr Holer will be sobbing onto his framed Mahon portrait about to end it all.
Darn I'm at LHR otherwise I could find the page reference from Mahon's book. Mahon made a big deal about the absence of photographs to the south as if if were some big mystery - noting, correctly, that there would have been four opportunities for photographs to the south during the descending orbits. He hinted of yet another big conspiracy, as if Gemmell had somehow removed all the photos of the south from the crash site. Why the obvious reason there were no photos to the south - ie. because we know it was pretty much a solid wall of cloud from cruise altitude down (if not, they would've seen the mountain) and passengers didn't want to waste film on cloud didn't occur to him, is just another example of Mahon's blinkered-ness.
Ampan #1043 - absolutely. Collins's comment says it all. He knew exactly the problems associated with flying above ice below a cloud layer.