F/O Lucas did not attend the briefing. Neither did one of the co-pilots on the other flight, who was given an informal briefing by F/O Gabriel. Presumably, something similar happened with F/O Lucas.
On the flight south F/O Lucas was in the cabin. He heard the captain's PA announcement that they were going to descend using the radar at McMurdo Station so he would not have been concerned when the aircraft started going down, because he would have assumed, wrongly, that their position had been confirmed by the ground radar. (But he would have started to get curious about the way the aircraft was descending, via orbits instead of going straight down.)
0018:05 (GMT) - McMurdo - “… If you have copied our latest weatherwe have a low overcast in the area (at) about 2000 feet and right now we’re having some snow but our visibility is still about 40 miles and if you like I can give you an update on wheare the clear areas are around the local area
0018:11 - Captain - "Clouds come down a bit *** may not be able to** McMurdo. Very hard to tell the difference between the cloud and the ice **
" ** better conditions ** before"
0018:52 - McMurdo - "901 this is the forecaster again it looks like the clearareas around McMurdo are at approximately between 75 to 100 miles to the northwest of us (but) right over McMurdo we have a pretty extensive low overcast over"
0019:39 Captain - "Doesn’t look very promising does it?" Co-pilot - "No" Flight enginner - "No"
0019:56 - McMurdo - "... within a range of 40 miles of McMurdo we have a radar that will, if you desire, we can let you down to one thousand five hundred feet on radar vectors over"
0020:07 - Co-Pilot - "Roger New Zealand 901 that’s acceptable"
0020:17 - Captain -" * that’s what we want *** "
0020:30 Captain on PA - "Gents we’re going initially to eighteen thousand and the cloud cover in the McMurdo area has increased although the visibility is forty kilometres so ground visibility is good and we - - - will be taking advantage of the radar facilities at McMurdo for letdown which should take us below the cloud and give us a view of the McMurdo area, that is always likely to change of course depending on any variations in the weather but we’re hopeful we’ll be able to give you a look at McMurdo today. Thank you."
That couple of minutes from the transcript chops out most of the irrelevant garbage generated by the Mahon team. Sector whiteout? Known about well before Mahon and Vette were born. Known about by anyone who has been skiing and obviously known about by Captain Collins. Air New Zealand’s failure to warn him therefore had no relevance - as was the failure to warn him of the risks to passenger safety of flying the aircraft into the side of a mountain. 40 miles visibility? All that meant was that you could see a black object 40 miles away and Captain Collins clearly knew that, because after getting the ’40 miles’ information he was still going to go someone else. The visibility under the cloud was zero, which he knew full well.
Last edited by ampan; 28th Jun 2017 at 22:51.