That statement by Justice Mahon is, to many people involved in the aviation world, manifestly wrong.
An argument which has been well won on this forum many times over. Yet still people persist in trying to counter by using flowering quasi-philosophical prose, or making unqualified statements like "Mahon was right!". Bizarre.
I agree with Mahon in that the
Flight Engineers made no error that contributed to the disaster. If Collins had possesed some situational awareness, and listened to Brooks "where's Erebus in relation to us at the moment/high ground in the area/I don't like this" there might well have not been a disaster. If I was a surviving member of the Brooks family, I would be harbouring one hell of a lot of resentment towards Collins.
Could Gordon Brooks have done better? Instead of simply saying "I don't like this" should he have said "For ****'s sake Jim, these conditions aren't VFR, get out of 1500'"? I don't believe so. That guy wasn't happy, and he did his bit to protect the flight.