Paul Holmes and Erebus

[henry crun]

DozyWannabe: If I correctly understand what you are saying, a VMC descent required radar identification.
In that case, knowing that they were not identified, why did they descend ?

[prospector]

One point that no one has yet brought up.

One of the reasons, apart to avoid whiteout, that the MDA (minimum descent altitude) was set at 6,000ft was to avoid any problem with bird strike. There are many skua gulls around McMurdo, as was witnessed by the people who had to clear the wreck. If a flock of skua gulls was encountered at 1,500ft, at 260kts, the damage sustained would be considerable. These are big birds.

The flights that did go down to this altitude, 1,500ft, at the invitation of the ice controller would certainly have been at risk of such a bird strike.

The sightseeing value of such a low level at that speed, when only a small proportion of the pax would have a window view is questionable.

One is left with the thought of for whose benefit were these low level runs carried out??

[ampan]

Sir Rochford Hughes: "AirNZ treated the flights as a picnic for senior captains. They asked to fly them and they went in order of seniority."

[DozyWannabe]

@henry crun, ampan :

I think they thought they were identified on radar, as the transponder was coding before the letdown began (and probably during to some extent) - and that the offer to descend from the controller confirmed it.

@prospector :

ANZ only sold the outer rows of the aircraft on the Antarctic flights in order to make moving about the cabin easier - you can see this in the various films and videos taken for promotional purposes, and by the passengers (including one from the accident flight which is very eerie to watch).

Will pick up the rest tomorrow.

[ampan]

0028:47 - F/O: "You didn't get the Tower did you?"

Capt: "No, negative, no we haven't got it"


...

0031:20 - Capt: "If you can get HF contact tell him that, we'd like a further decent - we have contact with the ground and we could if necessary descend doing an orbit."


0032:22 - Capt: "I'll come round there and set that down (at) ten thousand"

...

0035:15 - F/O: "Transponder is now responding"

Capt: "OK"



0036:32 - F/O: "We've lost him again"



...


[down to 1500 feet]


00048:55 - Capt: "Have we got them on the tower?"

F/O: "No - - - I'll try again"



0049:25 - Capt: "Have you got anything from him?"

F/O: "No"

[henry crun]

DozyWannabe; There is no room for assumptions with something as important as radar identification.
You are either identified or you are not; and at no time was Collins advised he was.

[chris lz]

prospector,

I appreciate your detailed response to AINS.




The answer to your first question depends entirely on how they navigated down there in the first place without INS (and given that the trips relied on INS to some extent to get them in the ballpark because the previous onboard navaids were not accurate enough it makes it extremely hypothetical as a situation). The only way I could see them doing it would be if they had a fully-qualified and dedicated navigator onboard, which would place the onus on the crew in any case.


What I'm hearing you say is, the crew was for all intents and purposes relying, by the back door route, on AINS. Take away AINS and you have a crew that would not have been confident that a faint patch of darkness was the west coast of Ross Island. Is that a fair statement?

[prospector]

.ANZ only sold the outer rows of the aircraft on the Antarctic flights in order to make moving about the cabin easier

With 237 pax and 20 crew there would have been very few empty seats.



.

[DozyWannabe]

@prospector - The DC-10 had a theoretical maximum capacity of 380 passengers. Even if we knock some off so it's not all cattle-class , you're looking at about 330-350, which leaves 103-123 seats free from your stated number of 237. It was deliberate policy to "underbook" the Antarctic flights because to fill the central rows would impede cabin movement, as I said, and there's no point in going on a sightseeing flight and sitting in the central row!

The DC-10 may not have had the carrying capacity of a 747, but it was still a sodding huge airliner!

@chris_lz - No I wouldn't, but let me think about it a bit.

@ampan - Let me do a bit of digging to check. First thoughts - "him" could refer to the controller, but the transponder could still be coding.

[ampan]

Whole transcript here (Annex C):

Chippindale Report (http://www.erebus.co.nz/Investigation/ChippindaleReport.aspx)


The point is that he was going down the hole before the transponder started. At the time that occured, the aircraft was descending from 13000 feet to 10000 feet, already well under MSA. So he definitely ditched the plan.

Vette's attempted explanation is difficult to fathom:

"There was a nagging doubt at the back of Jim Collins' mind, possibly associated with the briefing, that the approach radar would be unable to pick them up above 6000 feet." (Impact Erebus, p130)
There is no evidence of anything like that being said at the briefing, and it would make no sense. The whole point of the radar was to confirm an aircraft's position before it went below MSA.

"A quick mental reckoning put him about ten minutes before the McMurdo Sound waypoint near the Dailey Islands if he continued on the same heading, holding the same height. But there was no point in the exercise. The edge of the main cloud front was drawing closer and he would have to get beneath it before he could make the dog's-leg turn to hook in to the south of the island, and fly visually under radar guidance to the ice runway and the TACAN." (p132)
No point in the exercise? What's wrong with staying above MSA until his position was confirmed by radar, turning left towards Mac Station, and descending through the cloud base under radar guidance? After all, that was how the military pilots did it.

[chris lz]

Dozy,

The Chippindale report mentions that 21 seats were left empty. The DC-10, as configured by most airlines at the time, was for 250-300. 330-350 may have been closer to the norm in more recent years, but in 1979 the standard was for 8-abreast seating and more seat pitch than in later years (versus 9 beginning in the early 80s or so) That suggests ANZ's were normally configured for 258 pax.

BTW, when ANZ started these flights, would anyone recall if they ever used a DC-8? I'm pretty sure that would have stretched its range, and with fewer windows per seat row, I would be surprised.

[prospector]

ozywannabe,

We've been over this before, but just because the rules state that the pilot is responsible for navigation under VMC rules, it does not automatically follow that the pilot should be blamed for an accident if one or more outside factors for which they are not prepared are the root cause of said misidentification.

From Gordon Vette "Impact Erebus"

Like other pilots, Captain Collins had implicit faith in the DC10's navigation system. implicit within the bounds of good airmanmship, which means counter-checking where possible, and never accepting it as infallible.

The AINS would guide the machine accurately- within a mile each side of track for every hour flown- until the aircraft descended to a lower altitude, then the crew would fine tune its position using ground aids. The AINS was relied on absolutely for cruising at altitude-it is the passage maker

Here we have a descent below MSA before the AINS was fine tuned with the available ground aids, and accepting it as infallible in a descent to 1,500ft, the decision for this descent to this altitude would appear to be Captain Collins alone. No one is disputing it was done with the best intentions, giving the pax their monies worth, but it was the crew's mistake, and I do not believe they can be held blameless.

If one does not comply with the rules then one must be responsible for the consequences, in this case many people took the consequences.

just because the rules state that the pilot is responsible for navigation under VMC rules

That would appear to be the governing factor in all your statements, and as you appear to be a firm believer of Mahon it is easy to understand why, any fact that did not suit his theories he completely disregarded.

.

[Dream Land]

Agree prospector. :ok:

No point in the exercise? What's wrong with staying above MSA until his position was confirmed by radar, turning left towards Mac Station, and descending through the cloud base under radar guidance? After all, that was how the military pilots did it. That is how all tour pilots are trained, to positively identify your current position, Captain Collins was never to my knowledge given adequate training for the mission.

[chris lz]

prospector,

I have the feeling most lay people familiar with the accident tend to agree with the Royal Commission's conclusion, but that pilots, in general, tend not to. Is this impression yours too? If so, would you care to give some sense of how much consensus there might be.

Thanks

[prospector]

chris lz

The many people that agree with the Commissioners findings are for the most part as you say lay people. There are pilots and ex pilots with many thousands of hours experience who agree with Ron Chippendale, himself a very experienced aviator, and well trained in aircraft accident investigation.

Air New Zealand made mistakes in the Nav dept. There is no disputing that. But a Captain is not a Captain just to wear four stripes.

When statements are made such

but just because the rules state that the pilot is responsible for navigation under VMC rules, it does not automatically follow that the pilot should be blamed for an accident

Then I shudder, if that is the case what is the point of many experienced people getting together and using that experience to make rules to be complied with by less experienced people until they are themselves experienced. We all know rules are bent sometimes, but only if there is absolute certainty that by so doing the safety of the operation is not jeopardised.

In this case people had carried out descents not as directed by the rules, but they had Erebus, Ross Island, Beaufort Island in sight for many many miles and were absolutely certain of their position. The one flight that had bad weather prior to 901 diverted, and as the end result of 901 shows, with the weather they had, below requirements for the approved descent, they should also have diverted.

[ampan]

Dreamland #264: I would have thought that Capt Collins didn't need any training in that regard. He was an RNZAF flying officer for at least four years, and then he joined TEAL in 1958 - well before INS and even route briefings. In the 1960s he would have been strapping himself into a DC8 at Auckland, heading for places as far away as Honolulu, Singapore and Hong Kong, with nothing but a navigatior, beacons, and stars. He would have had to deal with a myriad of navigation issues and would have had to make numerous difficult approaches, including the now-legendary Checkerboard approach to Kai Tak. If anyone knew the importance of making sure where you are before going below the height of that hill you might hit, it would have been him.

[Dream Land]

Yes, fully agree, had this been a passenger flight to a VFR only airport destination, I have no doubt that it would have been handled in a completely professional manner.

[chris lz]

prospecter,

I came to read Vette's book before talking to pilots, and I have to say he had me convinced. It was only later that I felt I could not defend my positions while debating with pilots on another forum. It actually took me quite a while after the fact to accept this. Vette glides over the issue of whether INS is suitable for descents below MSA by never even alerting his readers to the objections we have seen again and again on this thread. Interesting that he notes how Collins was very careful to stay on the programmed track even after he was visual -

"It is an [in]escapable conclusion that Collins believed that there was some inherent protection or safety provided to the aircraft by its adherence to navigation track. There is no other explanation for adhering to it while flying visually." (p135)

Vette may be trying to point out how carefull Collins was, but Collins' keeping to the track might also be interpreted as indicating that he wasn't really prepared to go it eyes alone?

So let me play the other side for a moment. Part of Collins' certainty must have rested on the assumption that even in the unlikely event they were off course, he would be in VMC once under the clouds, and that fact alone would count as certainty of terrain avoidance. Except for the unanticipated effects of white out, would this normally have been a sound assumption?

Thank again.

[prospector]

Except for the unanticipated effects of white out, would this normally have been a sound assumption?

With the ambient weather conditions, that he had been advised of just prior to descent, to not anticipate whiteout conditions under a 2,000ft overcast, and being advised of light snow showers in the area, would be very rash indeed.

Without any of the AntArctic problems, going below a 2,000ft overcast at 260kts+ in an area you have never before been would to most aviators be a very rash move. Perhaps no problem in a light aircraft on your own, but in a heavy jet with 257 souls aboard, a very rash move. At sometime they would have had to turn to come out of McMurdo base area, the ground would be coming up, and at 1,500ft 260 kts, 200 ton aircraft would not be a position many would like to line up for themselves.

[framer]

Perhaps no problem in a light aircraft on your own, but in a heavy jet with 257 souls aboard, a very rash move. At sometime they would have had to turn to come out of McMurdo base area, the ground would be coming up, and at 1,500ft 260 kts, 200 ton aircraft would not be a position many would like to line up for themselves.

Most people that argue the pilots having no responsibility have difficulty understanding the above. Primarily because they have never flown a heavy jet. You can only get so much out of books.

[chris lz]

You can only get so much out of books.


Well I certainly can relate to that!

Not to be ganging up on Dozy, but I do know the "spell" that Vette's book can have on lay readers. Sometimes an unstated assumption drives a belief. For me, perhaps it was the fact that Vette paints Collins as of the highest possible experience and calibre, and indeed it seems likely this is how he was regarded by everyone pre- Erebus. How can one argue with that?

[DozyWannabe]

@ampan - There are several good reasons not to trust Chippindale's version of the transcript, but I don't want to go back into that again. RNZAF training does not apply here - thanks to technology, line crews of the late '70s operated in an entirely different manner from line crews of the '60s, let alone miltary operations of the late '50s.

While I can't fault your reasoning, your arguments are based around an ideal-world interpretation of what they could and should have done, rather than what they were required to do in the real-world situation. For example, you state the fact that neither Collins or Cassin picked up on the 166E change as they were keying it in. This is because SOP did not require them to - it was designed to catch a mis-keying of the waypoints by way of reading the data, keying it in and reading it back - it was not designed to catch a change of waypoint from the briefing to pre-flight, and to cover that eventuality, all changes to the computerised flight plans were required to be notified to ops via a NOTAM. This was not done. In your ideal-world scenario they should have taken it upon themselves to check, but the real-world situation did not require them to. A coda to this is that the way you put it, the digit change was one of three, when in fact it was one of five - from 164.48E at the briefing to 166.48E at the pre-flight check. As they were not required to check the briefing co-ordinates against the pre-flight co-ordinates (unless they were notified of a change - which, and sorry to bang on about this point, they weren't) the only way they could have picked up on it would be if they had memorised the whole set of numbers and noticed a discrepancy - I do not think it is reasonable to have expected them to do so.

@chris_lz - In my experience pilots are split on the matter. If you look back over the thread there are more numerous posts from those who oppose Mahon's findings either partially or wholly, but the number of pilot users on here who do not feel that way are roughly equal (for the vast and sweeping majority the findings don't bother them one way or the other, but the revolutionary aspect of Mahon's approach to the investigation is still a model of it's kind).

I find the suggestion that as a lay person I must have been "taken in" by Vette's argument a little insulting. Any pilot looking at the network of circumstances that led to this accident would like to believe that they would have done things differently - in this way, assigning a degree of responsibility to the crew is comforting ("Well, even with all this other stuff going on, he broke the regs and went below MSA - I wouldn't have done that, so I'm OK"). I suspect that at that time and in that place with the prevailing aviation and company culture at the time, most if not all would have ended up with Collins on the slopes of Erebus.

The destination they were flying to was unusual, but by the time Collins and Simpson's crews attended the briefing they were regularly scheduled flights - the company had set up a series of extra safeguards because of the nature of the trip, but otherwise - as far as they knew* - it was just another day at the office. They took off believing that even if something went wrong those safeguards would protect them, but unbeknownst to them every single one of those safeguards had been defeated by pressing a few keys in on a computer terminal in Auckland only a few hours before they left.

The debate among the piloting fraternity will always go on regarding this incident because every pilot has his or her own opinion of what it was reasonable to expect the crew to do with the information they were given. It is that word - "reasonable" - that defines the difference of opinion.

[* - Allegedly the NZCA did indeed complain about the apparent busting of minima in the press reports, but this complaint never made it as far as the briefing room.]

[chris lz]

DozyWannabe,

My apology. In hindsight that what I wrote above was (unintentionally) insenstive and presumptuous. I was referring more to me, because I was, in in fact, "taken in" by Vette in the past. But maybe not you. My position is one of caution. I've been through these arguments before and been found wrong (I think), so as a layman, I'm not about proclaim that this time round, I have the definitive truth.

Which leads me to

It is that word - "reasonable" - that defines the difference of opinion.


So the case against Vette/Mahon is a reasonable one? I wrote what I wrote because I was getting the impression from you that this isn't so- that only the Vette position is reasonable.

Cheers

[framer]

Any pilot looking at the network of circumstances that led to this accident would like to believe that they would have done things differently - in this way, assigning a degree of responsibility to the crew is comforting ("Well, even with all this other stuff going on, he broke the regs and went below MSA - I wouldn't have done that, so I'm OK").

I agree ,there is definately an element of that in the industry.

I suspect that at that time and in that place with the prevailing aviation and company culture at the time, most if not all would have ended up with Collins on the slopes of Erebus.


Having talked with Air NZ DC10 Captains from that era I don't agree with that.

[ampan]

DozyW #273:

There is no issue with the transcript as regards Capt Collins and F/O Cassin: "When I listened to the tape recording myself, which I did on two occasions in New Zealand, it became clear that the only two voices which could be heard without difficulty were those of Captain Collins and First Officer Cassin" (Royal Commission's Report, page 36). Mahon did not take issue with anything in the transcript that was attributed to the captain or the F/O.

Of course it's very easy with the benefit of hindsight, but the issues with the VMC/AINS plan were known to Captain Collins before he went below MSA. Although he had not experienced sector whiteout before, he knew that visual perception could be affected. That is probably why he locked back onto the nav track - but in doing that, he also knew that he had received conflicting information about the waypoint and hadn't checked it.

A good pictorial summary of what happened is at Annex D, Appendix 3, of Chippendale's report:

Chippindale Report (http://www.erebus.co.nz/Investigation/ChippindaleReport.aspx)


If you look at that 3D presentation, it's difficult to understand why he decided to go down in that situation, even if he thought Erebus was 20nm to his left. (Ironically, the track of his two descending orbits is engraved onto the flight safety award named in his honour.)

[prospector]

but the revolutionary aspect of Mahon's approach to the investigation is still a model of it's kind).


From New Zealand Tragedies Aviation. John King.

Because the findings of the Royal Commissionof Inquiry on the cause of the disaster were limited in scope, being legally an opinion and not a statement of fact, they could not be appealed in legal terms, unlike the Office of Air Accidents investigation which remains the sole official account- and has never been officially challenged

The Court of Appeal addressed several aspects that were brought to the commissioners notice during the enquiry but ignored by him. The five judges unanimously quashed the $150,000 costs order, imposed as punishment for the alledged conspiracy.

Citing his own action when alledged to be in the wrong, Morrie Davis called on Mahon to resign as a High Court Judge, which he did.

In their judgement delivered opn 20th Oct 1983, the five Law Lords of the Privy Council dismissed the commissioners appeal, which upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal decision, which set aside the costs order against the airline, on the grounds that Mahon had committed clear breaches of natural justice.
THEY DEMOLISHED HIS CASE ITEM BY ITEM INCLUDING EXHIBIT 164 WHICH COULD NOT "BE UNDERSTOOD BY ANY EXPERIENCED PILOT TO BE USED FOR THE PURPOSE OF NAVIGATION.

And then of course we hae the finding of Judge Greene who also completely disagreed with Mahon's findings.

[DozyWannabe]

@prospector - We're educated and polite men here, sir - there's no need to shout.

At this point the best we can do is agree to disagree, because ultimately the whole mess is tied up in tales of missing evidence, break-ins, acrimony and the end of careers. If you choose to take that as your conclusion then that's none of my business just as the reasons behind mine are none of yours.

Vette saw Mahon after the whole thing had worked it's way through the grinder, and asked him what had happened and why he did not continue to press his case beyond the Privy Council's findings (which in fact only upheld the complaint of the conspiracy charge and nothing else, despite what you say - even if you say it in caps). Mahon's enigmatic reply was "Politics boy, deep politics".

Once you're into that mess then even the best reasoning can come to nothing.

[prospector]

and why he did not continue to press his case beyond the Privy Council's findings

Fair enough, but please advise what Court is higher than the Privy Council?


[QUOTE] Their Lordships cannot close this lengthy judgement without expressing their conviction that the time has come for all parties to let bygones be bygones as far as the aftermath of the Mt Erebus disaster is concerned.

There were what in retrospect can be recognised as having been faults or mistakes at the enquiry but which,in the circumstances in which the enquiry had to be held and the Judges report prepared, appear to their Lordships for the most part to have been manifestations of human fallibility that are easy to understand and excuse. The time has surely come by now for them to be allowed to be forgotten[/QUOTe

And that statement was many years ago. Why then has Holmes chosen to resurrect the subject, especially with his treatment of Ron Chippendale???.

No need to answer that, it was to create a bit of controversy to help the sale of his book.

[DozyWannabe]

I have to admit I find it amusing that you speak of the man with such reverence, yet consistently misspell his surname. It's "Chippindale".

The joy of free speech and a free press is that any damn fool can say or print anything they wish, and taking offence on behalf of the dead is a fool's errand. No matter which way you slice it - to run the Antarctic flights the way ANZ did was a mistake. You blame the unions for taking it out of the hands of management captains and you blame Captain Collins and his crew for not being able to unravel the dreadful situation that the poor management and communications practice in the company put them in - fine, that's your lookout.

But as with many disasters of this type the truth of the matter went beyond piloting and aviation skills and showed a flawed system that promised the crews several redundant layers of safety - every single one of which was defeated by a late-night flight plan alteration at a computer terminal which was unannounced and undetected.

Everyone's going to have their own opinion - it's the way of things. I don't think theres any further resolution beyond this point.

[prospector]

Everyone's going to have their own opinion - it's the way of things. I don't think theres any further resolution beyond this point.

At last, something we can agree on.

[ampan]

The crew weren't promised several redundant levels of safety. That was the promise made to the passengers, and one of the most important safety barriers was the crew itself.

The other members of the crew should have objected, but they were not given much a chance.

As for these NZALPA 'believers' who say that the same thing would have happened to them, this is what a C141 pilot did about 45 minutes after Capt Collins: "At the time we we navigating entirely by INS. We maintained 16000 feet until McMurdo picked as up on radar; as I remember, this was at about 38 miles."

It wasn't rocket science and it wasn't complicated, either today, or in 1979, or in 1949. When you're at 16000 feet, you won't hit a 13000 foot hill.

[framer]

It wasn't rocket science and it wasn't complicated, either today, or in 1979, or in 1949. When you're at 16000 feet, you won't hit a 13000 foot hill.

And right there, in one simple sentence, is a nugget you can tuck away inside your flight bag and carry with you your entire flying career.

If you are involved in a company SMS then there are plenty of more complicated lessons to take from this event. If you fly aircraft, an awareness that the systems always fail in some way or another and that you can never rely on several redundant layers of safety is all you need, because you are the last layer of safety. That is your job. That is why you get paid more than the First Officer.

[FGD135]

I just can't believe some of the silly statements that have been made recently in this thread.

When you're at 16000 feet, you won't hit a 13000 foot hill.Silly, stupid statement that simplifies things so much that it ignores the important things.


... because you are the last layer of safety. That is your job. That is why you get paid more than the First Officer.
framer, this statement reveals that you do not understand the concept of safety levels. According to your statement, the other levels don't matter and you don't need them! You are saying the last level has the responsibility of preventing the accident.

If you fly aircraft, an awareness that the systems always fail in some way or another and that you can never rely on
So would you ever take off framer? With that view, you would never leave the ground! This is the third time I have had to put this to you. Here is the fourth: You MUST place a great deal of trust in others when you take flight. You have no other choice.

framer, you just make one motherhood statement after another.
I get the feeling that your statements are for the purpose of making *you* feel cozy that this accident wouldn't have happened to you. I think this is delusional and will contribute to a false sense of security.

I have been flying commercially in GA for 20 years but have no qualms in coming out and saying that I believe the result would have been exactly the same had I been the captain of that DC10 on that day.

Try saying this same thing to yourself. Say it with nobody within earshot if that helps. You will find that it doesn't hurt and will in fact set you free from those self-imposed ego constraints. You will then find yourself looking at the facts in a completely different light.

I think that for many pilots, there is a desperate belief that things would have been different had they been captain, and they will go to great lengths to support and strengthen that belief.

Bravo, Givelda, for the admission you made at post #221. Like Mahon, Vette and our Dozy, you can be trusted to look at the facts completely impartially. And thanks for that map.

After all, that was how the military pilots did it.Another silly statement. Ampan, the military pilots weren't there for the sightseeing!

There is something quite striking about the arguments made by those that believe the crew had some responsibility for the accident: they never use the word "reasonable".

That word, reasonable, is a very important one.

To judge whether the crew were responsible, you first must ask whether they made any mistakes or broke any rules. They didn't, so next you must ask whether their actions were reasonable.

So what did they do that was not reasonable?

Putting a DC10 at 1,500' and 250 kts in a region you've never been to before? Not unreasonable when he believed he would be visual with a visibility greater than 20 Km. He had been told that the low cloudbase was only over Ross Island and that everywhere else was effectively CAVOK.

Descending where/when they did? Not unreasonable given that the real, if unwritten, SOP was for a flypast of Ross Island at 2-3,000 feet. Making this the real SOP was the fact that every other crew had done this, plus the reinforcement of the briefing, plus the reinforcement of the crewroom chatter. Bear in mind that Chippindale himself did not fault the pilots for doing this.

Not plotting their position on a topo map of suitable scale before continuing the approach towards Ross Island? Why should they have done this? Their problem was the low cloud, NOT any uncertainty of position.

Were they supposed to have somehow realised that, in fact, there was actually, uncertainty as to their position? Just where, reasonably, were those prompts/cues to have come from?

[framer]

framer, this statement reveals that you do not understand the concept of safety levels. According to your statement, the other levels don't matter and you don't need them!
Nah not really FGD. I was trying to highlight a practical lesson that you can use as a pilot. I made reference to all the other systemic lessons that are in this event, people pretty much accept all those lessons, there are just a few who refuse to accept one very important lesson and thats very concerning.

I get the feeling that your statements are for the purpose of making *you* feel cozy that this accident wouldn't have happened to you. I think this is delusional and will contribute to a false sense of security.


Not at all FGD, someone asked me a week or so ago on this thread what would have happened if I was flying it and I honestly answered that I didn't know....doesn't really tie in with your cozy theory now does it.

[framer]

I just had a look back through the thread and it was you FGD who asked me what would have happened if I was flying it and I answered that I don't know.
I'm pretty keen on taking lessons out of incidents and accidents and I've put forward what I believe to be a good lesson from this accident, it was
Minimum Safe Altitudes are your last safety net that will protect you from mistakes and errors that yourself and others make.

I feel like if we all put forward one lesson, the one we personally think is the biggest from this event, one that can be of use in our careers, there might be some really good thought provoking stuff. If you could join me in that FGD it would be appreciated and possibly useful to myself and others.
Framer

[ampan]

Another important lesson is to stick to the plan, unless there’s good reason not to. In this case, the original plan was to check the weather about 100 miles or 30 minutes out and then make a decision. When they got to that point, Capt Collins checked the weather at Mac Station and it was, basically, no good. So he would have been thinking about going to the clear areas coming up on his right (eg, Taylor Valley), then going back to Cape Hallett and on towards the South Magnetic Pole, keeping a careful eye on the fuel. But then he was offered a radar letdown, the radar having a range of about 40 miles. Although that wasn’t part of the briefing, the captain would have performed a radar letdown on numerous occasions in the past, and he responded with “* * that’s what we want * * *”. In Vette’s reconstruction, he fills in the gaps and confirms that an experienced DC10 captain would have welcomed a radar letdown in those circumstances: “Collins expressed his relief: ‘Crikey. That’s what we want to hear.’”(p130)

As to the rules, the specific rule for the sector, and the general rule re AINS, was to stay above 16000 feet. VMC flying was an exception to both, but we know, and this is an undisputable fact, that Capt Collins knew that VMC was not assured when under the cloud. But that would not matter once his position had been confirmed by the radar operator. We also know, again as an undisputable fact, that Capt Collins was told, at the briefing, that the waypoint was at Mac Station. But again, the position of the waypoint would not matter once the radar operator had confirmed his position. The point is that when he accepted the radar letdown, he could not have been intending to go below MSA before his position was confirmed, because that would defeat the whole purpose – and the rest of his crew would assumed the same.

Against that background, what he did next is difficult to understand. At about 45 miles out, before he had even got within range of the radar, he says “I’ll have to do an orbit here I think … Well actually it’s clear out here if we can get down.” That was the first indication that he was going to go down, and rather then getting anyone else’s input, he immediately started to descend, such a minute later, it’s: “I’ll come round there and set that down (at) ten thousand”. So in less than two minutes, he went from 18000, through the MSA of 16000, down below 13000, being the height of a known hazard, right down to 10000 – without any reason and contrary to his own plan for the approach. And when he doesn’t get confirmation of his position from the radar operator, his solution is to keep going down, all the way to 1500 feet, rather than returning to MSA.

[framer]

Good point ampan, I hadn't actually thought of that. It reminds me of several 'beat-up' accident reports I've read where the beat-up was done on a whim while disregarding the original flight plan. I would like to see a list of several lessons we can take from this, we don't all have to agree with them, but they will at the very least make us think and then we are getting something from this discussion greater than arguments. Thus far we have;

From AmpanAnother important lesson is to stick to the plan,

From FramerMinimum Safe Altitudes are your last safety net that will protect you from mistakes and errors that yourself and others make.

From DozyAny safety-critical system is inevitably more complicated than the human brain will initially think it is - always assume that your best may not be good enough and make sure every contingency is covered".

[chris lz]

NOT any uncertainty of position.


But that's debatable. Their certainty was based on trusting AINS. It probably should not have been. The logic makes more sense after reading framer's response to my AINS question: he stated he's never been aware of any SOPs that allow AINS to be used as a substitute for ground based aids below MSA, primarily because of the drift factor. Wasn't that what the crew were in effect doing? Whether that was reasonable I guess depends on how high one thinks taking that risk would be. Would framer or anyone like to take a stab at this? How risky, in general, would you view Collins' use of AINS that day? Recklessly negligent? Understandable if not optimal? Or somewhere else on the danger curve?

[FGD135]

framer,

I find it a bit of a worry that you think the main lesson to be taken from this accident is:

Minimum Safe Altitudes are your last safety net that will protect you from mistakes and errors that yourself and others make.


Neither Mahon nor Chippindale considered the where/when of their descent to be an error/mistake. You seem to be the only one with this opinion.

And, this is NOT a lesson from the Erebus crash. This was a lesson that was presented - and learned from - way earlier in the history of powered flight.

And, the premise is false. MSA is just one of several safety layers. It will NOT necessarily protect you from the mistakes of yours or others.

Finally, I will suggest that by proposing this, you are looking more at the "whats", rather than the "whys".

framer, I asked you to summarise the opinions of those ANZ Captains who stated that the accident wouldn't have happened had they been at the controls. Please do so.


Another important lesson is to stick to the plan,

Another non-lesson! "Sticking to the plan" might have been a lesson in the first few years of powered flight. I can imagine a commander of the Royal Flying Corps finding that his charge crashed his Sopwith Camel into a tree because he didn't stick to the plan, but nowadays, we know that sticking to some plan can be just as dangerous as not.

Take fuel exhaustion and "VFR into IMC" accident categories, for example. Both of these frequently involve situations where a change of plan would probably have saved the day.

And besides, Collins WAS sticking to the plan! The plan was to give the passengers some lovely sightseeing - the first stage of which being a flypast of Ross Island at 2-3,000'.

To me, the lesson from this accident is that sometimes, those outside aviation will do a far better job of identifying the failures that led to the accident than those inside!

Collins' desire to get visual was perfectly normal and understandable and was in accord with the commercial obligations ANZ had towards the passengers. He broke no laws and contravened no established wisdom by doing this.

He did what he had to do! 99.9% of commercial flights terminate with a visual stage, but just how one gets visual depends on the environment and circumstances.

I had been going to list "organisational entropy" (OE) as the main lesson from this accident, but I'm sure there would have been accidents before this where that factor played a major part.

OE is an extremely difficult failing to rectify. The aviation company I work for at the moment - and all the previous ones - all have OE to the same extent as that which prevailed within Air New Zealand in 1979.

chris lz, my apologies, but I have run out of time for the moment. Next post I will address some of the questions and issues you have patiently been raising.

[prospector]

And besides, Collins WAS sticking to the plan! The plan was to give the passengers some lovely sightseeing

If the weather was suitable, and it obviously was not.

The more important plan was to get them home again.



This was a lesson that was presented - and learned from - way earlier in the history of powered flight.

And the first commandment applied then, it does now, and always will,

Thou shalt not make a stuff up or the ground will arise and smite thee


.
Neither Mahon nor Chippindale considered the where/when of their descent to be an error/mistake. You seem to be the only one with this opinion.

Mahon obviously did not, it was the backbone of the Chippindale report.

Initiated a descent below both the IMC 16.000ft and VMC 6,000ft minima for the area in a cloud free area

And I can assure you many airline experienced pilots agree with that opinion.

.
The aviation company I work for at the moment - and all the previous ones - all have OE to the same extent as that which prevailed within Air New Zealand in 1979.

So it would be a reasonable assumption that if we hear you have flown into a mountain, it would not be your fault but Company "OE"???

[framer]

this is NOT a lesson from the Erebus crash. This was a lesson that was presented - and learned from - way earlier in the history of powered flight.

I agree whole heartedly that it is a lesson that has been learnt before, and then forgotten. What I am getting at is , how many times do we have to learn it? I can think of three New Zealand crashes off the top of my head that would not have ocurred without a willful violation of a safety altitude.

MSA is just one of several safety layers. It will NOT necessarily protect you from the mistakes of yours or others.

True but if we are waiting for one lesson that will prevent all crashes we will be waiting a long time. Respecting safety altitudes will definately protect you from some crashes. That is worth while isn't it?

The conversations I had with two Air NZ Captains about this contributed to the opinion I have formed about this. I'm not speaking on their behalf, just mine so I won't 'summarise' any more than that.

Finally, I will suggest that by proposing this, you are looking more at the "whats", rather than the "whys".

I can see why you feel like that. I am focussing in on one element because it is disputed. The other reasons (and there are many in this case) are not. It is suggested by Paul Holmes, Mahon, Dozy, yourself, and obviously many others that the crew bear no responsibility. I personaly think that is a dangerous position to take so I put my view forward in the discussion.

[framer]

Another important lesson is to stick to the plan,

Minimum Safe Altitudes are your last safety net that will protect you from mistakes and errors that yourself and others make.

Any safety-critical system is inevitably more complicated than the human brain will initially think it is - always assume that your best may not be good enough and make sure every contingency is covered".

To me, the lesson from this accident is that sometimes, those outside aviation will do a far better job of identifying the failures that led to the accident than those inside!

..............................

[ampan]

FDG135 #290: Of course you change the plan if you have to, but he didn't have to. If he was so keen to see McMurdo Station, he already had the best method, which he had announced to the passengers, which included the two extra crew members. Look at the situation from F/O Lucas’ perspective: The radar letdown was announced over the PA, which would have made perfect sense to him. He would then have noticed the first descending orbit, followed shortly thereafter by another announcement over the PA: "Captain again ladies and gentlemen we're carrying out an orbit and circling our present position and will be descending to an altitude below cloud so that we can proceed to McMurdo Sound ... thank you". F/O Lucas, as well as the spare F/E, would have assumed that the radar operator had confirmed the aircraft's position. This could explain the some of the garbled background comments, in that one of the spare crewmembers might have gone up to the cockpit and discovered that they were still trying to contact the radar operator, when they were already below MSA. Whatever the situation, Capt Collins’ quickly-hatched plan was a bad one, and the reason came out of his own mouth.

The other obvious reason for waiting (for the radar operator to confirm his position) was other aircraft. There were helicopters flying on the day and there were other fixed-wing aircraft around – and he was flying without flaps at 260 knots, and went from 18000 all the way down to 2000. Putting the terrain to one side, I would suggest that most DC10 captains of the time would have wanted to ensure that they were on the radar screen before going down through 16000 feet of airspace, whatever the radar operator had to say about it. (In any event, he was only cleared to 2000 feet, yet dropped another 500 feet without any clearance from the tower, right into the band that the helicopters were probably operating in.)

[FGD135]

Mahon obviously did not, it was the backbone of the Chippindale report.
Ah yes, looking through Chippindale's report, I see that he did indeed have an objection to the descent occurring when/where it did. The contrary had been stated earlier in this thread by someone else and I had just been repeating that.

But this does not change my views as to whether that was a reasonable act on the part of the flight crew. I still believe it was, given all the circumstances.

Those (including Chippindale) that insist he "broke an SOP" by descending where/when he did need to realise that that "SOP" was not really an SOP.

An "SOP" is not an SOP when nobody observes it. Not only was nobody observing it, its disregard was condoned by the CAA. And as the RC revealed, ANZ had distributed a pamphlet to every postal address in NZ, advertising the fact that the flights were passing Ross Island at low level.

Some SOP!

... if we hear you have flown into a mountain, it would not be your fault but Company "OE"???It would take an investigation to determine whether it was my fault or the company's OE. I just hope it would be somebody as open-minded as Mahon doing the investigation.

I think it would be fair to say that ALL pilots hope somebody like Mahon will investigate their crash.

chris lz,

Re "certainty of position". This subject is largely philosophical.

No pilot is ever 100% certain of their absolute position - and the word "position" itself has aspects whose discussion are more suited to philosophy!

The degree of certainty varies, and the criteria for "certainty" varies between flight phases. What would pass for certainty in the middle of a long overwater crossing would not suffice during an instrument approach, for example.

The question of position certainty is really a question of degree. There is a dividing line between "sufficiently certain" and "insufficiently certain" and precisely where that line is drawn is a matter of opinion.

For a pilot to be "certain" of his position, he will usually have built a case based on several independent pieces of evidence (inputs). (E.g. INS position roughly agrees with VOR/DME; Distance to run agrees with time since last positive fix, etc - there are dozens of combinations). It would be a rare pilot to use only one input.

Giving Collins "certainty" of present, recent and near-future position would have been the following three inputs (or "facts"):

1. The AINS position was visually confirmed over Cape Hallett;
2. The AINS would accumulate no more than 1 mile of error between Cape Hallett and McMurdo Station;
3. The route had been plotted on a map the night before;

In Chippindale's opinion, the pilots of TE901 were not sufficiently sure of their position. What he really meant was that, within the context of the environment and what they were intending to do, they should have possessed a higher degree of certainty.


And this is all very obviously true, but is something that can only be said in hindsight (Mahon's opinion).

Their certainty was based on trusting AINS.Yes, but this was perfectly reasonable. I cannot conceive of a navigator that would not have had a similar degree of "trust" for the AINS at that point.

The AINS had got them to the point where they could transition to visual navigation. The accident occurred whilst the aircraft was being navigated visually.

[Desert Dingo]

Ampan: It appears you have a problem with reading comprehension regarding the CVR record.

Mac centre never cleared TE901 to descend to 2000 feet.

What Mac center did do was to clear TE901 to descend maintaining VMC and keep them advised of what level was being maintained.

2000 feet was a level that F/O Cassin said they were descending to at a time when he had radio contact on HF. Some time later they descended further to 1500 feet (which seems appropriate as McMurdo had reported overcast at 2000 feet). F/O Cassin was never able to advise the final level being maintained because of the radio problems.

I’ll refresh your memory and even use Chippindale’s version of the CVR.

0032:07 RDO-2 (HF)
We'd like further descent and we could orbit in our present position which is approximately 43 miles north, descending in VMC.

0032:08 CTR (HF)
Roger Kiwi New Zealand 901, VMC descent is approved and keep Mac Center advised of your altitude.

0032:10 RDO-2 (HF)
Roger, New Zealand 901, we're vacating one eight zero. We'll advise level.

And later when Mac centre requests a cloud layer report

0044:57 CTR (HF)
Understand the bases are at ten thousand?

0045:00 RDO-2 (HF)
Affirmative. We are now at six thousand descending to two thousand and we’re VMC.

[Do a text search and that is the only time “two thousand” appears in the radio transcript.]
So when you write
(In any event, he was only cleared to 2000 feet, yet dropped another 500 feet without any clearance from the tower, right into the band that the helicopters were probably operating in.)
I call BS. You are making false assertions without a shred of evidence to back it up.

[prospector]

Affirmative. We are now at six thousand descending to two thousand and we’re VMC.

Would appear to be rather unusual adding "we're VMC". It is the only way they could be at that altitude without getting a descent clearance, and they would not have got a descent clearance as such before they were identified by radar'.

There was only, as standard practice for VMC descent, advisories given to the controller as to their altitude and intentions.

In a VMC descent, responsible for their own terrain and traffic separation as they had requested, all the controller had to provide was traffic information.

There was a danger operating at that altitude, as has been mentioned before on this thread. One of the reasons for the minimum descent altitude, 6,000ft, was that at that altitude there was no danger of bird strike with the numerous skua gulls, big birds capable of causing a lot of damage.

Wonder what would have been the outcome if one of the flights that did descend below 6,000ft did have such a birdstrike that caused substantial damage, which at 260kts plus it certainly would have, and the reason given was that "The controller invited me to do a low level run". Would not hold much water as areason..

The contrary had been stated earlier in this thread by someone else and I had just been repeating that.

Would not worry to much about that, would appear to happen quite often on this thread.



.

[framer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwW-T6pIQoA
FGD and Dozy, I would like to hear your thoughts on what Nigel Roberts says 47 seconds into the youtube video that I have posted the link to.
To me it says quite a lot.
Cheers, Framer

[chris lz]

FGD135 (http://www.pprune.org/members/237338-fgd135),

Thank you for your reply. I am not one of those who say this was just another ordinary CFIT. So whatever Collins misjudgements regarding AINS may have been, I cut him a lot of slack. The coincidence factor was pretty high on that day. Whether Collins' confidence was reasonable is still an open question in my mind. But I doubt he could be accused of gross negligence. The airline itself described him as "meticulous."

The question marks for me remain as follows:


-"certainty" - of course, it's a question of degree. But acknowledging this doesn't itself show the crew had "reasonable" certainty.


-Cape Hallet - If there had already been a drift of 3 or 4 miles, would they have noticed it at that point? So we have the possibility of 4-5 miles drift by the time they were in Lewis Bay.

-However acurate AINS was, we have it from prospector that it was never intended as a substitute for ground aids. That implies they used it improperly.


-They were not picking up signals from the TACAN.

-They had no VHF contact.

-Regardless of what one thinks of the above, I suggest it's common sense that before beginning a VMC descent in a mountainous area, without any ground aids available, you first visually identifiy the mountain(s) itself. To me that just seems intuitively basic to any philosophy espousing "fail safe flying."


When you combine all this together, I can certainly believe that many pilots would not have did what Collins did - and that's in fact what many have stated. Why should we be out to condemn them, especially if they are telling the truth? Perhaps we should at least say that maybe this is an irresolvable grey area. Possible?

Cheers

[FGD135]

... your thoughts on what Nigel Roberts says 47 seconds into the youtube video
He describes a flight that appears to have been observing the "16,000' descent limit". He goes on to describe the next flight as one that clearly wasn't.

Yes, the odd flight does appear to have observed that "limit", but in Mahon's opinion, most didn't.


I suggest it's common sense that before beginning a VMC descent in a mountainous area, without any ground aids available, you first visually identifiy the mountain(s) itself. To me that just seems intuitively basic to any philosophy espousing "fail safe flying."
It is not necessary to see and identify ground obstacles before switching to visual flight, but you must be in VMC at that point (in order to see that you can continue in VMC). You don't even need to know your position - you can be totally lost!

The only requirement re visual flight is that the necessary meteorological conditions exist.

Terrain and other obstacles beside the flight path don't matter. The only thing that matters is that you can see a sufficient distance along the path the aircraft will take. Wise aviators will have an escape plan up their sleeves for some scenarios involving visual flight, however.

At the point where Collins realised he didn't have adequate visual reference it was too late for any escape.

[ampan]

Chris Iz - They checked the black box to see what happened at Cape Hallett. This is from MB Wylie, an NZ government accident inspector:

1. "The aircraft was overhead the Cape Hallett waypoint at 2351 hours GMT at flight level 330. This altitude, plus or minus 45 feet, was maintained throughout.

2. During this period the aircraft was flown continuously by the number two autopilot engaged in the Command (normal on) mode.

3. Prior to turning into the Hallett – McMurdo leg, the role mode of the Flight Guidance System was in ‘NAV TRK’ and the aircraft heading was 327.5 degrees plus or minus 0.5 degrees to maintain this track.The Grid track for this leg was 324 degrees, the difference being due largely to drift.

4. The aircraft overshot this turn requiring it to make an intercept on the out-bound track. This is unusual, as the flight guidance system would normally compute its rate of turn based on the selected bank angle and commence the turn at a point that would allow the in-bound and out-bound tracks to be tangential to the radius of the turn; ie, the aircraft wouldn’t actually reach the turning point. Bank angle in this form was limited to five degrees. One possible explanation for this overshoot is that as the aircraft started to turn, the crew reduced the bank angle from a normal position of 20-25 degrees to the five degrees setting. This would allow better viewing from both sides of the aircraft, but because of the small bank angle, the aircraft would overshoot the next track.

5. At 2356:43 hours the NAV TRK mode was again displayed as the aircraft locked onto the Hallett-McMurdo track. The initial Grid Heading was 360 degrees on this leg. This backed one degree as the aircraft corrected for changes in drift. The Grid track on this leg was 358 degrees.

6. At no stage was the “Heading Select” mode engaged. This would occur if the aircraft was manually steered through the autopilot.

7. If the crew had manually updated the system at any time after leaving the Christchurch area the words “Manually Updated” would be displayed above the ‘present position’ shown on the performance page of the CDU. These words were not displayed.

8. Based on the known error in the AINS at impact; the error in the system one hour earlier when the aircraft was over Cape Hallett would be less than three nautical miles. With the aircraft at altitude it is doubtful if the crew could visually improve the system accuracy by making a manual update.

9. The crew of NZP made a number of radio calls (4 on VHF2, 6 on HF1, 11 on HF2) during the period. The voice recorder record does no extend to cover this period so the context of these messages is not known."



One slightly interesting thing about the waypoint is that it's right on Cape Hallett, which, under the Antarctic Treaty, is a 'no overfly' area. That might have been different in 1979, but it's more likely to be yet another SNAFU by AirNZ.

[compressor stall]

Amman, most ASPAs (well the ones I have had to avoid) have a minimum altitude of 2500 feet overflight to protect the wildlife. I'll check for Cape Hallet, but suspect it would be no different.

[compressor stall]

http://www.ats.aq/documents/recatt/Att443_e.pdf

Only 2000 feet...

[prospector]

I suggest it's common sense that before beginning a VMC descent in a mountainous area, without any ground aids available, you first visually identifiy the mountain(s) itself. To me that just seems intuitively basic to any philosophy espousing "fail safe flying."

And that would be a very valid suggestion that I for one would agree with wholeheartedly.

[prospector]

Compressor stall,

Could you please give your opinion on the validity of the requirement to remain above 6,000ft, using the possibility of bird strike with skua gulls as one of the reasons???

[ampan]

Compressor Stall: Thanks for the clarification. I'm sure the little penguins could handle a DC10 that's 33000 feet away.

Prospector: I vaguely recall reading something about skua gulls and height limits. They're definitely big birds. (The other large flying bird in the region is a species of albatross, but they tend to fly low, using ground effect.)

[compressor stall]

In my experience, I don't recall seen a skua in flight from the air in the cruise below 10K, and I've flown along ~1/3 of the Antarctic coastline at 6000 feet or below. (On low level survey, however, <1000' I've seen a lot of birds including skuas, but that's irrelevant to the discussion).

I'm not comfortable criticising any risk analysis regarding altitudes for skua avoidance around the McMurdo area, especially as I've only flown into and out of the Ross Sea area to/from flight levels.

Having said all that, it's all a matter of likelihood and consequence. I believe that chances of a QF/DJ 737 hitting a small "fire hawk" (similar sized bird) in outback Australia would be at least one order of magnitude higher. However a buggered engine in Kalgoorlie is not as much of an issue as a buggered engine at 78S. :eek:

[prospector]

compressor stall,

Thanks, do you still have that photo approaching McMurdo Sound taken from the flight levels? as I recall it showed Ross Island, Mt Erebus and Beaufort Island to perfection. It showed the likely difference in weather conditions that previous flights had for a VMC descent as against the conditions that were prevailing for Capt Collins flight.

[compressor stall]

I can't find it at the moment on my photobucket site. In the mean time, have this one to ponder whilst I stitch the images together again.

http://i663.photobucket.com/albums/uu353/stallie001/aviation/Picture6.jpg

[ampan]

That's two big hailstorms and a smaller one - or two big mountains covered in hail and a smaller one, otherwise known as Ross Island.

[chris lz]

Chris Iz - They checked the black box to see what happened at Cape Hallett. This is from MB Wylie, an NZ government accident inspector:




Thanks - I've only looked at the Chippindale report proper and don't recall seeing this.


You don't even need to know your position - you can be totally lost!



That's what I used to think until I encountered commercial pilots on internet forums. How many do you think would agree with you?

[prospector]

Hope that is not a Bendix radar, they will not show up Ross Is, despite what a number of crews said to the contrary.

[ampan]

Chris Iz: I wouldn't disagree with FGD135. The best description I've read was on the other Erebus thread, by someone with the moniker of Bryan Abraham, who used the phrase "VMC bubble". This was another of those VMC/IFC accidents, just like JFK Jnr. He thought he could follow the lights along the coast to Martha's Vineyard, but couldn't see the cloud ahead, because it was dark. Once he entered the cloud, he lost all visual reference and couldn't distinguish up from down. If he had bothered to get his instrument rating, it would have been drummed into his head that he was to ignore his eyes and fly solely on his instruments.

[prospector]

It is not necessary to see and identify ground obstacles before switching to visual flight, but you must be in VMC at that point (in order to see that you can continue in VMC). You don't even need to know your position - you can be totally lost!

I would not agree with that statement. You are either on a VFR plan or an IFR plan, you certainly would not be flying IMC without being on an IFR plan. If you are on an IFR plan then the controllers must provide separation, either vertical or horizontal, from traffic, and terrain, by using MSA (Minimum Safe Altitude) When you request VMC then you must be coming from an IFR plan, you are then responisble for your own terrain and traffic separation. If you are responsible for your own terrain separation then you must know where that terrain is relative to your position., How could this happen if you were lost???



If you are on an IFR plan you would be flying, normally, on a track from beacon to beacon, or with modern gear, GPS, direct to your destination.

If you wanted then to proceed VMC, weather permitting, which is normally requested for a descent to destination you could request a VMC descent. This to save the round about way of descent via an Instrument Approach Procedure. If, after requesting VMC flight, you do not wish to proceed directly to your planned destination then you must advise the controller, .cancel your IFR plan and proceed VFR.

Or that's the way it used to be.

[FGD135]

I would not agree with that statement.
My statement was related to the simplest set of circumstances. To bring in ATC, clearances and flight plans is unnecessarily complicating things.

There is no law or rule that I know of that says you must know your position before switching to visual navigation. Similarly, there is no law for the reverse situation (switching from visual navigation).

Note that we are not talking about switching from IFR to VFR. The aircraft can still be following IFR procedures whilst navigating visually.


That's what I used to think until I encountered commercial pilots on internet forums. How many do you think would agree with you?
If they don't agree then I would suggest the reason was that they misunderstand the question. Go back to those forums and ask specifically:

Is it a requirement that an IFR aircraft that is switching from navaid/RNAV navigation methods to visual navigation must know its position before making the switch?

My statements in this area have been to address an apparent belief held by chris lz that a pilot must be certain of his position before switching to visual navigation.

There is also no law against being lost or uncertain of position!

[chris lz]

My statements in this area have been to address an apparent belief held by chris lz that a pilot must be certain of his position before switching to visual navigation.




Thanks. This is precisely the kind of nuance that's key to one's understanding. Maybe my assumption is incorrect. Let's be very specific: to other pilots still tuning in:

1) is there a formal rule that states when switching from instrument flying to VMC you must first establish your position with (a high degree of) certainty?

2) If not, is the argument then that "certainty of position" is implied by any standard of responsible airmanship while VMC - at least with 300 pax behind you?

My thinking has been that either 1) or 2) must be correct.

Pilots: speak

Thank you

[prospector]

My statement was related to the simplest set of circumstances. To bring in ATC, clearances and flight plans is unnecessarily complicating things.


Sorry, but that is what happens in the real world.

[FGD135]

Sorry, but that is what happens in the real world.
Agreed!

chris lz, answers:

1) No
2) Yes

Note that an IFR aircraft may be navigated by visual means, if desired. The aircraft is still effectively IFR.

Similarly, a VFR aircraft may be navigated entirely via means normally utilised by IFR flights (e.g, using ground-based navaids such as VOR, NDB, DME or RNAV-based systems such as INS, GPS, LORAN, etc).

TE901 was being navigated visually, but was still operating to the IFR.

This is quite different from an aircraft that has switched from IFR to VFR. A VFR aircraft must conform to strict rules regarding visibility and separation from cloud, whereas an IFR aircraft navigating visually is not bound to those VMC requirements.

[FGD135]

An absolutely striking image of Mt Erebus, Mt Terror and Mt Bird, thanks stallie!

Mt Erebus gets all the attention but to help appreciate the terrain of Ross Island, it is worth remembering that Mt Bird - the smaller of the three blobs - is itself almost 6,000' above sea level!


Hope that is not a Bendix radar, they will not show up Ross Is, despite what a number of crews said to the contrary.


That image could not have come from any radar because it shows the mountains as circular shapes. A radar would only be able to see the sides facing the aircraft.

That image is from the EGPWS (Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System), which has been regular equipment in airliners for only about the last 15 years.

[DozyWannabe]

At the point where Collins realised he didn't have adequate visual reference it was too late for any escape.

Or to be more precise, lost the visual references he thought he had up until that point.

[chris lz]

Agreed!

chris lz, answers:

1) No
2) Yes




In regard to 2) above, just curious how this strikes you:


- The crew's reliance on AINS resulted in plane hitting mountain

- The crew's reliance on ground aids would not have resulted in plane hitting mountain

-It follows that reliance on AINS is not a substitute for ground aids.


Evaluate.

[framer]

DozyHe describes a flight that appears to have been observing the "16,000' descent limit". He goes on to describe the next flight as one that clearly wasn't.


Thats right. So on the 14th November, Simpson, who had been to the same briefing, maintained MSA even in good weather. (I imagine it was the 6000ft visual MSA not the FL160 IMC MSA).

In the prevailing conditions and knowing how previous flights had been conducted, who on here can hold their hand on their heart and say they would not have done the same?
Well I imagine Simpson could, considering he went to the same briefing but still respected the minimum altitudes even though the weather was better.


Except in this case Wilson was the company-appointed briefing pilot who told them that the rule could be broken and Simpson was the pilot who attended the same briefing and did in fact come home safely. The crew had every right to trust that they would be too if they followed instructions which - as I said - they did *to the letter*.
So are you saying that Simpson didn't follow the instructions to the letter? Why on earth was Simpson floating around up so high when he had been instructed to descend prior to the descent area?

Because they had been told it was safe to do so
Again , why did Simpson not do it then?

your arguments are based around an ideal-world interpretation of what they could and should have done, rather than what they were required to do in the real-world situation.
But Simpsons flight was in the real world, respecting the MSA's didn't do him any harm did it?
I'm not attacking the pilots here, I'm attacking your guys arguments that they are absolved of all responsibility because they were told it was safe, they were told to do it etc etc. You even say it would have happened to any crew. Well obviously it wouldn't have happened to the flight on the 14th November Captained by someone who was at the same briefing, because he was too high to hit anything.

[ampan]

Chris Iz: The problem there is that you could swap the two premises around and still have had the plane hitting the mountain. For example, assume that the waypoint was where he thought it was, and assume that the radar operator was drunk. In that event, there would have been no accident if he had relied on the AINS, but there would have been if the radar operator's double-vision had him with Erebus dead ahead, the operator therefore recommending an urgent turn to the left.

[DozyWannabe]

@framer - You're replying to FGD135, not me. However, I don't have any details on Simpson's flight other than the fact he got back safely - if you could provide corroborating evidence that he did not in fact go below 6,000ft at any point during his flight I'd be very interested to see it.

[ampan]

Simpson stayed at 6000 while going down the Sound, then went down to 2000 once overhead McMurdo Station.

[DozyWannabe]

OK - do you have a link to a source for that information so I can add it to my pile? I don't mean to be a pedant, but given that it was Simpson who reported McMurdo Station to be 27 miles from the waypoint, does that mean he flew down the Sound, made a left turn at the waypoint's longitude and flew overhead? I realise the visibility was a lot better when he made the trip, so it's possible.

However, even if true, that doesn't really change anything as far as I'm concerned. Simpson was flying the "false" track and as such would have been able to descend safely to 2,000ft at the same longitude Collins did with no negative repercussions. The crux of the matter for me is that both Collins and Simpson had the same briefing materials, but only Collins flew the route with the unannounced changed waypoint. Thus the briefing (including the verbal dispensation in particular) would have been perfectly safe for Simpson, but Collins was placed in considerable danger by operating to the same parameters and restrictions.

[ampan]

I got it from Simpson's brief of evidence: page 9, paragraphs 32 and 33 - which is reproduced in The Erebus Papers at pages 242-3. (There's a copy currently for sale on Trade Me for NZD16.00)

[framer]

Simpson stayed at 6000 while going down the Sound, then went down to 2000 once overhead McMurdo Station.


In that case I better retract my comments about him staying at 6000ft.

Sorry about that, I concede and points to you Dozy.

[FGD135]

- The crew's reliance on AINS resulted in plane hitting mountain
Not sure what exactly you mean be "reliance" in this context. Are there some other words you can use instead?

The aircraft was being navigated visually at the time of the accident.

Using my understanding of that word, I would say that the crew were reliant on the AINS for the overwater segments, but as Cape Hallett came into sight, they became less reliant on it. The "reliance level" continued to steadily decrease from then on.

-It follows that reliance on AINS is not a substitute for ground aids.
Agreed, and I don't believe anybody in this thread has stated anything to the contrary.

[DozyWannabe]

(Re : AINS vs. ground aids)

Agreed, and I don't believe anybody in this thread has stated anything to the contrary.

The issue in this case is that while the withdrawal of the Williams Field NDB effectively reduced the available ground aids by 50%, the airline did not treat it as such. The written materials were in the briefing, but aside from that nothing had changed. The dispensation to descend to any level specified by the McMurdo Station controller (and the assertion that as far as the company was concerned, it superceded the 6,000ft NZCA limit) remained unchallenged. I'd bet any money you'd care to name that any disquiet on the part of the NZCA was never relayed in the briefing. As far as the company was concerned, the AINS and radar tracking from McMurdo Station provided enough defence in depth against a mistake. Unfortunately - because the change of waypoint was never communicated to the crew, and the co-ordinates of the new waypoint were never transmitted to Mac Central - both those safeguards were defeated and that left the lives of everyone on board in the hands of a crew who was navigating visually to the best of their ability but who did not know that the starting point of their descent had changed, nor did they know that the overcast they were trying to avoid was capable of hiding the mountain that had unwittingly been placed in their path. If everyone involved had followed procedure then it is likely the accident would have been avoided - unfortunately a desire on the part of the Chief Navigator to correct a mistake as quietly as possible led to disaster.

[prospector]

. If everyone involved had followed procedure then it is likely the accident would have been avoided

And that surely is what the discussion has been all about, everybody, including the crew did not, for a lot of reasons, many of which have been aired on this thread, so to clain they are blameless is why I for one, and obviously many others do not agree with Holmes. Remember it was because of his publicity machine that this thread was started.

[chris lz]

Chris Iz: The problem there is that you could swap the two premises around and still have had the plane hitting the mountain. For example, assume that the waypoint was where he thought it was, and assume that the radar operator was drunk. In that event, there would have been no accident if he had relied on the AINS, but there would have been if the radar operator's double-vision had him with Erebus dead ahead, the operator therefore recommending an urgent turn to the left.


Certainly ATC have guided aircraft to their demise in the past. I also know of at least one case were instruments on the ground were faulty and probably caused a crash. That said, before proceeding, let me ask framer or prospector (or anyone else) if a radio message from a controller looking at a radar scope is what they have in mind when they think of "confirmation from ground based aids."

Thanks

[chris lz]

framer/prospector,

In addition to what ampan has written, could you explain for the benefit of the ignorant if the TACAN at McMurdo was capable of providing both distance and bearing info, thus capable of alerting the crew to their mistaken position. I'm assuming it would, but I constantly read that it was "equivalent to" civilian DME, not "VOR/DME":confused:


Thanks

[henry crun]

chris lz: I am not sure I understand what you are asking in your first question about "a controller looking at a radar scope is what they have in mind when they think of "confirmation from ground based aids.".

The rules for controllers to identify aircraft are strict and usually laid down in the company or local orders.
They may include confirmation of passing over a ground based aid like VOR that is marked on the video map, reporting a bearing and distance from an approved aid, by confirmation over a known geographic point marked on the video map, etc.
The list is not complete but you get the idea.

Re your second question, civil aircraft cannot receive bearing information from military Tacan, they can only get distance from the Dme.

[DozyWannabe]

And that surely is what the discussion has been all about, everybody, including the crew did not, for a lot of reasons, many of which have been aired on this thread, so to clain they are blameless is why I for one, and obviously many others do not agree with Holmes. Remember it was because of his publicity machine that this thread was started.

But what you are saying is incorrect - I repeat, the crew followed the information they were given in the briefing to the letter. That NZCA's 6,000ft limit was effectively disregarded by the airline and briefed as such means that you'd have to have an excessively strict interpretation of the rules to put any level of blame on the crew. No matter what papers were found and presented, the fact remains that they were told the 6,000ft limit was to be disregarded if Mac Central offered them a lower altitude.

I don't follow the logic in saying the flight crew - the last link in the chain of events that had been set up by management, ops and nav section before they even departed, remember - should be blamed for not following a rule they were told to disregard.

@chris lz : To confirm what henry crun said, the TACAN was not capable of giving directional information on civilian equipment, and neither could the NDB even when it was operational (the clue's in the name :)).

[ampan]

I surrender re altitude.

But not re waypoint. He couldn't follow the briefing to the letter, because he had received conflicting information about it.

[prospector]

should be blamed for not following a rule they were told to disregard.

When were they told to disregard the dictates of the weather? in fact the pax had been briefed if the wx was unsuitable they had an alternate plan.

[ampan]

Good point. So he might have complied with the badly-written "directive" (as verbally amended by Capt Wilson), but he was still subject to the general requirement to operate the aircraft in a safe manner. He knew the problem with flying under the cloud. I don't see why he had to have experienced a sector whiteout before. That's a bit like saying that you need to jump off a cliff in order to appreciate the problem with doing so.

[framer]

To confirm what henry crun said, the TACAN was not capable of giving directional information on civilian equipment, and neither could the NDB even when it was operational (the clue's in the name http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/smile.gif).

Every NDB approach I've ever done the NDB gave me directional information. In fact, thats all it gave me. I must have missed the clue in the name :rolleyes:

[henry crun]

DozyWannabe: For the benefit of framer, myself, and probably many pilots reading this thread, if an NDB does not provide bearing infomation, please tell us what it does provide and how it is used.

[chris lz]

For anyone:

Let me make sure I have everything straight. With the NDB assumed as non operational, and the TACAN incapable of giving bearing info, the only means the crew of F901 had (at the time of their descent) to verify their position with the aid of ground instruments would be messages relayed by ATC based on their radar returns.

Do I have this right?

[amc890]

The needle on the instrument panel points to the station regardless of where you are relative to it so you need to know the aircraft heading first to get any idea of where you are ( unless you are directly overhead). Think carefully before answering that one though.

[ampan]

If you had the track plotted on chart/atlas, you could use the TACAN as a cross-check (eg, "If I'm here, then I should be x miles from the TACAN. Am I?)

The problem was that he only received the signal from the TACAN for a very short period.

If you look at p15 of the Mahon Report, he has the assumed track and the actual track, with various distances to the waypoint marked off. If the TACAN signal was being received by the aircraft and the check was done at 43 miles to the assumed waypoint, it would have given a distance of 43 miles to the TACAN, whereas it should have been 48. If done at 34 miles out, the distance would have been 34, whereas it should have been 41. And if done 26 miles out, the distance to the TACAN would have been 26, where it should have been 36.

[Brian Abraham]

the only means the crew of F901 had (at the time of their descent) to verify their position with the aid of ground instruments would be messages relayed by ATC based on their radar returns.The only aids available to the crew were,

TACAN - using the distance read out you get a circle of probability ie if it reads 40 miles you don't know which direction you are from the station and need back up information to determine direction. You can carry out a what is known as a DME homing procedure which determines a coarse direction and ultimately the procedure will bring you over head the station, where upon the distance displayed will be your altitude.

RADAR - if the aircraft was above 30° elevation a radar fix would not have been available. With that limitation a radar fix would be available to within a little under 5 NM by my back of the envelope calc if the aircraft was at the 16,000 LSALT.

[prospector]

The only aids available to the crew were,

What about the WX radar in the mapping mode?? Mahon went to great lengths to show this was not relevant, probably because it never fitted into his theory.

From "Aviation Tragedies" John King.

This aspect has been hotly debated. Many pilots flying the DC10 to the AntArctic used the weather radar in mapping mode which clearly confirmed the outline of Ross Island and the hight ground they could see through the cockpit window in the clear AntArctic conditions. The Chippindale report covered that point.

One would think given the situation every piece of equipment to confirm position prior to descent below MSA would be used.

[DozyWannabe]

DozyWannabe: For the benefit of framer, myself, and probably many pilots reading this thread, if an NDB does not provide bearing infomation, please tell us what it does provide and how it is used.

OK, so I got my wires crossed - you *can* get bearing information from an NDB, but it requires more mental calculation than, say, VOR. In any case the NDB was (officially at least) not in service, so other than getting me to admit a mistake (which I'm happy to do) not much else has changed.

Back to the subject at hand, the weather was within minimums for the flight path they took - certainly it was not as promising as it had been for many of the other flights, but they didn't break any rules (at least - any of those that they had not been told to disregard). Remember that they thought they were headed down McMurdo Sound and that the overcast applied only to the immediate area of Ross Island. There were enough breaks in the cloud between 2,000 and 16,000ft for the crew to make a visual descent and because they thought they were well west of where they actually were they probably did not expect the overcast to present much of a problem until they reached the immediate area of Ross Island and turned left once south-west of the mountains (the point at which Simpson had noticed the waypoint discrepancy).

In short they were expecting the overcast to be east of their position and as far as they were concerned the conditions in which they made their descent (broken cloud) would remain the same until they turned left.

Riddle me this - if NZCA and ANZ were so confident that the allegation of busting minima would prove pilot error as the primary factor, then why invent the story of them being in cloud when they crashed (which was later proven to be incorrect, but not before the press reports based on this allegation had fixed it in the public's mind)?

@prospector - I detect a logical inconsistency in your argument. Given that your position is that the crew deserve to share responsibility on the grounds that they did not go "by the book", it takes considerable chutzpah to argue that they were remiss in not using the weather radar for terrain avoidance despite the fact that Bendix expressly forbade use of the weather radar in this manner in their own operations manual. If the management pilots in whom you set so much store did use it this way then it is they who were in the wrong - if, of course, one were to go "by the book". Also, Mahon never had a "theory" of his own while the inquiry was in session - it was his job to assess the theories and evidence submitted, then formulate the most likely sequence of events and the responsibility for those events based on the quality of evidence submitted. Given that ANZ management presented only the evidence which supported their case and deliberately destroyed the rest then they really only have themselves to blame for giving the late Justice reason to distrust them.

[prospector]

[.then why invent the story of them being in cloud when they crashed (which was later proven to be incorrect, but not before the press reports based on this allegation had fixed it in the public's mind)?

Nobody invented anything, iPeople were trying to figure out why they flew into Ross Island without seeing it. Vette came up with his explanation of vector whiteout, which is a possibility, but only a theory, Chippindale came up with his theory that they may have flown into cloud, which at that altitude and those conditions was a distinct possibility.

Neither of these people were at the scene at the time, so one theory is as good as the other.

Nobody yet has come up with an answer as to why the wx radar in mapping mode did not paint the rock cliffs around Ross Island, remember, the dark pieces they saw in the distance and mistook for something else? In that mode it would not be used as a primary navigation aid, but it would certainly be of assistance in determining, or confirming position.

If the management pilots in whom you set so much store did use it this way then it is they who were in the wrong

That statement is about as accurate as your idea of the use of an NDB, These pilots were in real VMC conditions, and they could visually see Ross Island and Mt Erebus and compare what they could see with the radar readout.


AMC890,
The needle on the instrument panel points to the station regardless of where you are relative to it so you need to know the aircraft heading first to get any idea of where you are ( unless you are directly overhead). Think carefully before answering that one though.

RMI's, Radio Magnetic Indicators, have been in use for at least 50 years, so you can get a bearing to/ from the beacon at any time when with in range.

.


.

[DozyWannabe]

Nobody invented anything, iPeople were trying to figure out why they flew into Ross Island without seeing it. Vette came up with his explanation of vector whiteout, which is a possibility, but only a theory, Chippindale came up with his theory that they may have flown into cloud, which at that altitude and those conditions was a distinct possibility.

Except that Vette went to the trouble of obtaining weather data from that area at that time and discovered that there was no cloud at any level below approximately 2,500ft, thus significantly reducing - if not completely disproving - the possibility that they were in cloud. Sector whiteout then becomes the most likely explanation.

For whatever reason, Chippindale promoted the "in cloud" theory - probably because it was the most obvious explanation at the time - and subsequently refused to budge from that position even when confronted with evidence that made it unlikely. So he was as inclined to discard evidence that cast doubt on his conclusions as anyone else involved.

Nobody yet has come up with an answer as to why the wx radar in mapping mode did not paint the rock cliffs around Ross Island, remember, the dark pieces they saw in the distance and mistook for something else? In that mode it would not be used as a primary navigation aid, but it would certainly be of assistance in determining, or confirming position.

At the risk of repeating myself, Bendix's own manual expressly forbade the use of weather radar for terrain avoidance under any circumstances, even as a backup. I think the reason for this was stated by Mahon - namely that the weather radar relies on moisture to provide a return picture and ice in the Antarctic is *dry*.

That statement is about as accurate as your idea of the use of an NDB, These pilots were in real VMC conditions, and they could visually see Ross Island and Mt Erebus and compare what they could see with the radar readout.

Don't shoot the messenger - NDBs were considered stone-age technology even before I was born. The only use I know of during my lifetime was for NPAs of the kind that led to that nasty accident in the former Yugoslavia. That aside, by using the radar in this manner they were directly contravening the explicit instructions of the manufacturer and if they had been in the kind of VMC confronting Collins would have dramatically increased the likelihood of an accident had they tried.

[chris lz]

then why invent the story of them being in cloud


Don't think that's correct, at least in the Chippindale report itself, which has the airplane in clear air, but flying toward an area the crew should have recognized as requiring IFR, i.e. towards a white-out condition with no horizon definition.

[prospector]

Except that Vette went to the trouble of obtaining weather data from that area at that time and discovered that there was no cloud at any level below approximately 2,500ft,

Are you for real?? there was nobody, let alone anybody who could give a cloud base, let alone a possibility of patches below, for many miles, and on the other side of Ross Island, from whence would that information have come from???.
Surely not from photo's recovered from the wreckage. There were no photo's recovered that had been taken to the South. Who would want to take a photo of cloud??


. I think the reason for this was stated by Mahon - namely that the weather radar relies on moisture to provide a return picture and ice in the Antarctic is *dry*.

Yes, that was Mahon's reasoning, completely forgetting that the rock cliffs around Ross Island give a very good radar return, and completely contradicting the crew's of previous flights experience. This was one of the reasons that the Courts knocked him back on his appeals. Nobody had the chance to put any opinion to the contrary of Mahon's re the radar.

and if they had been in the kind of VMC confronting Collins would have dramatically increased the likelihood of an accident had they tried.


And what sort of VMC were they in? way below the company and CAA requirements, what used to be and I suppose still is called Bloodshot

In those sort of conditions you use anything and everything to confirm your position.

.

[Brian Abraham]

And what sort of VMC were they in? way below the company and CAA requirementsWhat were the limits for VMC, and where abouts specified?

[chris lz]

prospector/ framer

Getting back to ampan's point about placing one's trust in controllers who are human and therefore may make mistakes (or even get drunk), he questions why relying on ground aids is necessarily a safer proposition than relying on INS. What's your response?

[prospector]

. What were the limits for VMC, and where abouts specified?

The only relevant one here is the 20km vis. And it is patently obvious they never, for whatever reason had that. .



chris lz,

T he questions why relying on ground aids is necessarily a safer proposition than relying on INS. What's your response?

We have covered this in an earlier post, but, the INS was only ever designed as an en route aid, it was never intended to be the sole aid at 1,500ft, after a long flight from NZ and no updating itself from a ground station.

[chris lz]

We have covered this in an earlier post, but, the INS was only ever designed as an en route aid, it was never intended to be the sole aid at 1,500ft, after a long flight from NZ and no updating itself from a ground station.


Thanks prospector.

I recall that what we covered was that instruments on the ground, being regularly calibrated, are less likely to give false information than an INS. But in the case of radar at least, ampan's argument would appear to be that because a human being relays the radar information, that makes reliance on it subject to human error, and therefore makes it no safer than relying on AINS. Any additional thoughts?

[FGD135]

The only relevant one here is the 20km vis. And it is patently obvious they never, for whatever reason had that.

Not obvious at all, prospector.

You could have 100 km visibility but still not see an object 5 km away if that object is invisible.

Mt. Erebus was effectively invisible.

Visibility measures work on the assumption that there is enough contrast between the object to be observed and those surrounding.

[Brian Abraham]

You could have 100 km visibility but still not see an object 5 km away if that object is invisible.It seems to be a concept that some have difficulty in understanding ie white out. The one time I experienced same we were in the cruise at 18,000 over Antarctica and the visibility was some 160+NM, but you couldn't determine any features what so ever. In every direction, up, down, sideways, was all the same shade of white.

[prospector]

This was not an inexperienced crew, to get to be a Captain of a DC10 with an airline like Air New Zealand, even amongst the scrapping over pilot seniority when ANZ and NAC were merged, one had to be on top of the game.

When they were, if they were, told they could break the mandatory descent requirements as previous crews had done, they must have known that the weather conditions that previous flights had had was a prerequisite of these descents. What was said, or not said, is not really relevant, only the crew were facing the conditions on that day. To say they were not aware of whiteout is ridiculous, the flight engineer, who was part of the loop must have been aware for a starter, he had been down there before. They were advised that there were light snow showers in the area, their descent orders stated no snow showers. And anyone who believes the pax would have had a good view from 1,500ft, at something above 260 kts has obviously never been in that configuration.

but you couldn't determine any features what so ever. In every direction, up, down, sideways, was all the same shade of white.

So how did you figure the vis was 160nm?

.


You could have 100 km visibility but still not see an object 5 km away if that object is invisible.

Find it hard to reconcile that statement. Visibility is measured from your position to what you can see, surely if an object is not visible at 5km then vis is less than 5 km?

[27/09]

The only relevant one here is the 20km vis. And it is patently obvious they never, for whatever reason had that. .

Prospector, How can you say that? You seem so convinced that they were operating in cloud or poor visibility. Do you have any way to prove that?

Have you ever operated in Antarctic conditions? There are posters on here who have Antarctic experience their comments tend dispute what you seem to believe regarding visibility, white out and the ability to see things in clear air.

Why do you find it so hard to accept that in good visibility an object in the foreground can be masked by by the background. Hell even ag pilots hit trees which have they didn't see due to the background.

[prospector]

Do you have any way to prove that?

Yes, they flew into Ross Island. They did not do so intentionally so there for they could not have seen it. I am not disputing that that may have been caused by whiteout, what I am disputing is that the crew are without blame. The captain, and there would appear to no consultation with the rest of the crew before deciding on this descent, must have been aware that there was a very good chance of encountering whiteout at the altitude he descended to, at no time did they see anything that was positively identified during the VMC descent, they were still on a VMC status when he used the AINS as a last resort to put themselves somewhere they could positively identify, the track they thought they were on, even though the AINS was an en-route aid only. If you cannot see anything how then do you know you have 20km vis? a 180 turn and a climb to MSA should have been commenced as soon as there was any uncertainty as to their position. And there is no doubt they were uncertain, hence Peter Mulgrew's statement 4 mins before impact that he would let the pax know where they were when he knew himsel

And of course there was the non receipt of any VHF aids when they were well within range of these services.

[27/09]

Yes, they flew into Ross Island.

Sorry Prospector, that doesn't prove they were in poor visibility or cloud.

The captain, and there would appear to no consultation with the rest of the crew before deciding on this descent,

You're jumping to conclusions here. It doesn't sound like good multi crew procedures for the Captain to unilaterally make this decision and events later on tend to show that the crew were working on consultation with each other rather than as a one man band.

The captain........must have been aware that there was a very good chance of encountering whiteout at the altitude he descended to

Jumping to conclusions again. How ca you say this? How do you know what his understanding and knowledge of whiteout was? It was a foreign situation to him.

I'll repeat from my last post

"Have you ever operated in Antarctic conditions? There are posters on here who have Antarctic experience their comments tend dispute what you seem to believe regarding visibility, white out and the ability to see things in clear air."

[Chronic Snoozer]

The captain........must have been aware that there was a very good chance of encountering whiteout at the altitude he descended to

Jumping to conclusions again. How ca you say this? How do you know what his understanding and knowledge of whiteout was? It was a foreign situation to him.

Look, this is getting tedious. After receiving a mission briefing for his first trip to Antarctica, most would say it is fair to assume the Captain had an 'awareness' of whiteout and its dangers. The original quote from prospector is fair and uncontroversial. The captain was even quoted on the CVR saying that it doesn't look good.

Yes, they flew into Ross Island.

Sorry Prospector, that doesn't prove they were in poor visibility or cloud.

No it doesn't but prospector is saying that some blame rests with the crew. Flying into terra firma is unequivocal proof of that.

[DozyWannabe]

Look, this is getting tedious. After receiving a mission briefing for his first trip to Antarctica, most would say it is fair to assume the Captain had an 'awareness' of whiteout and its dangers. The original quote from prospector is fair and uncontroversial. The captain was even quoted on the CVR saying that it doesn't look good.

I'd familiarise myself with the details of the case before making such sweeping statements. First, the briefing contained information on whiteout, but it was whiteout of the kind caused by snow flurries and high winds at low altitude (as might be encountered when making an emergency landing on the ice runway for example) - not "sector whiteout" of the kind it is likely they encountered in this case. The "doesn't look good" statement is difficult to draw conclusions from because there's no context stating *what* didn't look good - he may have been talking about the overcast to (what he was expecting to be) the southeast obscuring the ground, and the knock-on effect that would cause a flight that was supposed to be for sightseeing.

In any case, the the brief trepidation was ended when the Mac Central controller told them that they had 40 miles plus visibility under 2,500ft and as such VFR was completely possible as long as they let down when they did.

The descent - despite what prospector claims - was performed with the consent of all flight crew in the cockpit at the time. Prospector's claims are based on the unauthorised transcript changes made by Chippindale with ANZ Chief (management) Pilot Gemmell's "assistance".


No it doesn't but prospector is saying that some blame rests with the crew. Flying into terra firma is unequivocal proof of that.

CFIT is proof that something went wrong, but it does not automatically follow that it is the flight crew's fault. Remember that the advent of computerised flight plans meant that for the first time responsibility for navigation was taken out of the flight deck, and it was the action of the Chief Navigator - not the flight crew - that had them starting their descent 26 miles east of where they expected to be, exacerbated by the visual illusions for which they had not been trained providing a false visual confirmation of their location. Prospector's position is predicated on a set of regulations that were out of date in terms of responsibility for navigation, along with an almost fawning regard for the management of ANZ at the time. I have to wonder whether he is related in some way to Muldoon, Morrie Davies or one of the management at this point.

[FGD135]

... some blame rests with the crew. Flying into terra firma is unequivocal proof of that.
Chronic Snoozer, how about you put your thinking cap on?

If you were to fly into a hill whilst conducting an RNAV approach because Jeppesen accidentally shifted all the waypoint coordinates by a few miles, then that would be your fault would it?

[Chronic Snoozer]

FGD135
Chronic Snoozer, how about you put your thinking cap on? If you were to fly into a hill whilst conducting an RNAV approach because Jeppesen accidentally shifted all the waypoint coordinates by a few miles, then that would be your fault would it?

Thinking cap firmly on thanks mate. No requirement for straw men. I paraphrased prospector and added my observation that flying into the ground is proof enough (for me anyway) that 'some' blame (I prefer to say responsibility) rests with the crew in view of all that has been discussed. (That is the crew of this particular ANZ flight)

Dozy
I'd familiarise myself with the details of the case before making such sweeping statements.

I commented that this quote from prospector
The captain........must have been aware that there was a very good chance of encountering whiteout at the altitude he descended to was fair and uncontroversial after 27/09 said it was jumping to conclusions. Semantically, there is little to be gained from discussing it further.

Not sure about this 100% blameless agenda being pushed which is detracting from a highly educational and useful discussion. You and I are of course entitled to our own opinions.

[DozyWannabe]

Except for the fact that the only whiteout he had been briefed to expect was the kind that happens close to the ground in a snow squall - sector whiteout was little understood at the time, and sadly it took this crash to make it common knowledge among the piloting fraternity.

The crew had been briefed to expect a particular track to a waypoint that turned out to be incorrect when the previous flight queried the waypoint position. Chief Navigator Hewitt realised he'd messed up, "corrected" the track (which while technically errant, was nevertheless the one flown as a matter of routine for over a year) and the change was made a few hours before the aircraft departed. The problem was that, for whatever reason, Nav Section failed to notify anyone of the change and so the meticulously plotted course that Collins thought he was following based on the briefing was not in fact the course programmed into the INS. What followed was a devil's brew of weather, misunderstanding, visual illusion, coincidence and rotten luck.

[ampan]

I don't see the relevance of the lack of any briefing on sector whiteout. The captain's comment, about it being very hard to tell the difference between the cloud and the ice, did not refer to snow flurries or things of that nature. It referred to the difficulty of distinguishing one white thing from another white thing. If the F/O had responded to the comment with "So should we fly VMC below the cloud base?", what would the captain's answer have been? "Better not", I suggest.

[DozyWannabe]

Ampan, that's a 20/20 hindsight call right there. Remember that sector whiteout was not well understood and it becomes clear that the crew were convinced they were on the briefed track and had good reason to be.

[ampan]

20/20 hindsight would be 'He should have appreciated the problem with flying VMC below the cloud base'. The CVR shows that he did, in fact, appreciate the problem.

If he thought that the visual problem was overcome because he had his AINS track, then his mistake was lumping visual rules in with instrument rules, taking bits from both. He couldn't have his cake and eat it too. If it wasn't VMC below the cloud, that was the end of it. If he wanted to go down there, he had to do it on instruments.

[DozyWannabe]

Can you really be so certain? You're taking words plucked from a partial transcription with several unintelligible words and forming it into a statement of understanding and intent. Sector whiteout was not a well-understood phenomenon on the line, and it's possible that he might have been reasoning it out for himself while at the same time not being fully aware of the implications. Had he been on the track he believed he was on, then it would have made little or no difference, but it was the undisclosed change of track - over which the flight crew had neither control nor knowledge - that turned the situation deadly.

[ampan]

That could well have been his thought process, but that means that he was, in reality, flying on instruments. He knew that he wasn't allowed to go below MSA relying soley on the AINS, so maybe that's the reason for the VMC comments. In other words, he deliberately misdescribed an instrument descent as a VMC descent, in order to get around the rules.

[Dark Knight]

That could well have been his thought process, but that means that he was, in reality, flying on instruments. He knew that he wasn't allowed to go below MSA relying soley on the AINS, so maybe that's the reason for the VMC comments. In other words, he deliberately misdescribed an instrument descent as a VMC descent, in order to get around the rules

Now we are totally in the realm of speculation, 20/20 hindsight, fantasy, maybes, whatifs and could haves.

What has the annual rehash acheived this time?

As usual, exceedingly little.

Similar to the next rehash of the Lindy Chamberlain saga, maybe it is time to let sleeping dogs lie?

[ampan]

Hardly fanatsy. It's the captain's own words, uttered 12 minutes before he went down that hole, allegedly VMC: "Clouds come down a bit * * * may not be able to * * McMurdo. Very hard to tell the difference between the cloud and the ice * * "

[Dark Knight]

In which case it can be assumed he screwed up?

You were not there; you do not know; one can only speculate.

The usual annual rehash has changed or proved nought.

Time to let sleeping dogs lie.

[27/09]

Chronic Snoozer

You posted
No it doesn't but prospector is saying that some blame rests with the crew. Flying into terra firma is unequivocal proof of that.

My comment to prospector was in reply to this from Prospector:

The only relevant one here is the 20km vis. And it is patently obvious they never, for whatever reason had that. .
In other words I take it that Prospector thinks the visibility was poor.

To which I asked Prospector, How can you say that?
And he replied Yes, they flew into Ross Island.

I don't believe there is any absolute proof of poor visibility.

prospector is saying that some blame rests with the crew
I agree some blame rests with the crew, but not on the degree of blame, however that wasn't being debated at this point, we were debating the visibility.

Regarding the 100% blame or no blame. Prospector seems to only find things to blame on the crew for the accident even though early on he did say there were others who contributed to this accident

Why was there such a cover up from Air New Zealand and other parties? There was the inference crew were in cloud, the skewing of the CVR transcripts, the break in to Jim Collins house, the removal of the pages from his diary that was found in the wreckage. The missing portions of the ATC tapes at MCMurdo. What were they trying to hide, what did they have to be worried about?

Prospector does not seem to be able to accept that the crew were possibly deceived by the conditions. How many people have not been fooled by an optical illusion whether it be in the ground or airborne?

Yes, it is time to let things lie.

[prospector]

Prospector does not seem to be able to accept that the crew were possibly deceived by the conditions.


There is no "possibly" about it. They were deceived by the conditions.


I agree some blame rests with the crew,


Then you agree with me, the whole point of this thread is Holmes scribing a book trying to convince the general public that no blame be attached to the crew, and that the New Zealand Government apologise to the Captains family for even hinting at the fact the crew could have in any way been responsible for this crash.

(Is it coincidence that this book appears after 30years, and after Chippindale's death??)

The object of Accident Investigation is to find the cause, if possible, of the accident. This whole controversy has been over the interpretation of two separate findings, one by a highly experienced, trained, Aviation Accident inspector, who stated a "Probable Cause", and a High Court Judge, whose methodology was hightly criticised by both the NZ Appeal Court, and the Privy Council.

You can take your pick of which interpretation of facts you wish to believe, I have stated that I believe the findings of Chippindale to be far more plausible as to the cause of the crash. There is no doubt Mahon made some contribution by extending the enquiry outside the hitherto boundaries of Accident Investigation, but as to whether his version of events is more realistic then the findings of Chippindale is up to the individual, after hopefully looking fully at all aspects of the findings of both parties, and using their own experience in Aviation to fine tune their views.

[ampan]

Quite right. The whole "no blame to the crew" thing is just plain stupid. Could we at least give Capt Collins 10%? The response would be a howling "no" from NZALPA. They remind me of a brain-dead cult.

[27/09]

Prospector

I think we might agree on the dwarf as well, pompous, self opinionated person that he is.

I don't fully accept either the Chippendale report nor the Mahon version. There are some things in the official report that don't stand up to scrutiny, for example some of the transcripts. I don't wish to denigrate Ron Chippendale, because I think he did the job honestly to the best of his ability but I do think he might have been steered in certain directions on some things. Justice Mahon also did a good job but as a layman I'm not sure he came up with interpretations on some things that an industry expert would necessarily have.

The way I see it both gentlemen were doomed to failure to some degree both by the system and some of the people manipulating that system.

There were people who could not afford for Ron Chippendale to come to certain conclusions leading to some parts of his report to come into question.

Justice Mahon was appointed to run a Royal Commission which I suspect was originally intended as window dressing but to the surprise of certain people his report contained details of actions/events which were perhaps not the original intent of his report. Someone who is a Judge of his standing does not coin a phrase "Orchestrated litany of lies" with out good reason. His report embarrassed certain people, the fall out eventually leading to him falling from favour.

[reubee]

I found it interesting when reading of the Court of Inquiry report into the crash of the RNZAF Iroquois on Anzac Day last year and thinking how in 2011, how much of their key causes could relate to events in 1979 ...

The Court of Inquiry into the Iroquois crash on Anzac Day last year made about 169 findings during its investigation, which boiled down to six key causes.


The loss of awareness experienced by the Iroquois crew after they inadvertently flew into heavy cloud.

None of the Iroquois crews flying that day took such a scenario into account when performing their pre-flight preparation.

The failure of those on the crashed Iroquois to comply with orders, instructions and procedures for flying in low and heavy cloud, as well as the deficiencies in those procedures that resulted in the crew not being fully qualified, competent and up to date with their training in such a scenario.

The radar warning system on the crashed Iroquois was set to five feet rather than 200ft, like the other two aircraft. It is likely the radar only activated seconds before the crash.

The air force did not effectively identify and mitigate the risks associated with night vision flying.

The operational culture of 3 Squadron was one where occasional "rule breaking" was permitted if servicemen felt it would successfully achieve a task.


In 1979 that could've read ...

The loss of awareness experienced by the crew of 901 crew after they inadvertently encountered sector white-out.

The training and route planning departments in Air New Zealand did not take such a scenario into account in any training or pre-flight preparation

The failure of the 901 crew to comply with orders, instructions and procedures for descending, as well as the deficiencies in those procedures that resulted in the 901 crew not being fully qualified, competent, familiar and up to date with their training in such a scenario.

No equivalent

Air New Zealand and CAD did not effectively identify and mitigate the risks associated with sector white-out.

The operational culture of Air New Zealand was one where occasional "rule breaking" was permitted if pilots felt it would successfully achieve a task. (same could be said for navigation department)


I've bolded sector white-out as it is different from white-out, and I bolded familiar because when people say the crew didn't follow Air New Zealands descent guidelines, there were 5 crew on-board the DC-10 and not one of them ever said out loud, hey we aren't allowed to descend yet. I don't believe all 5 purposefully silently disobeyed something, rather it hadn't been drummed into them what was permitted and what wasn't.

[DozyWannabe]

They did follow ANZ's descent guidelines though - it was the NZCA's 6,000ft lower limit that seems to be the sticking point, even though ANZ explicitly briefed crews that they could descend to any level suggested or invited to by the Mac Central controllers and that in those circumstances the controllers' directions superseded the NZCA "rule".

In short, what was presented by NZCA as a hard-and-fast rule was diluted to a guideline by ANZ, and ANZ went to some trouble to try to put that fact down the memory hole (via the company shredder).

[#1AHRS]

If he thought that the visual problem was overcome because he had his AINS track, then his mistake was lumping visual rules in with instrument rules, taking bits from both. He couldn't have his cake and eat it too. If it wasn't VMC below the cloud, that was the end of it. If he wanted to go down there, he had to do it on instruments.

The operator I fly for descend both VMC both IMC using LNAV/VNAV coupled to the guidance. When flying visually or even VFR (which we occasionally do though not in Antactica) we still use the Area nav to manage the navigation, though we are flying visually and avoiding the rocks by looking out of the window. No lumping together of visual or instrument rules there, just good utilization of what the aircraft offers us. As I suspect Jim Collins was doing.

[Dark Knight]

http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/yy73/robofq/sleepingdogs.jpg

[prospector]

------------------- Amen ----------------

[chris lz]

Now before I forget, can someone fill me in on the alleged possible discontent of F/E Lucas? I can't find a thing on this.

[Dream Land]

If you were to fly into a hill whilst conducting an RNAV approach because Jeppesen accidentally shifted all the waypoint coordinates by a few miles, then that would be your fault would it? It would be if you chose to disregard the MDA of 16000 FT.

[ampan]

#1AHRS: The difference between what you did and what Capt Collins did is that you actually had visual meteorological conditions, whereas he didn't. The AINS didn't improve his vision, nor did it assist in distinguishing between the cloud and the ice. The transcript gives a good indication of what he was thinking: 'Problem with vision below the cloud / No NDB and no contact with TACAN yet / Might have to go somewhere else / Radar assist! Yes please.' Yet 10 minutes later he dives down under the cloud without any radar assist.

[DozyWannabe]

#1AHRS: The difference between what you did and what Capt Collins did is that you actually had visual meteorological conditions, whereas he didn't.

Under the cloud he did - in "by the book" terms anyway, the Mac Central controller told him so - 40 miles plus visibility (the maximum in aviation terms meaning anything from literally 40 miles to the horizon). The fact that the book was not sufficiently informed to take sector whiteout into account was not something Collins was aware of, and not something he should carry the can for.

[#1AHRS]

Ampan, My point being that Collins was fooled by sector whiteout, a phenomenon that he had no knowledge or training on. Both pilots obviously believed that they had adequate visual reference by what they saw out of the window and by what ATC told them. They believed, based on what they were briefed upon, that the RNAV track was to drop them over the entrance of McMurdo Sound, clear of mountains.

Current practice by RNZAF, RAAF and the yanks at the time was for commanders to make three entries under supervision. Air NZ had achieved a dispensation from that on the basis that their training (or briefings) were of such a high standard that this was not required.

Sector whiteout was no mystery to regular operators in Antarctica at that time and yet it was not a topic that was included in any of the ANZ briefings. Even their CP (Shredder) showed only rudimentary knowledge of the whiteout illusion during the inquiry. This barely reflects a high standard of training.

There is no argument that the crew didn't play a part in this accident. They did as they most often do. However that is not what Chippendales report portrays. It conveniently heaps nearly all of the blame onto the dead crew. That certainly curbed the litigation against New Zealanders and saved Muldoons career, but it did nothing toward identifying the latent and active failures that were clearly buried well into Air New Zealand's operations management system. In particular the Navigation section.

Mahons report did.

[FGD135]

It would be if you chose to disregard the MDA of 16000 FT.

Dream Land, you are missing the point in more ways than one.

You're way off base to say that he "disregarded" the MDA. If you read back over the last 4 or so pages of this thread, you will find that:

1. It was not an S.O.P to observe this "MDA". The real S.O.P was to descend where/when they actually did;

2. The crew were briefed to descend where/when they did.

And, the whole point of the RNAV approach analogy is to demonstrate that the actions of other persons on the ground - before you take off - can bring about your demise through no fault of your own.

If you were conducting an RNAV approach as per my example then you would have descended below the MDA in the course of conducting it. So this response is really quite dopey:

It would be if you chose to disregard the MDA of 16000 FT.

#1AHRS, very good post that summarises the circumstances very well. DozyWannabe gave a very similar summary much earlier.

[Dream Land]

My point is that I am trying to make is that the tour itself was not something conducted by use of any company supplied fixes if I am understanding the information correctly.

The waypoints brought you to a point where you would then begin a "visual tour" your statement implies to me that they actually conducted the tour by the use of some waypoints, one waypoint which ANZ changed considerably the night before departure.

After they transition to a VFR tour, it is then the responsibility of the flight crew to understand that they are solely responsible for identifying their location before conducting any descents, regardless of some visibility report given to them, and what airline crew would assume they are under radar control based on the the fact that a light on the xponder is flashing, these aren't ppl's, these are seasoned airline pilots.

[ampan]

I think the transponder light is a bit of a red herring. It only came on for a brief period, and he was already going down at that point. There's no indication that the crew believed that they were under radar control.

The same applies to the advice that visibility was 40 miles. The captain wasn't led astray by that, because his cloud/ice comment came after, not before.

As to sector whiteout, #1AHRS has confirmed that it was well-understood by polar aviators. In other words, the phenomena was not discovered by Vette. In fact, it was referred to in the Chippendale report. Given that, why couldn't Capt Collins have had a general understanding of the problem, either from his own private reading or from his time in the RNZAF, or both? The point is that he was obviously aware of the potential issue re VMC, despite not having been briefed on it.

[DozyWannabe]

My point is that I am trying to make is that the tour itself was not something conducted by use of any company supplied fixes if I am understanding the information correctly.

That was the case in the days before the computerised flight plans, certainly - but from 1978 onwards, when the computerised flight plans were followed, things became less certain. With the passage of time the Antarctic flights stopped being a preserve of the management captains who had drawn up the original process, and passed to the line. Prospector, who appears to venerate the abilities of the management pilots of the day as being somehow superior, sees this as the point the rot began to creep in (and blames the union) - whereas I see the fact that the transition was not properly managed as a failure of management in terms of putting a process in place to transfer the knowledge. With the computerised flight plans in place it seems to have become the de facto practice to follow the computer track for as far as necessary before visual flight can be begun, and the fixes on the computer track did indeed come from the company - they were entered by Chief Navigator Hewitt himself.

Captain Simpson noticed that the waypoint labelled "MCMURDO" was a significant distance from the station - prior to this the assumption had been that the waypoint had been selected to follow the military track and did not refer to the station itself. He reported this upon his return and the message was passed up the chain to Hewitt, whose testimony states that he reset the waypoint to the TACAN, believing he was making a correction of 2 miles of latitude rather than the 27 mile correction he was actually making. Whilst he never went into specifics we can only assume that he made the change whilst looking at his original notes rather than what was in the database itself, which would have revealed not the 2 mile error he was expecting due to mistranscribing, but a 27 mile error which appeared as a consequence of his mis-typing the co-ordinates a little over a year previously. In any case he did not notify ops of the change and the fact that the co-ordinates had been changed was never communicated to the pilots who he would (or at least should) have been aware would be flying the route that morning.

The ethics of Hewitt's actions are debatable depending on how sympathetic one is to his account, but in strict terms his actions were a clear violation of company procedure as well as common sense and they were performed before the flight crew even awoke that morning.

What follows is a classic case of organisational entropy, which in this case had many tendrils manipulating events.

Firstly, the de facto procedure of following the computer track until visual flight was possible meant that in a situation where visual flight below an overcast was the only available option (I don't buy the assertion that every preceding flight occurred in "gin-clear" conditions throughout - even if the flights were scheduled for the best weather possible, we're talking about Antarctica here and the weather is anything but predictable), the pilots would be relying to some extent on the AINS and radar to confirm their position before descending - and would not be aware that the topography of Lewis Bay could from certain angles be mistaken for that of McMurdo Sound. Because these flights had been going on for some time they had become perceived amongst the flight crews as somewhat routine, and this led to a further perception that the computer would keep you away from high ground if the programmed track was followed.

Next we have the clarity of the briefing becoming diluted over time - rules became guidelines and the potential dangers that may have been well understood by the early crews were not properly communicated to those that followed. The audio/visual and written materials that dated from the earlier flights were verbally contradicted during the briefing itself, with the verbal instructions taking precedent - and this was explicitly confirmed by the briefing pilot's testimony.

Finally, we have the breakdown in communication between management, nav section and ops. Nav section clearly did not query the fact that the returning flights from Antarctica were following a track that was considerably different from that which they testified was intended. The error was only brought to light by chance when a line captain (Simpson) informed his superior on his return of the apparent discrepancy. The message certainly reached Chief Navigator Hewitt, but it would appear that neither ops nor management heard of it, nor was there a co-ordinated effort to solve the problem. Hewitt therefore made his change without notification or supervision in the early hours of the morning and no thought was given to the potential consequences of such a change.

These circumstances combined in such a manner that only a large dose of luck might have been able to help the crew of TE901 realise their predicament, and sadly luck was certainly not with them that day.

@ampan - How often would one have watched a transponder light in those days? It only needed to be on during the few seconds during which a decision was made to have proved fatal. Sector whiteout was understood by polar aviators, but not by line crews - or indeed even the management pilots that prospector speaks so highly of, because Gemmell certainly did not appear to understand the phenomenon judging by his testimony. Let me check the transcripts on the "40 miles" and get back to you.

[henry crun]

DozyWannabe: In your last paragraph in the post above you refer again to the transponder light being on for a few seconds.

You appear to believe that is justification for Collins to believe he was identified and and radar control, is that correct ?

[FGD135]

DozyWannabe,

Another highly articulate and thoughtful summary of the circumstances. We are grateful that you are putting so much effort into this thread.


... only a large dose of luck might have been able to help the crew of TE901 realise their predicament, ...


If ever anybody needed a one-sentence summary, that would have to be it.


You appear to believe that is justification for Collins to believe he was identified and and radar control, is that correct ?

henry crun, you appear to be reading way more into Dozy's words than he has written. Dozy was speculating on the significance of the XPNDR reply light. If the light happened to be flashing during those few seconds that Collins was assessing whether he should continue, then it is very likely that the light contributed to his belief that everything was safe.

Just speculation.

You seem to prefer the strictly black or white concept of being positively-identified or NOT, but if you could see inside any aviators mind while he is on the job you would find that his reasoning, rather than resting on a set of black-or-white foundations, rests instead on a large set of foundations that are comprised of shades of grey!

Aviators are human beings after all, and there often isn't time or justification to turn shades-of-grey into black-or-white.

This is the reasonable view of Collins and his copilot's performance that day. Some here insist their performance should have been robot-like but that is just not reasonable.

There's that word again: reasonable.

[henry crun]

FGD135: With the experience of being a radar controller for many years, and knowing the dangers that mis-identification can bring, it would be unthinkable of me to beleive in identification in any terms other than black or white.

Collins was a senior captain, widely experienced in being under radar control in many countries, and you will have some trouble convincing me he would have been influenced by the very brief flickering of the transponder light in the manner which Dozy Wannabe suggests.

Imho there was no room for any shade of grey in his (Collins) situation.

[DozyWannabe]

...and you will have some trouble convincing me he would have been influenced by the very brief flickering of the transponder light in the manner which Dozy Wannabe suggests...

How do you know it was "brief", or indeed how brief it may have been? It could have been coding for several minutes while the decision-making process was happening.

Imho there was no room for any shade of grey in his (Collins) situation.

Let's talk about mental models for a second. As far as Collins is aware, the radar controller will not approve a let-down until they are positively identified - also as far as he is aware, the radar controller will have an exact copy of the flight plan that he was given along with the co-ordinates, so even if identification is sporadic, the controller will know where he is at a given point in time. He's also used to radar control as it exists in the civilised world, where things are indeed "black-and-white". This is Collins' mental model, and as such he was entitled to take the controller's assent to the let-down as confirmation that everything is safe for him to do so.

The controller's mental model is somewhat different, because unbeknownst to Collins, the flight plan sent to Mac Central by ANZ was incomplete and in fact lacked the all-important changed co-ordinates for the McMurdo waypoint. So it's possible that the controller approved the let-down based on a calculated position in turn based on the flight plan, which may have been the plan from the previous flight which had the (original, "false") co-ordinates used as a reference (because the co-ordinates were missing from the new one). In "black-and-white" terms the controller should not have approved the let-down for this reason, but this is not your usual radar-controlled airspace - it is in fact a sparsely-populated bit of airspace on the edge of the known world and things tend to be a little less rigid here. The controller is also aware that TE901 is not the average hoary old military propliner with decades-old nav equipment that he is used to handling, it is a state of the art jetliner festooned with gadgetry that is probably better at calculating their current position than he is.

The difference in these mental models could well carry the genesis of the physical reasons for the let-down being approved when perhaps it should not have been. As I did before, I must ask myself - if the controller had done things by the book and the aircraft crashed, then why destroy a segment of the radar trace that would have erased all doubt?

[ampan]

Capt Collins was advised that the radar's range was 40 miles.

He started his descent below MSA at 43 miles out (ie, that's when he pulled out the knob and began the first orbit using Heading Select).

[DozyWannabe]

They're going a little over four nautical miles per minute when they make the request at 12:02, which means that they should have shown up when clearance is granted at 12:03, and would be well within range when they begin their descent at 12:11.

(All timings from the left-hand column of Washington Transcript)

[ampan]

It still doesn't fit: (1) There's no reference to the transponder before the descent commenced; (2) Just before descending, the F/O told Mac Station that they would be descending VMC, and the captain was careful to maintain VMC all the way down.

PS - Where were able to get the Washington transcript from?

[DozyWannabe]

@ampan - Do you think they'd have started the descent without it? They appear to lose it for a time, but it returns at timestamp 15:21. Unfortunately there are no publicly-available FDR traces to help confirm one way or the other (not that such information would likely be available on FDR traces of that vintage).

Both the Washington Transcript and the version from the Chippindale Report are downloadable as PDFs from :

Transcript (http://www.erebus.co.nz/TheAccident/Transcript.aspx)

Note that while they make their position clear (the website being run by NZALPA), they at least provide a significant amount of the raw material from both the Chippindale Report and the Mahon Royal Commission for people to make up their own minds, which does them credit as far as I'm concerned.

The descent may have been VMC, but they tried to remain in contact with Mac Central, advising of their position and altitude as they went - remember that the crew were perceiving Lewis Bay as McMurdo Sound due to a combination of the track they were expecting to be on and the visual illusions that provided false confirmation. Perhaps they were expecting some kind of warning if they were off-course and even in the ATC transcripts (including those that were not heard by the crew), at no point did the radar controller try to warn them that they were approaching Lewis Bay and Erebus. If the transponder was coding at 15:21 - 26 miles east of where he was expecting it (which means that they probably did show up) - why? It's not like he was distracted by heavy traffic...

Because of the visual illusions and the fact that they did not receive any kind of warning before it was too late (in this case the GPWS) it is entirely understandable that the crew believed that things were proceeding according to the plan they had been briefed on because all the information they were receiving confirmed their mental model and nothing contradicted it other than a single-digit change that was not required to be checked against the flight plan they had based their work on the previous night.

[ampan]

The transponder light could only have come on once, being the occasion referred to in the transcript. Firstly, the radar's range was 40 miles or thereabouts. Secondly, the track, directly towards Erebus, was right in the middle of the radar's blind sector (see The Erebus Papers, p434). The only time the transponder light came on was when he went off to the right of track, on the first descending orbit.

If the descent was caused by the illumination of the transponder light, someone would have said something. What caused the descent, according to the transcript, was sighting the ground. Thereupon, he abandoned the radar assist and went VMC. If he assumed that his position had been confirmed by radar, he would have gone straight down, through the cloud base. No need to muck around with orbits.

[henry crun]

DozyWannabe: I will try and answer your questions and points in the order you have made them..

I don't know how long the transponder light was on for, and neither do you, so we are both speculating.

You say that "As far as Collins is aware, the radar controller will not approve a let-down until they are positively identified".
You are completely wrong in this assumption, the radar controller cleared Collins for a VMC descent. In doing so he handed complete responsibilty for cloud avoidance and terrain clearance to the crew, without any suggestion of radar identification or flight following.
I have issued many hundreds, maybe thousands, of VMC descent clearances to aircraft on IFR flight plans and it was never understood by any commercial pilot to mean anything other what I have stated above.
In that knowledge, Collins was not entitled to take the controller's assent to the let-down as confirmation that everything is safe for him to do so, nor do I believe he would have assumed it to be so.

You mention again your belief that a brief part of the radar trace was deliberately destroyed.
To do so you are making another assumption, neither you nor I know for certain how that part of the tape came to be erased.
Do you know what playback equipment was used ? do you know if the tape was frozen post accident knowledge, and if so, what safeguards were there to preserve it's integrity ? do you know who was authorised to make any playback, pre or post accident ? do you know if accidential erasure was possible on the type of playback equipment used ?

In reply to ampan's point you appear to making the mistake of believing that because the aircraft was just within the radar maximum range it would have shown up.
Surveillance radar does not necessarily work like that, there can variations, holes, and gaps in coverage for a variety of reasons. Particularly as the radar at McMurdo was, as I understand it, by no means new.
When I was working I could have shown you several instances where an aircraft well within the range limit of coverage, would be on one track at a specific range painting loud and clear, but if it had been on another track only 8-10 miles away at exactly the same range it would not show at all, not a glimmer of a paint
This was, I will add, using a radar of similar vintage but longer range capabilty to that I understand was in use at McMurdo.


Secondly, in your reply to ampan you say "the transponder was coding at 15:21 - 26 miles east of where he was expecting it (which means that they probably did show up) - why? It's not like he was distracted by heavy traffic..."

It may or may not have shown on the radar, regardless of whether it did or did not show, by then Collins was accepted a VMC descent and, as I have already explained, had accepted complete responsibilty for his flight safety.
Knowing this, the controller might well have looked away from the scope to talk to a colleague, or perhaps perform some other admin task.

[ampan]

I'm assuming that a ground controller's silence would not have been regarded, either by the controller or the pilot, as confirmation of position. As you say, the controller is not necessarily looking at the screen at all times. The controllers of 1979 would obviously been aware of that but so too would have been the pilots. The transponder light only indicated that the aircraft was on the radar screen, somewhere. It didn't indicate whereabouts on the screen. That information could only be provided to the pilot by the controller. If Capt Collins went below MSA because the transponder light came on (which it didn't), then that would have been an equally bad piece of flying.

[#1AHRS]

I suspect that the significance of the transponder reply (which the crew probably didn't see), was more relevant to a question of were the McMurdo controllers aware that the aircraft was descending towards Erebus so therefore why didn't the warn them? And if they indeed did, was it via VHF or HF? There has been a suggestion that some of the ATC tape had been erased at that time.

The crews decision/acceptance to descend was based on maintaining VMC, which they clearly had and went to great lengths to maintain.

[ampan]

Clearly had VMC? Isn't it the opposite? After all, he flew the aircraft into the side of a mountain.

The issue is whether he knew that it was "very hard to tell the difference between the cloud and the ice."

[#1AHRS]

Yup clearly (photographic evidence and something like 11-13 crew references to it) VMC under a cloud cover. And yes they flew into a 14 deg up-slope towards a mountain that they couldn't see due to sector whiteout; still in VMC.

[Dark Knight]

The most isolated landmass on the planet,
No official government,
No permanent population...

Temperature: 120 Below zero

Wind speed: 200 miles per hour

No horizon! No Shadows!

There is only White...


"Whiteout" - Official Trailer [HD] - YouTube

[FGD135]

About that transponder light:

I have just had a thought. Do we know for sure that McMurdo had secondary radar?

If the range was limited to 40 miles, then this suggests to me that it was primary radar only. In fact, there are a number of things that suggest it was primary only.

If it was indeed primary only, then the "reply" light could NOT have been flashing.

I will investigate.

[DozyWannabe]

How do you know the light only came on once? Radio waves are a fickle beast at the best of times and they were higher than the mountain at TOD. Also I think the orbits were to set them up for a low-altitude sightseeing run down the Sound (which had some of the more spectacular scenery) as opposed to a straight descent which would - on the track they were expecting - have had them reach clear air just in time to turn left, round Ross Island to the south and start the trip home - not what the passengers paid for.

[DozyWannabe]

It may or may not have shown on the radar, regardless of whether it did or did not show, by then Collins was accepted a VMC descent and, as I have already explained, had accepted complete responsibilty for his flight safety.
Knowing this, the controller might well have looked away from the scope to talk to a colleague, or perhaps perform some other admin task.

That sounds like an excuse to me. Given that Collins' VMC descent (and assumption of responsibility) was in real terms entirely predicated on his position being 27 miles west of where it actually was, and on the assumption that the radar controller agreed to the let-down (which implies the radar controller should be aware of the position), it is then unfair to pin blame on Collins who only had the information he was given - some of it incomplete and some of it completely incorrect - to work with. If he had been made aware that the information he was given was not up to scratch, then certainly he could be held responsible for relying on it, but the fact is that he was not and never was made aware - as far as he was concerned the flight was routine, the computer nav track was the same as it was in the briefing and over a dozen flights had followed that briefing to safety.

[framer]

This is rediculous. The people arguing that the crew hold zero responsibility have never held that same resposibility, and will never fully understand that resposibility unless they retrain and take it on themselves. (thats not a dig, it's my experience that that is the case).
Dozy, when, as Pin C of a heavy jet, would you consider it prudent to fly 250kts, 1500ft, clean, straight and level?
FGD is the only one who answered my earlier question about this. He thinks as long as there is 20km viz. (what a coincidence).
How about, when you've never been to an area before, there are snow showers and a reported 2000ft cloud base, you've told your crew that 'it's hard to distinguish between cloud and ice', you know there is terrain in the vicinity and that you're not over the ocean. Is that the appropriate time to do it? I really want to know if you think that is reasonable as FGD would say. Also, we are not talking about allocating all of the resposibility to the crew, just pointing out that Holmes' proposition that the government acknowledge that they hold no resposibility for the crash is not on. They hold some responsibility for the aircraft being flown into Erebus.

[henry crun]

DozyWannabe: No, Not an excuse, I am trying to point out to you what was likely to happen in the real world.

Second No: The fact that the radar controller agreed to the letdown does not imply he should be aware of the position.
The aircraft was still some way out, and only the pilot could make the decision about descending VMC,. The controller would not know what meteorological conditions the pilot was experiencing at the altitude he was at the time, or those conditions in the area the pilot was intended to let down in.

Let me make the point quite clear.
If I were to issue a VMC descent clearance requested by a pilot, I do not necessarily expect him to maintain his flight planned track. He may deviate from it to maintain VMC.
He is still on an IFR flight plan, so my responsibilty as the controller is to ensure his separation from other traffic is maintained.
In the case we are discussing, there was no other traffic.

[ampan]

FGD135: According to Mahon's report (p128) the radar had an IFF mode (Identification Friend or Foe) with a range of 150 miles and an ASR mode (Aircraft Surveillance) with a range of 40 miles.

Most of the ground/air communications were between the aircraft and Mac Station on HF radio. The radar was not located at Mac Station. Instead, it was at the Ice Tower, by the runway. The Tower only had VHF radio. So Mac Station was in contact with the aircraft on HF, and Mac Station and the Tower were relaying messages to eachother on VHF.

The F/O was handling communications, but at one point, Capt Collins took over and attempted to contact the Tower on VHF. He had no success. Shortly thereafter, he saw the ground and went down VMC.

The probable explanation for the captain's decision to abandon the radar assist is that he suspected that he wouldn't be actually getting it. If he wasn't getting VHF radio at a range of 50 miles out then the same would probably apply to the radar within 40 miles. So if he maintained MSA to the waypoint, he would end up stuck above the cloud layer with no way of getting through it, given that he had been told that the NDB wasn't working.

[Dream Land]

FGD, thanks for your replies. I personally don't buy off on the excuse that company SOP dictated that they SHOULD descend at any particular waypoint, the crux of the accident appears to me to be this:

The descent may have been VMC, but they tried to remain in contact with Mac Central, advising of their position and altitude as they went - remember that the crew were perceiving Lewis Bay as McMurdo Sound due to a combination of the track they were expecting to be on and the visual illusions that provided false confirmation.

So based on a mistake by the crew, thence...

So the whole responsibility for the accident is based on the crews mistaken location influenced by the waypoint change doesn't totally let the crew off the hook in my opinion considering ones responsibility during VMC operations. This type of operation being accomplished by airline crews is crazy IMHO, that's what real tour operators are for.

[#1AHRS]

This type of operation being accomplished by airline crews is crazy IMHO, that's what real tour operators are for.

A very valid point in a bigger picture frame. As I see it ANZ (then) were over confident and arrogant with their stance on Antarctic flights. Thus being fairly incompetent for such an undertaking. I guess this reflects on the attitudes of their leadership at that time as it all seemed a bit disorganized and poorly documented.

To make matters worse the people who should have kept them honest, the MOT CAD, seemed to be conveniently myopic as to what ANZ were up to.
They also failed the travelling public of NZ miserably by not ensuring that those flights were done by an appropriately qualified and skilled operator.

It bit them all in the arse very hard..!

Of course Chippendale wouldn't have considered any of this as he worked for CAD and old shredder was his personal adviser. Whether he acted in a biased fashion or was just way out of his depth is a debatable point.

Mahon"s accusations of "an orchestrated litany of lies" were found to be outside the scope of the commission by the court of appeal and subsequently the Privy Council.

However what is commonly overlooked in Erebus debates today is that the Royal Commissions findings on the cause of the accident still stand today.

So here we have (1) The findings (using an investigative process way ahead of its time) of a Royal Comission of inquiry that still stands, or (2) Chippendales much more simplistic report that really only should have formed part of the inquiry.

By today's standard, Mahons investigation and finding would appear completely normal as Chippendales now seems antiquated and obsolete.

Maybe that is why there are those here that would like to let sleeping dogs lie.

[ampan]

Quite right: Justice Mahon's findings as to the cause of the accident still stand today. So do numerous other bad judicial decisions.

I don't understand the reverence in which this gentleman is held. As to the cause, he spent many months hearing evidence and tripping around the world (including a pointless trip to Antarctica), yet still managed to come up with the wrong answer. The taxpayer paid two lawyers to assist him as well as an aviation expert, all of whom recommended attributing a portion of the blame to the crew, particularly the captain. He ignored that advice, because he had developed a series of conspiracy theories, which culminated in that ridiculous "orchestrated litany of lies" comment.

The end result of His Honour's efforts is the only CFIT accident where the crew were entirely blameless. In other words, TE901 was doomed from take-off.

[prospector]

Of course Chippendale wouldn't have considered any of this as he worked for CAD and old shredder was his personal adviser. Whether he acted in a biased fashion or was just way out of his depth is a debatable point.


There are some unknown facts related to this crash, such as why the decision to descend was made when it was, why it continued with the weather, cloud base as it was, these facts will never be known.

But there are facts that are known, and the number of times in this thread that these have been distorted, or been completely wrong, time and time again, despite the correct proven, references given facts, physical impossibilities that some of the arguments are constructed on, no wonder it goes on and on.

Chippindale did not work for CAA. His office was completely independant, he reported directly to the Minister of Transport. The reason for this should be perfectly obvious.

[ampan]

The decision to descend at 45 miles out, which was just as much a cause of the accident as the changed waypoint, might be explainable. Ten minutes beforehand, Capt Collins had accepted the offer of a radar assist, so the standard procedure would be to maintain MSA until his position had been confirmed and then go down through the cloud. The weather reported to the captain was a continous layer of cloud with a base of 6000 feet. After accepting the radar assist, the F/O tried to contact the Tower on VHF radio (being the only radio the Tower had) and then the captain took over and tried to get the Tower himself, without success. This was just prior to the decision to descend, so the two are probably linked.

The theory about the transponder light coming on cannot be correct, but the descent decision must have had something to do with the proposed radar assist, because that plan was obviously abandoned. The captain would have expected to be in contact with the Tower at least by 60 miles out. As he got to 45 miles out, there had been no contact, despite numerous attempts, so the captain probably concluded that the VHF radio was having one of its off days. If so, there could be no radar assist, whatever be the state of the transponder light. At the time, he was approaching the edge of the cloud layer which, he had been told, extended all the way to McMurdo Station. Without the radar assist, the only way that he and the passengers would get to see the place was VMC, and the only way to do that was to go down the hole while he still had a hole to go down. It was a 'now or never' situation.

Although the decision might be understandable, so too was Capt Van Zanten's, yet he is regarded as a villain, while Capt Collins is regarded as God's gift to NZ aviation. What Capt Collins did was hasty, stupid, negligent, and contrary to the warning he had given to himself only a few minutes beforehand.

All of this was compounded by what happened afterwards. Capt Van Zanten was stuck with his bad decision, but Capt Collins had a full 20 minutes to appreciate his mistake, yet instead of returning to MSA, he kept going down.

[DozyWannabe]

@ampan - Captain Van Zanten did not have clearance to take off and overruled an obviously hesitant crew to send his 747 down the Los Rodeos runway - he was improvising procedure due to a pre-existing emergency (the bomb at Las Palmas airport). Captain Collins had been given a set of information that the airline changed overnight without informing him, which he followed dutifully and with the consent of his crew, and when things didn't look right he began an escape maneouvre at the first sign of disquiet. The cases couldn't be more different.

The disaster that bears the most similarities to TE901 on Erebus to my mind is non aviation-related, and it is the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. In both cases, information that might have prevented a catastrophe was known by those further up the chain from the men at the controls, but that information was withheld for the sake of expediency - and in both cases the powers that be attempted to blame the disaster on the last link in the chain. The only reason this information is known is due to the work of Gordon Vette and Peter Mahon in the case of Erebus, and the last recorded testament of Valery Legasov - the First Deputy Director of the Soviet Institute of Atomic Energy - in the case of Chernobyl.

[framer]

Captain Collins had been given a set of information that the airline changed overnight without informing him, which he followed dutifully
Dozy that is a simplistic view. He accepted responsibility for navigating the aircraft clear of terrain visually, then relied on something else to achieve that (AINS). The result was that they lost the protection of both MSA and navigating visually.
The disaster that bears the most similarities to TE901 on Erebus to my mind is non aviation-related, and it is the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986
We can each find events that suit our arguments. I could easily find many accidents that wouldn't have happened if a safety height was adhered to.
1/ Erebus (FL 160 MSA)
2/ Perpignan (Airbus safety height FL140)
3/ Pukerua Bay Iroquois (NVG min height 600ft)

Dozy, when, as Pin C of a heavy jet, would you consider it prudent to fly 250kts, 1500ft, clean, straight and level?
FGD is the only one who answered my earlier question about this. He thinks as long as there is 20km viz. (what a coincidence).
How about, when you've never been to an area before, there are snow showers and a reported 2000ft cloud base, you've told your crew that 'it's hard to distinguish between cloud and ice', you know there is terrain in the vicinity and that you're not over the ocean. Is that the appropriate time to do it? I really want to know if you think that is reasonable as FGD would say.

[ampan]

DozyW: Each captain embarked on a foolish journey into the unknown, one down a runway and another down a hole.

Putting nuclear reactors to one side, a possible analogy is that of JFK Junior, flying VMC at night from New York to Martha's Vineyard. The weather was clear and his plan was to navigate by reference to the lights along the coast. But he abandoned the plan and tried to take a short-cut over 50 miles of open water. Once he lost contact with the lights on the coast, he lost all visual reference and couldn't tell up from down. It might be said that his ears deceived him, given that it's the little spirit levels in the human ear that give the sense of balance. Capt Collins' superior training would have prevented him from making that particular mistake, but what he did was similar, in that he went VMC into a situation where his eyes might deceive him, and made that situation potentially lethal by going below MSA.

[DozyWannabe]

I'm guessing that your last quote tag was in fact a question. This was not a normal, routine flight - but the procedures put in place by ANZ meant that for line crews it was accepted that it might as well have been. The "safety" altitude was explicitly rescinded in the briefing - what part of that is difficult to understand?

As PIC, Collins had faith in the people that had briefed him, the company he worked for and his own abilities. Going by character testimony he was a cautious and meticulous pilot, well regarded by everyone he worked with. There is nothing in the record to suggest that he was anything other than that when he boarded the DC-10 that morning. He was not expecting to have to improvise and followed the advice and information he was presented with - and I emphasise this again - to the letter. If he had experience of the Antarctic before then your argument would hold ground, but the fact is he was not - however he was told that if he followed the instructions (and computerised flight plan) given to him at the briefing he would be safe. ANZ changed the flight plan without telling him, did not communicate the change in co-ordinates to the radar controllers at McMurdo and did not impart to him the vital knowledge of whiteout at significant altitude - they set him up to fail.

[framer]

I'm guessing that your last quote tag was in fact a question.
Yes it was. I've asked it a couple of times now and still no answer. I would appreciate it if you would answer it because it would help me understand your personal position better. A lot of aviation safety comes down to judgement calls by the P in C. Operating as they did was a judgement call by Collins. If you tell me what circumstances you would be happy flying straight and level clean 1500ft 250kts in a heavy full of pax, then I will have a better idea of how comfortable you are with risk and also of your understanding of the configuration the were in.
Cheers

[ampan]

DozyW: If Capt Collins was a cautious and meticulous pilot, he and 230 others would not have died that day. The comments you refer to were the result of a natural tendancy to not speak ill of the dead.

The inadequacies of the briefing had nothing to do with it. The issue is the state of the captain's knowledge when he made the decision to descend. That knowledge included nearly 30 years as a fulltime professional pilot, nearly 20 of them as PIC. He was expected to (and was very well paid to) exercise all of that accumated experience and skill.

The MSA was not revoked at the briefing. The briefing did not cause Ross Island to sink into the ocean. The reason for not going below 16000 feet was not because of a rule. It was because there was 13000 foot mountain in the vicinity. If there was any rule, it was one created by plain old common sense.

As to the "to the letter" point, that can't be correct, given the conflicting information about the waypoint that he took from the briefing. It's logically impossible to follow conflicting instructions to the letter.

[DozyWannabe]

The MSA was not revoked at the briefing.

Yes it was - it's there in the briefing pilot's testimony.

[ampan]

Applying the rules of common sense, MSA was 14000 feet: 1000 feet above the summit of Erebus.

Applying the rules conveyed at the briefing, MSA was 16000 feet with a discretion to go lower if VMC.

The captain did not have VMC below the cloud, as he had pointed out to himself ten minutes beforehand.

He made what was, in effect, an instruments descent, backed up by what he could see out the window. But as he knew full well, the view out the window is of no assistance when flying on instruments and can be completely misleading - which is why you put the blinds down.

As for his instruments descent, there were three things wrong with it:

(1) It was against the rules, given that he wasn't VMC.

(2) The AINS was not regarded, at the time, as sufficiently precise to go below MSA.

(3) In this specific case, the AINS should never have been used, given the conflicting information about the waypoint, which the captain failed to resolve.

[mangere1957]

ampan @ 30th Dec 2011, 12:26 post #402


"The transponder light only indicated that the aircraft was on the radar screen, somewhere."

It doesn't even do that. All it indicates is that it has been interrogated and has replied. It does not indicate that the reply was received and decoded and displayed. It is even possible that it was interrogated by some naval ship.

[mangere1957]

#1AHRS @ 27th Dec 2011, 15:03 post #380

"No lumping together of visual or instrument rules there, just good utilization of what the aircraft offers us. As I suspect Jim Collins was doing."

If you mean(as logically appears to be the case) that Collins was "{making} good utilization of what the aircraft offers" I have to disagree strongly. It's clear that he made no attempt to use the weather radar. Had he done so, with correct technique, he'd have know exactly where he was.

Hubris kills and Air New Zealand were full of it.

[prospector]

Hubris kills and Air New Zealand were full of it.


And that in a nutshell sums it up.

[mangere1957]

DozyWannabe @ 2nd Jan 2012, 15:17 post #424

The MSA was not revoked at the briefing.

"Yes it was - it's there in the briefing pilot's testimony."


Nope a briefing officer can not change MSA. MSA is set by the relevant regulatory authority. Rules for operating airliners are all in hard copy not conveyed verbally.

[prospector]

Do not know if you followed the thread from the start but this from Dozywannabe is very relevant, note self taught, so knowledge is related to that.

I'm happy to admit that I'm no professional aviator, my experience being limited to my Air Cadet days and getting the odd go in a light aircraft. However I've been an aviation enthusiast and self-taught safety freak since you could count the years I'd been around on two hands - I blame watching "A Fall From Grace" on the BBC when I was eight

framer,
Also very pertinent to your thrice asked question
.

Yes it was. I've asked it a couple of times now and still no answer. I would appreciate it if you would answer it because it would help me understand your personal position better

[Centaurus]

It's clear that he made no attempt to use the weather radar. Had he done so, with correct technique, he'd have know exactly where he was.

The following extracts from Peter Mahon's book "Verdict on Erebus" page 168, answers your accusation that "it was clear he made no attempt to use the weather radar"

" The Bendix company (weather radar) opinion was that because the slopes of the mountainside were covered in snow and ice which was totally dry, then the return from from the mountain would be nil. Even though this particular radar equipment was programmed only to detect moisture, it would nevertheless give a return off high terrain composed of rock and earth, but a thick coating of dry snow and dry ice on the northern slopes of Mount Erebus would cause the radar beam to be totally absorbed and make it impossible for any return to be received. This opinion was based upon the inability of the radar pulses from the radar to achieve any return once they penetrated the crystalline structure of dry snow and dry ice.

In the opinion of the Bendix experts there was nothing in the theory that the radar on the DC10, if set in the `weather` mode would have detected the presence of the ice-covered slopes of the mountain ahead.

[prospector]

. and this from mangere1957

with correct technique, he'd have know exactly where he was.

and this from an earlier post of mine in this thread.
Quote:
The only aids available to the crew were,

What about the WX radar in the mapping mode?? Mahon went to great lengths to show this was not relevant, probably because it never fitted into his theory.

From "Aviation Tragedies" John King.


Quote:
This aspect has been hotly debated. Many pilots flying the DC10 to the AntArctic used the weather radar in mapping mode which clearly confirmed the outline of Ross Island and the hight ground they could see through the cockpit window in the clear AntArctic conditions. The Chippindale report covered that point.

One would think given the situation every piece of equipment to confirm position prior to descent below MSA would be used. To leave the radar in WX mode at that time would not be a clever idea, but it got Mahon a trip to America to prove what????

[Dream Land]

I've used radar mapping to assist me to steer clear of the big stuff in the old days getting in to Aspen, CO., but I didn't try to use it to determine my position in the first place!

I think ampan and framer have it correct, Dozy, I think your opinions are off the mark, as pilots we are responsible to formulate a plan of action based on very conservative, and sound judgement.

Formulating a plan based on a lot of assumptions is never good, and only gets worse, whether the company gave him the wrong coordinates on the last fix, or whether the NAV system had a flaw, it was Captain Collins responsibility to know exactly where he was before he began his scud running mission, I'm signing off of this thread, I enjoyed the civilized discussion. :ok:

[TDK mk2]

I've enjoyed it too! The only time I've ever flown a public transport catagory jet (albeit a regional jet) at anything like 260kts clean at 1500' was on a visual approach and that was over water. I did ask a retired BA captain (757/767) about the Erebus circumstances quite a few years back and he said that the hair would have been standing up on the back of his neck in those conditions and he was well known for his slightly 'adventurous' style of operation on occasion.

I haven't really got a problem with the apportioning of resposibility for the conduct of the flight to the Pilot in Command but it's what happened in the aftermath which I find so disturbing as a line Captain, and that's what Justice Mahon got to the heart of. Unfortunately for him he learnt what I now suspect is the case in all public inquiries and the like conducted for governments of the Westminster system, and that is that the outcome is known by the establishment from the outset. Mahon discovered the conspiracy to conceal the systemic causes of this accident and laid them bare. Apparently legally he went too far in outing the conspiracy, and for that paid a huge price.

Going by some of the things I've seen posted here the lessons of this whole sorry saga haven't been learnt by some, and I suspect they are the sort of uncompromising black and whiters that I have to deal with from time to time. As was said to me by a wise fleet manager once, 'the ops manual is written in black and white but the world is not black and white'...

[ampan]

In this case, the world was white and white.

Screeds could be written about Mahon's conspiracy theories, but the real point is that they had no relevance to the issue. The mighty judge had exposed the alleged conspiracies. Having done that, his job was to determine the cause/s. Instead, he got completely sidetracked - and don't take my word for it:

But there was an aviation expert more or less attached to the commission and not associated with the airline – Air Marshall Sir Rochford Hughes, who was the technical advisor to David Baragwanath QC, the senior lawyer appointed to assist the inquiry and Mahon’s legal right hand during the hearings. Hughes had a distinguished service career and had been advisor to foreign governments on aviation matters. He had also sat as an assessor on an aircraft crash investigation in Britain. …

“Mahon wrote his report on Erebus entirely on his own, without any reference to either David Baragwanath or certainly myself,” says Hughes … I think David read it with as great an interest as I did as it was completely contrary to some things we had urged him to take cognisance of. The main point was he had convinced himself – and we had no disagreement with that – that the basic cause of the accident was the lack of proper organisation within Air New Zealand for the execution of a flight to a territory totally remote from regular airline routes. For reasons best known to the judge, he formed a great sympathy for the lot of the pilots on that flight. That’s where the difficulties arose. He felt they were fully entitled to rely implicitly on the internal navigation system which they used on regular routes, but of course that had limitations on the Antarctic route, and I don’t think any of the air force authorities or I would agree that was the way an Antarctic flight should be conducted.”

Sir Rochford Hughes says the crew must accept 10 to 20 percent of the blame for descending without first being picked up by radar and without identifying the high ground: “My great difference of opinion with the judge is that the captain ultimately had full responsibility for the control and navigation of his aircraft. It was a terrible error of judgement coming below safety height without positive radar control. He came down at low altitude in a position which prevented the US naval radar from seeing him because the mountain was in the way. That was the fatal mistake. He should never have come below safety height until he was under positive radar control. That is the rule for military flights.” (North & South magazine, November 1989, pages 85-86)

[TDK mk2]

Sir Rochford Hughes says the crew must accept 10 to 20 percent of the blame for descending without first being picked up by radar and without identifying the high ground: “My great difference of opinion with the judge is that the captain ultimately had full responsibility for the control and navigation of his aircraft. It was a terrible error of judgement coming below safety height without positive radar control.

It doesn't seem like an unreasonable position that the Air Marshall has taken above. I note that at 12.19 the F.O. had been told by MAC centre that within 40miles they could provide radar vectors to let them down to 1500 feet. The F.O. replied to them on HF; "that's acceptable" and the Captain stated that "that's what we want to hear". It's difficult to understand how they got from those statements where it seems to me that they fully intended to have a radar service to instead making a VMC descent with seemingly little discussion about the absence of the radar service. I know the limitations of the various CVR transcriptions, and that there is clearly much context (map reading, pointing out visual features etc) that can't be known from any CVR transcript, but how did such an obvious (to me anyway) intention to have the radar service get set aside so seemingly casually?

[ampan]

Probably because the captain thought he wouldn't be getting the radar service. Even if he was within range with his transponder being interrogated by the radar, that was of no use to him without VHF contact with the Tower. Of the ten minutes that elapsed between the offer of the radar assist and the decision to descend, most of it was spent trying to make VHF contact, with Mac Station and with the Tower. Radio communications in the Antarctic were notoriously unreliable, so the captain probably thought that the VHF was playing up, hence the decision to go scud running while he still had the chance.

PS - The Air Marshall didn't let AirNZ off the hook:

Sir Rochford’s criticism of the crew is almost mild in comparison with his scathing denunciation of Air New Zealand’s flight planning, which he says deserves 80 to 90 percent of the blame for the disaster. “Air New Zealand treated the flights as a picnic for senior captains. They asked to fly them and they went in order of seniority. The air force insists that potential Antarctic captains do at least one or two trips in the copilot’s seat, which is eminently sensible. But only the flight engineer (Brooks) had been there before and from the voice recording he was the only one concerned. The briefings for the captains were pathetic. I was horrified throughout the inquiry to realise that, in preparation for the flights, the airline had no contact with the RNZAF with their great fund of Antarctic flying experience. This manifested in the ridiculous situation that the airline could not even give Collins a proper topographical map of the area. At Whenuapai (the air force base at Auckland) I saw for myself drawers full of maps. An adequate briefing was available at Whenuapai, if the airline had just pocketed its pride and asked.”

Hughes adds: “That (navigation coordinate change) was an added and very sinister factor which just again weighed the odds against Captain Collins, who was after all following the procedure adopted by captains of the previous flights. Without doubt he should have been told of the change. One can have no sympathy whatsoever with the poor organisation which Judge Mahon revealed was prevalent. It was a chapter in Air New Zealand’s history I’m sure they wish had never been written. (North & South magazine, November 1989, pages 86 & 89)

[ampan]

Boeing 787-9:
Seating 250 – 290

Range 8000-8500 nm

Cruising speed 0.85 Mach
The distance between Auckland and McMurdo Station is 2473nm: 4.4 hours flying time. Available flying time at cruising speed is a whopping 15.1 hours, so that would give 6 hours for sightseeing. It would be a long day, but I'd pay around NZD900. And given the history, it would be one of the safest scenic flights available.

[prospector]

From Gordon Vette "Impact Erebus" page 213.

When I flew visually in the AntArctic I believed that there was no problem. Prior to m,y research on the AntArctic crash, I would have scoffed at this requirement. I am now firmly convinced that under certain lighting conditions an aircrew could fly into terrain, even with the terrain in the field of view and with plenty of time to take avoiding action. Therefor descent below the top of Mt Erebus, or other Polar terrain, even in clear conditions is hazardous. It appears to me that those of us who conducted the AntArctic flights may unwittingly have exposed ourselves, our passengers and crew, to a similar danger.

From the aviation expert who was supposed to be Mahon's technical adviser

Air New Zealand treated the flights as a picnic for senior captains. They asked to fly them and they went in order of seniority. The air force insists that potential Antarctic captains do at least one or two trips in the copilot’s seat, which is eminently sensible. But only the flight engineer (Brooks) had been there before and from the voice recording he was the only one concerned. The briefings for the captains were pathetic. I was horrified throughout the inquiry to realise that, in preparation for the flights, the airline had no contact with the RNZAF with their great fund of Antarctic flying experience.


Vette admits, after his research, that the research of CAA and Capt Gemmel made sense after all, the altitude restrictions were there for a specific purpose, not the story that was given to Mahon that they were irrelevant if VMC.

Going down to 1500ft at the invitation of the radar controller was not the most sensible thing to do, but it left a rod for the back of following crew who had different weather conditons entirely but were expected to show the pax the same scenery from the same altitude.
.
Hubris kills and Air New Zealand were full of it.


And the previous quotes show how accurate that sentence is.

[mangere1957]

Centaurus @ 2nd Jan 2012 18:56 post #431

"The Bendix company (weather radar) opinion was that because the slopes of the mountainside were covered in snow and ice which was totally dry, then the return from from the mountain would be nil."

The last clause, in italics, might(not, in my opinion), or not, be true. However there were plenty of exposed rock faces and cliffs so that in the hands of a skilled operator it would have been possible to see the coastline all the way down from Cape Hallet. Cape Hallet itself would have been detectable from 200 nm(or 180 if the DC10 radar was analogue - I've not flown the 10 but imagine that it was digital). To detect relevant terrain from low altitude the radar should be in weather, not map, mode and tilt and gain manually adjusted to find the sought features.* There were even exposed rock faces on Erebus which would certainly have given strong returns. I don't hold Collins blameworthy for not knowing how to use the radar for an undesigned function, it's just another of the things in which Air New Zealand did not train its pilots. In their normal operations it was of no relevance at all.**


Air New Zealnd training; why was it so bad.

Both in the Sixies and Seventies TEAL and NAC were government owned and totally corrupt. TEAL/AIRNZ, as everybody knows, had destroyed two aircraft in training during the Sixties. Nothing had changed through the Seventies.




*It is often possible to use technology do do useful things other than that for which it was designed, or even, perhaps, known by the designers. For one instance, even in 1961, more than 20 years after its design NAC had still not solved the single circuit U/C downlock indication problem. I solved it withiin minutes of exposure to it on my DC3 course. The solution to the problem was trivial but nobody had bothered to solve it. It did matter. The problem was serious as the bent wings on a DC3, a few years later, attested.

**Except possibly in the early sixties when the Electras constantly succeded in landing on 16 at Wellington when all others were unsuccessful.

[ampan]

except for simulators

T or F: In the 1966 crash, they were spending the day practising an engine failure on take-off?

Why would anyone do something like that 'live'?

[framer]

Why would anyone do something like that 'live'?

They still do, twice a day. Air NZ has been assessing a business case for a simulator for the 1900D for years now and each time says it doesn't stack up so the Air NZ Link boys and girls go out and chop engines at V1 in all sorts of weather day in day out. I wonder if they factor into the business case the potential to lose an aircraft and crew and have the Koru broken on the world wide web again?

[prospector]

**Except possibly in the early sixties when the Electras constantly succeded in landing on 16 at Wellington when all others were unsuccessful.

Is that what this crew were practicing to perfect?? From NZ Tragedies Aviation by John King.

Lockheed had a spectacular handling gimmick that the company liked to demonstrate. The Electra could be flown over the runway threshold at 1,000ft and, with full flap and throttled right back to flight idle and standing on the propellors, descend almost vertically at 140 knots and land on the runway. It had absolutely no relevance to anything that might be encountered at any time in airline flying, where standard approach procedures and decision points are rigorously maintained, but it was a last- ditch method which somehow became an exercise to be performed on a flight check.

Such an approach was dangerous and had to be flown with absolute accuracy, at no less than 140 knots, Only that speed would give enough energy for the airliner to flare into a landing attitude because the propellors at flight idle effectively blanketed the airflow over the wings.

No names, no pack drill, so a paragraph omitted here.

Without enough airspeed in the descent the aircraft landed very heavily, collapsing the undercarriage and shedding engines, wings and tail as it slid of the runway and across the grass to the accompaniment of emergency sirens and alarm bells ringing throughout Whenuapai RNZAF base.


Perhaps not directly related to Erebus thread, but further example of the Hubris that existed in the Company, TEAL, before the change to Air New Zealand

[ampan]

Crikey: Not much point in wasting breath calling for a go-around.

It looks as if they had a better excuse for the 1966 incident: Due to a design defect in the DC8's throttle, the engine went past idle and slipped into reverse.

[prospector]

Due to a design defect in the DC8's throttle, the engine went past idle and slipped into reverse

And that was the second time it happened, got away with it the first time, the DC8 had enough speed to be controllable until the problem was resolved.

[ampan]

Crikey Number Two: Then why do it a second time, for no reason?

Put yourself in the position of an AirNZ (or TEAL) line captain in the 1960s, which Capt Collins was. Biggest danger? Kai Tak Checkerboard approach? No. Missing Honolulu and ditching in the Pacific? No. Mad-Cap training for things that would probably never happen? Definitely.

[27/09]

TEAL was really just the "Air Transport Division" of the RNZAF

[Brian Abraham]

TEAL was really just the "Air Transport Division" of the RNZAF
TEAL first registered in Wellington as a limited liability company on 26 April 1940. The shares were originally held by the New Zealand government (20%), Union Airways (19%), BOAC (38%) and Qantas (23%).

[ampan]

NZ Court of Appeal:


HOT FREE BOOKS &bull; Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster &bull; Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richard (http://www.hotfreebooks.com/book/Judgments-of-the-Court-of-Appeal-of-New-Zealand-on-Proceedings-to-Review-Aspects-of-the-Report-of-the-Royal-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Mount-Erebus-Aircraft-Disaster-Sir-Owen-Woodhouse-R-B-Cooke-Ivor-L-M-Richardson-Duncan.html)


Privy Council:

http://www.nzalpa.org.nz/Portals/4/Documents/Legal/Privy-%20Air%20NZ%20Ltd%20v%20Mahon.pdf


US District Court for District of Columbia (Justice Greene):

FindACase™ | BEATTIE v. UNITED STATES (http://dc.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.19880707_0000141.DDC.htm/qx)

[ampan]

Recently paid NZD43 for Holmes’ book. As expected, it’s garbage. The analysis of the causes is all taken from previous books. He certainly goes to town on Chippindale (and of all the available photos of the inspector, the one he selects is one that he hopes will show the man looking slightly dodgy.) Interestingly, there is no such full-frontal attack on Gemmell. It’s all innuendo and insinuation. From this, I would conclude that Gemmell, unlike Chippindale, isn’t dead yet and can still sue for defamation. The money spent on the book, however, was worth it, because it contains a piece of relevant evidence that never came out. The irony is that the evidence puts the final nail in the coffin of the ‘no blame on the Captain’ argument – so Holmes’ attempted snow-job has precisely the opposite effect.

Whatever transcript you look at, Captain Collins, while at 18000 feet and after being advised that McMurdo Station was covered in cloud, said that it was “very hard to tell the difference between the cloud and the ice”. The danger of flying VMC below cloud was not covered in AirNZ’s briefing, but the captain clearly had some appreciation of the problem. How? It could have been from his days in the RNZAF, or from his private reading, but thanks to Paul, we have a far better candidate. At page 369, Holmes writes: “We know that Lucas had been diligent in his preparation for the flight because he and Jim Collins had paid a visit to Operation Deep Freeze for a briefing a month before, a visit confirmed by Chippindale, according to ALPA investigator First Officer Peter Rhodes.” (A footnote to the above sentence provides the source: “Email to Paul Davison, 5 December 2009”.)

Well, well. Now it comes out, 33 years later. I wonder how long the union has been sitting on that piece of information. If members of NZALPA knew about this air force briefing at the time of the Royal Commission, then they have some explaining to do. Mahon obviously knew nothing about it, and neither did Sir Rochford Hughes.

The significance is obvious: Given the state of his knowledge, Captain Collins wasn’t entitled to fly VMC below cloud. He could only go below MSA on instruments. Was the AINS sufficient? Definitely not:

“Even with the granted accuracy of the inertial navigation system, no pilot should descend in instrument meteorological conditions beneath his minimum safe altitude until he is perfectly certain of his position. He can do this by checking with ground aids, or by visually identifying the terrain over which he is flying. Should he even look like straying into unclear weather at lower heights, he should fly out immediately – unless of course his position can be monitored exactly with ground radio aids or radar.” (Vette p169)

[prospector]

Given the same set of facts, it is amazing that two legal minds can come to such different conclusions. Justice Greene of the District of Columbia has come up with a finding that agrees in the main with Ron Chippindales findings. Completely different to Justice Mahons findings.

Could it be due to the fact that Justice Greene had no outside influence from other interested parties, unlike Justice Mahon, who undoubtedly put a lot of weight on the testimony of Captain Vette.

Justice Greene disagreed with Vette, especially over what the radar operators meaning of an offer of Radar vectors was intended to convey.

[chris lz]

Ampan,

Can you or anyone fill me in on the alleged discontent of Lucas on F901?

[ampan]

That's just another of many rumours, but there's no evidence of it. If it had a source, it would have to be someone who listened to the tape, thought they might have heard something, and then told someone else. Trouble is, numerous persons listened to the tape.

[prospector]

chris lz,

That piece pf information was posted by bbq. It is the first time I have ever heard it, and I have been following this and other relative threads for a long time now, and read just about all that has been printed on the subject.

It would appear from bbq's posting that he was employed by ANZ as aircrew at the time of the crash. Perhaps if he still follows this thread he may elucidate further on his statement.

It perhaps gains some credence due to the fact that F/O Lucas was not in the cockpit at the time the CVR recordings were being recorded, which would appear to be unusual given that he was a member of the crew and important decisions were being made.

[ampan]

It's a pity that Lucas was back in the cabin, given that he also attended the air force briefing at Operation Deep Freeze.

Old Fella's post at #73 is interesting: "I was involved as part of Operation Deep Freeze during December 1978 and we were certainly well briefed re 'white-out'. "

[ampan]

“Why was the airline so intent on blaming the dead aircrew? As always, we must follow the money. If the pilots were proven to have caused the accident through their own negligence, the airline’s insurers were protected in terms of the amount of damages for everyone on board by the Warsaw Convention – replaced in 1999 by the Montreal Convention – which would limit the airline’s liability to USD42,000 per dead passenger. If the airline itself were proven to have been grossly negligent, however, then the claims for damages would be unlimited and would have filled New Zealand courts for a long time. The costs to the airline and the country could have reached several hundred million dollars in compensation awards. Juries in courts, in the United States particularly, had been lavish in their awards against negligent airlines. It could well happen here. So the pilots had to be blamed. The airline could not be found to be culpable.” (Holmes p240)


Really, Paul? The pilots were employees of the airline, as were the navigation staff, the flight operations people, and every single other person involved (except the US Navy staff at McMurdo Station). Things done by the pilots were things done by the airline. AirNZ was liable for the decisions made by Captain Collins, because he was an employee of Air NZ.

The limit under the Warsaw Convention did not apply if the accident was caused by the airline’s “wilful misconduct”. The airline employees most often accused of such conduct were pilots. For example, in the Korean Airlines disaster, the airline was successfully sued in the US courts, it being found that the accident was caused by the airline’s wilful misconduct, in allowing the aircraft to enter Soviet airspace. In other words, the airline was liable for the navigation error made by the captain.

http://openjurist.org/932/f2d/1475 (http://openjurist.org/932/f2d/1475)

There was no financial incentive for AirNZ to pin the blame on the pilots. In fact, it was the opposite. If there was a clear unambiguous directive that 16,000 feet was the minimum altitude (which there wasn't), then Captain Collins’ deliberate breach of the directive would probably have amounted to wilful misconduct, by AirNZ. Far better to have individual acts of carelessness by numerous different employees, which then came together, in combination with the weather, to cause a disaster. In other words, lots of people were careless, but no-one wilfully broke the rules.

Follow the money again, Paul. You’ll end up in a very different place, with nothing to write a book about.

[prospector]

Careful there ampan, you will be starting another conspiracy theory, Ron Chippindale was also involved in that investigation.

From Johnj King publication.

Recently, for instance, he was appointed to the five strong United Nations team to investigate the loss of Korean Airlines Boeing 747 airliner, Flt KAL007 shot down by a Soviet fighter near the Island of Sakhalin in 1983.

Not the sort of job to be handed to the Aircraft Accident Inspector that Holmes tries to portray.

Also from John King publication. This is relevant but has not been mentioned in the thread yet,

So even before the Royal Commission began its lengthy hearings, Judge Mahon had preconceived idea's about the deeper motives behind it-and about the c ause of the disaster, so had W.D. Baragwanath and G.M. Harrison, counsel assisting the Commissioner.

In Sydney a few weeks before the commission started, while viewing QANTAS training procedures for its own Antarctic flights the two lawyers publicly stated that pilot error on Flt901 was not the problem. The disaster was caused by a navigational error by Flight operations.

Everything from then on was made to fit that theory and all evidence which suggested the captain was responsible was rejected by the Royal Commission.

[ampan]

Prospector / Desert Dingo:

The critical witness at the Royal Commission hearing was Captain Leslie Simpson, who ended up in the unique position of getting it in the neck from both sides. His "eye-balling"/ "10 miles" evidence when describing, we all think, two whole degrees of longitude is derided, by me and plenty of others. But what if he was looking at a flight plan that read:

"7751.0S16641.0E"

remembering that Captain Wilson had the co-ordinates of the TACAN up on the screen:

"7752.7S16658.0E".

17 minutes of longitude. Very easy to estimate that as 10nm. In NZ latitudes, it's 13nm. At 78S, it has to be less, so lets call it 10nm (and get back to following the briefing).


Second question: "7752.7S" means, to me, 77 degrees 52 minutes plus 0.7 of a minute. Is that right?

[chris lz]

ampan/prospector,

Interesting, thanks.

[ampan]

Looks as if his voice was never heard on the CVR tape:
“For Captain Arthur Cooper, the role of ‘Brick’ Lucas in the accident is constantly underestimated, not so much for what he did but for what he didn’t do. At no point in that final 30 minutes of the cockpit voice recorder is the voice of First Officer Lucas to be heard. In other words, he was back in the cabin, chatting to passengers or resting, without a doubt as fascinated as everyone else was with the Antartic scenes below them through the cabin windows, and not at all concerned. … And like Captain Arthur Cooper, Vette knew that if Jim Collins and Greg Cassin were flying foolishly that Lucas would have been straight up on the flight deck demanding to know what the hell they thought they were doing.” (Holmes p316)
When the aircraft began to descend, Lucas probably assumed that its position had been confirmed by the Tower’s radar. With the benefit of hindsight, it could be said that he should have wondered to himself why the aircraft was orbiting, instead of going straight down. So he has to cop a bit of the blame, but not much.

The main lesson I’m learning from Holmes’ book, apart from the fact that be couldn’t even be bothered checking his spelling, is that of all the books he read, he should at least have read his own. It’s difficult to find a better example of someone shooting themselves in the foot, or somewhere worse:

“But what no-one on the flight deck knew, Collins’ understanding of the meaning of flying visually bore no relation to the realities of Antarctic flying. The normal VMC requirement round the world is that you must be able to see anything eight kilometres away. Air New Zealand had increased that requirement to 20 kilometers in Antarctica but it wasn’t enough. In fact the visibility requirement meant nothing in whiteout. Whiteout is a unique and fatal trap. Collins didn’t know this. Mac Centre had told him he would have 40 miles’ visibility which, in aviation terms, is infinite. Air New Zealand never discussed the kind of whiteout he was now flying into and had not advised the Antartic pilots never to descend beneath cloud with white snow and ice beneath them and a low sun behind them. The failure to inform the crews about the dangers of whiteout was a grossly negligent omission. It was a gross dereliction. If the airline had arranged for the briefings to include instructions into the variety and perfidiousness of Antartic whiteout, then even in what he perceived to be visual conditions, Jim Collins would never have flown beneath cloud in Antarctica with mountains all around him, and the crash would not have happened.” (Holmes pp65,66)

As is to be expected, he makes no reference to the captain’s cloud/ice comment, because it doesn’t suit. At the point in the narrative where you would expect him to mention it, we get: “The fates were malevolent this day. The fates were conspiring. The fates wanted to kill this day.”(p62) Very good information about the fates, but nothing on the captain’s appreciation of the visual problem flying below cloud. So Holmes obviously had a snow-job in mind, but then, 300 pages later, he tells the world that the captain attended a briefing at the RNZAF, where the visual problems would have been referred to, thereby explaining the cloud/ice comment. With one single sentence, he destroyed his entire argument. Worse still, he turned an accident where the captain only had some of blame into one where he gets most of it. If I were a daughter of Erebus, I would regret letting Holmes inside the house.

[ampan]

Copied this from another thread re Hercs. It the best example I've seen of whiteout conditions. The horizon is mid-screen, but you would never know.

FARK.com: Fark Video Player (6857861) Skier 52 is executing a navigator directed Airborne Radar Approach on the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet. Let's drop into the cabin and see what's happening (http://www.fark.com/vidplayer/6857861)

[DozyWannabe]

@prospector - Learned people agreeing with you is not the same as being correct.

@ampan - "Scud Run" is a misnomer in this case - to use the term implies that the crew, unable to determine their location, descended through an overcast to attempt visual navigation at a lower altitude, which is not what happened here. The descent was performed in *broken cloud through which they could see* on the basis that *they believed they already knew where they were*, and that they would be able to see where they were going and avoid the danger presented by the overcast south of their position.

@Dream Land - Collins was, by all accounts, a very conscientious pilot and very conservative in his approach to risk - if that wasn't the case his colleagues would not have defended him as they did. The issue here is the whole basis of the pilot error argument is predicated on an assertion that the crew were unsure of their location - an assertion for which there is no concrete evidence. ANZ management had to falsify the CVR transcript in order to bolster their argument.

My argument has never been that the crew made no mistake - clearly they did. However, my contention is that the mistake was understandable and entirely primed by the slipshod management of the company from the top down, and as such the crew should not be tarnished with allegations of negligence or carelessness.

[prospector]

@prospector - Learned people agreeing with you is not the same as being correct.

Learned people disagreeing with me does not make them correct either. It depends a great deal on what their qualifications for being called learned relate to.

In the case in question the learned peoiple who I agree with are all very experienced aviators.



"Scud Run" is a misnomer in this case -

No it is not. Flying at 1,480ft below an 8/8 ths overcast which must have been under 2,000ft., because they went lower to try and see anything ahead of them, at 260kts plus, is scud running whether you know where you are or not. To carry out such a move in a 250 ton aircraft loaded with Pax is beyond belief, anywhere, much less Antarctica.

Please do not come back with the AINS track argument, it was not, at that time, and to the best of my knowledge, never has been cleared for any sort of instrument guidance below route MSA, which was 16,000ft.


Thus as far as I'm concerned (and given the deliberately destroyed evidence on the part of Mac Central and Air New Zealand), I have to apportion the responsibility as 15% NZCA for failing to update their regulations and failing to keep a regulatory eye on ANZ between 1977 and 1979 as far as Antarctic flights were concerned, 5% on Mac Central for destroying exculpatory evidence (which leads me to believe they were not paying attention to their radar), and 80% on Air New Zealand, for allowing standards to slip so spectacularly within the space of two years, having incredibly lax communication protocols between their nav section and operations and changing the INS co-ordinates without the crew's knowledge.

That is what you wrote earlier on in this thread, how does your summing up of 100% someone else's fault with your statement now that you say you never said the crew made no mistake????

[stillalbatross]

I am still stunned that even in this day and age with all the discussion about flying RNAV approaches with all the issues associated with trying to get something close to a precision approach in tolerances, reliability and therefore minima. And all the issues related to not having reliance on ground based aids even with the accuracy that laser gyros and GPS give us, that there are still those out there that think that using the INS system on the DC10 is perfectly acceptable for a descent well below minima.

[ampan]

Even Captain Holmes accepts that you couldn’t go below MSA relying solely on the AINS:

In any case, as Gordon Vette says in Impact Erebus, Collins would never have gone lower than 16,000 feet, AINS or no AINS, without being visual. (Holmes p64)

But then this ridiculous nonsense:

“Having established that they ‘had the ground’, and in an example of excellent and professional airmanship, he took the DC-10 down in two great orbits …” (Holmes p64)

and smashed it into a mountain.

Then Holmes hammers home the point that they were VMC. Actually, they were not – but Holmes says they were never warned of the danger of flying visually below cloud. Three hundred pages later he discloses a piece of information that establishes the opposite. (Holmes p369). So he can’t even carry out a simple whitewashing exercise without cocking the whole thing up. Holmes is either very stupid or very careless, or both. An indication of the amount of care and attention he applied to his project is provided by his photograph of Exhibit 164. The whole point of that document to the ‘believers’ is that it shows a track to the Byrd Reporting Point, followed by a short dog-leg left to McMurdo Station – but all of that part is chopped off. And he couldn’t even be bothered getting a proof reader involved, because throughout his book he uses the word “judgement” to describe court decisions. (To be fair, he finally gets it right on the last occasion, at page 437, where it’s “judgment”.) It also appears that Holmes didn’t bother running his book past Paul Davison QC before it was published. Had he done so, he would have had “judgement” corrected (and he would have been asked to tone down the over-the-top flattery) - but most importantly, he would have been asked to remove the sentence stating that Captain Collins had visited Operation Deep Freeze for a briefing. Even if Holmes was too thick to appreciate the significance of that information, Davison certainly wasn’t. Note that the information was provided to Holmes by Davison, it being contained in an email sent to Davison on 5 December 2009 (Holmes p435). It appears that at this time, Davison was representing Mrs Collins on some matter connected with the accident (Holmes p93). Given that Davison obtained the information in the course of his acting for Mrs Collins, there is no possibility of his consenting to its publication, because it’s completely against Mrs Collins’ interests. If her late husband was briefed on sector whiteout, there is no possibility of any exoneration and history will judge him to be the person primarily responsible. Were it not for Holmes’ book, the fact of the air force briefing would never have come out. Davison probably passed over his files to Holmes, on the assumption that he would be sent a draft to check before the book was published. He would have been somewhat concerned in September 2011, when the book was released without him having received a draft. As he read his autographed copy (“To Paul from Paul” “XXXXX OOOOO”) things weren’t too bad, until page 369: “* * holy f*cking sh*t! * * may not be able to * * McMurdo today. Very hard to tell the difference between the ice and the clouds * * I’m gonna * * * * that H*lmes * * Stupid f*cking ***tox!! * *”

An apologetic Holmes probably sought to excuse his blunder by referring to "the fates" (Holmes p62).

Someone who might have saved the stupid twit from himself was Macfarlane, who was sent a draft of each “gripping” chapter (Holmes p10). I don’t know what Mcfarlane was doing with himself while he attempted to read page 369 in Chapter 25, but he could not have been paying close attention, probably because of cartoons.

“But the giant upon whose shoulders I stood and relied was retired law lecturer Stuart Macfarlane. Stuart Macfarlane is a walking authority on the Erebus disaster and his weighty tome The Erebus Papers, published in 1991, is nothing less than the Erebus encyclopedia. No serious study of Erebus can be undertaken without a copy of this book at an author’s side. Stuart’s wife and collaborator, Alison, says that after Stuart read the Court of Appeal decision on Mahon and decided the Court was being ‘silly’, he didn’t come home for dinner for about eight years, working, as he was, on what became of the impossibly exhaustive The Erebus Papers.” (Holmes p12)

Eight years, for that? The only use of The Erebus Papers is its extracts from the evidence, but Macfarlane was deliberately selective. For example, he decided to omit Exhibit 12, because it did not suit his purposes. (Exhibit 12 was the audio transcript of the briefing, which established that the briefed track was to McMurdo Station.) The material that Macfarlane wrote, which appears under the “Editorial Comment” headings, has all the hallmarks of someone who thinks they are very clever and who are actually quite the opposite. For instance, at page 670, he postulates an experiment regarding Captain Simpson’s various statements, the suggestion being that Simpson changed his story. But Macfarlane’s own book answers the whole Simpson issue. The captain, who now has my sympathies, was not looking at “16448.0E” when he did his “eye-balling” at the briefing. He was looking at “16641.0E”, which was 17 minutes west of the TACAN, at 166.58.E. That’s why he estimated the difference as 10nm. In other words, Simpson wasn’t looking at one of the flight plans provided by Captain Wilson. He was looking at the flight plan at page 104 of Macfarlane’s book, which had the NDB waypoint, and which was dated 1977. That flight plan was definitely available at the briefing, because it was used to program the simulator (Macfarlane p220). If you read Simpson’s evidence with that in mind, it all falls into place. At the briefing, he saw a 17 minute difference, which he estimated at being about 10nm. In the cockpit on the morning of the flight, he thinks he’s looking at the same flight plan, but he isn’t. When he gets down there, it’s blue skies, and he flies right of track down the Sound, then turns left towards McMurdo Station. He expected to be going left of track just before reaching the huts in the distance, but notes that he’s going left of track while he’s still 27nm away. That night, he asks himself how the hell he could have estimated two degrees of longitude as being only 10nm and he mentions it to Captain Johnson the following day. Why, then, did Simpson’s evidence come out the way it did? Macfarlane again provides the answer. In his statement to Chippindale made in March 1980, Simpson said that Wilson had flight plans from “previous years” flights (Macfarlane p 354). The flight plans Wilson actually provided were from the previous week’s flight. Simpson’s statement, therefore, is consistent with him having sighted a flight plan dated in 1977 with the NDB co-ordinates: 166E. Simpson’s statement was provided to ALPA’s lawyer, who just happened to be Davison (Macfarlane p353). He prepared a brief of evidence and shoved it under Simpson’s nose just before he was to give evidence before the Royal Commission (Macfarlane p661). Remember that the union didn’t want Simpson looking at anything around 166E, because that’s McMurdo Station. If the briefed track was to McMurdo Station, then Captain Collins made a very bad mistake when he did not sort out the conflict that he would have noted the night before. The union wanted Simpson looking at 164E, so the phrase “previous years” didn’t suit, because it meant that Simpson wasn’t looking at Wilson’s 164E flight plans from the flight a week before. Simpson’s brief of evidence, prepared by Davison, was as follows: “During the briefing Captain Wilson produced flight plans from a previous flight to the Antarctic for our perusal. (Macfarlane p227) The phrase “a previous flight” covers the flight a week before, whereas the phrase “previous years” does not. Problem solved, at least for the union. No so for Simpson, because he then had to explain how he could possibly have estimated two degrees of longitude as being only 10nm, and he doesn’t do a very good job of it (Macfarlane pp680-685). Simpson, through no fault of his own, was manoeuvred into an impossible position, by ALPA. If his brief of evidence was as per his March 1980 statement and contained the phrase “previous years”, then the truth would have emerged in cross-examination. Instead, Mahon was left with the firm view that Simpson believed, at the briefing, that the track was to a point two whole degrees west of McMurdo Station, rather than a mere 17 minutes. Yet Simpson actually left the briefing with the understanding conveyed by the audio, which was that the track was to McMurdo Station, to a point about 10nm west of the TACAN – but not then knowing that a track to that point from Cape Hallett went over Erebus. When he sat in the cockpit on the morning of his flight, checking his waypoints against his chart, he had a different waypoint which, when he checked it, was out in the middle of the Sound, away from McMurdo Station. Seems to be a reasonable spot for it to be, he thought, given that we’re only there for sightseeing. Given that he thought he was looking at the same flight plan that he had seen at the briefing, his impressions of the waypoint got lumped together in his memory, so that an impression he had in the cockpit was recalled as being an impression he also had at the briefing. This is probably why ALPA were able to slip various things past him, but the inquiry was not supposed to be a game for lawyers. The object of the exercise was to find out why 257 people died, and in that regard, it was a miserable failure. Holmes p15: “The Cast – Paul Davison QC: … Tore the navigation evidence apart.” That’s the only thing that Holmes gets right.

Chippindale got far closer to the truth than Mahon ever did. In fact, he went easy on the captain. Instead of citing the decision to go scud running when at FL180, Chippendale referred to “the decision of the captain to continue the flight at low level toward an area of poor surface and horizon definition when the crew was not certain of their position …” (Chippindale p53). On completion of the second orbit, at 0047:23GMT, the aircraft was at 2000 feet, headed back towards Erebus: “Yes Alt Cap (nav) track”. Vette says that what they saw out the window looked like McMurdo Sound, with a false horizon. Having seen that video of an Antarctic whiteout, that’s bull****. What they saw was a wall of white, with no horizon, hence “We might have to drop down to fifteen hundred here I think”. The transcript should have read “We might have to turn around and climb back to 160”. Instead, the captain continued on for a full two minutes, before deciding to climb out. Mahon played various wordgames with the phrase “not certain of their position”, but the plain fact of the matter is that if the captain was actually certain of his position (which is doubtful), he had no right to be.

Given number of mistakes made by the captain, the co-ordinates issue tends to fall by the wayside - and the captain was complicit in that as well, given his failure to resolve the conflict in the information he took from the briefing. If he was briefed on sector whiteout at Operation Deep Freeze, then I’d give him 85% of the blame, with 10% to F/O Cassin for not saying, at the appropriate time, “But didn’t you say ten minutes ago that it was very difficult to tell the difference between the cloud and ice?” F/O Lucas, who also attended the briefing at Operation Deep Freeze, gets the remaining 5%, for not wondering, while seated in the cabin, why the aircraft was orbiting when doing a radar-assisted descent.

The accident was caused by pilot error. It’s just another of example of someone attempting to fly VMC in instrument meteorological conditions. Obviously, AirNZ’s Flight Operations section made a series of terrible blunders, but all would have been well if the crew had done the job they were paid to do.

Holmes babbles on interminably about how the more you read Mahon, the more impressive he becomes. I’ve read his report many times over, and his book a few times less, and go in the opposite direction. I would not go quite as far as Gemmell (“He was an idiot.”) but there was something strange going on in his head when he wrote his report. There was no need for the “orchestrated litany of lies” finding, and he knew it. The explanation he gives in his book makes no sense, not do his various conspiracy theories. One example is the lack of passenger photos showing Ross Island. He spends two whole pages on this (Verdict on Erebus pp258,259), implying that someone might have removed the photos. Mahon says: “If you looked at the flight path of the aircraft as it completed its two orbits, it was obvious that there had been four occasions upon which the aircraft had been side-on to Ross Island.” Obvious? What was actually obvious was that there was no occasion when the aircraft was side-on to Ross Island, because it was banked about 20 degrees as it turned, hence the lack of photos.

Mahon died in 1986, from a type of cancer that developed in his sinus. (Holmes p397) Holmes would have it that the cancer was brought on by the Court of Appeal and Privy Council “judgements”. It may well have been the other way around, because malignant tumours are known to spread secondary tumours to other parts of the body, often well before the primary tumour is diagnosed, and there’s very little of anything else between the sinus and the brain.

[buzzz.lightyear]

Read 'Fate is the Hunter' Chap 10 A lonely unloved ship.
P200,201 (in my copy)
The situation of white out in the clear is described over 50 years ago..

[reubee]

One example is the lack of passenger photos showing Ross Island. He spends two whole pages on this (Verdict on Erebus pp258,259), implying that someone might have removed the photos. Mahon says: “If you looked at the flight path of the aircraft as it completed its two orbits, it was obvious that there had been four occasions upon which the aircraft had been side-on to Ross Island.” Obvious? What was actually obvious was that there was no occasion when the aircraft was side-on to Ross Island, because it was banked about 20 degrees as it turned, hence the lack of photos.

... also probable that no photos in that direction because ...
a) there was nothing of interest to see and photo. Just a mass of grey not worth wasting one of the 24 or 36 pictures on your one or two rolls of film that you've taken along
b) if a photo had been taken, the developer may have innocently decided it was not worth developing as it was just a mass of grey


I took a little personal interest from Holmes comment page 382 where he attempted to dig the knife into Chippindale...

Mr Ron Chippindale, reported the Star was unavailable for comment. His office said he was in the United Kingdom and he would not be back until July. THis would have been, no doubt, one of his important trips on the taxpayer to the northern hemisphere summer. A day later, he was found in Bedford.

... I'm not sure if he is attempting to paint Bedford as a small backwater, but next time he may want to investigate if there are any places around Bedford (say 12 miles SW) where it would be appropriate for Chippindale to be.

[ampan]

I end up in Bletchley Park. Maybe Mr Chips was honing his codebreaking skills. Holmes would have meant no offence to the residents of Bedford who are alive, but woe betide any who are not.

The primary criminal exposed in Holmes' book is Chippindale. Was Chippindale a criminal? Of course not. The reason for the appearance of such allegations is not that they're true. The reason is that a driver lost control of his vehicle in February 2008. Those who have yet to be killed by a reckless driver while taking their morning walk are treated very differently by Holmes. It's almost as if he regards a person's death as the commission by that person of a very serious crime. Before they died, they were merely dislikeable. After, they're scum.

The best example is Holmes' treatment of Gemmell. Throughout the book Holmes drops numerous hints suggesting that Gemmell tampered with the evidence. But then, at page 310, we get this:

"Gemmell has been accused by many of removing documents from the crash site and causing them to disappear. There is no evidence that he did so and he always emphatically denied any improper behaviour. And none has ever been proven."

Holmes could have made similar statements about the various allegations he makes against Chippindale, but does he? No.

I think the relevant expression is "cluck" "cluck".

[slamer.]

Exoneration sought for Erebus crew

http://media.nzherald.co.nz/webcontent/image/jpg/20126/pilot_220x147.jpg
(http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10784332#)
First officer Gregory Cassin of the DC-10 jet airliner that crashed into Mt Erebus.


United Future leader Peter Dunne has added his voice to calls for Parliament to officially clear the pilot and crew of the 1979 Air New Zealand Erebus crash of blame.
The United Future leader plans to talk to the Government and other parties about what could be done.
The crash killed 257 people. The original inquiry by chief accident inspector Ron Chippindale blamed pilot error but a subsequent royal commission of inquiry led by Justice Peter Mahon blamed the airline for changing the navigation co-ordinates without telling the pilot Captain Jim Collins and First Officer Greg Cassin.
Writing in the Herald today, Mr Dunne describes the Erebus disaster as "our version of the Kennedy assassination", an event that scarred the nation and in which everyone knew where they were at the time they heard the news.Mr Dunne said he read Paul Holmes' book Daughters of Erebus which also calls on Parliament to exonerate the crew. And the pending departure of Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe, who apologised to the families for the airline's handling of it, had also been a catalyst.Mr Dunne said the most obvious course the Parliament could take would be to pass a motion of exoneration.

Another option might be a Government statement.Former Transport Minister Maurice Williamson tabled the Mahon report in Parliament in 1999 and had thought by doing so he had corrected the official record. He later learned both reports had equal status with the International Civil Aviation Organisation

[ampan]

Peter Dunne: Time to heal Erebus wounds after all these years - Opinion - NZ Herald News (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10784240)

Peter Dunne: Time to heal Erebus wounds after all these years0comments

Add By Peter Dunne 5:30 AM Thursday Feb 9, 2012



The families of the Air New Zealand TE901 flight crew need the closure a formal exoneration would bring. Photo / NZ HeraldAmong the many comments following the announcement by Air New Zealand's chief executive Rob Fyfe that he would be stepping down was a reference to the fact he was the first Air New Zealand chief executive to apologise for the airline's handling of the Mt Erebus tragedy more than 30 years ago.

However, as this and Paul Holmes' recent powerful book poignantly remind us, there is still unfinished business with the Erebus affair - specifically the exoneration of Captain Jim Collins, First Officer Greg Cassin and the crew of TE901 for what happened on November 28, 1979.

Erebus is our version of the Kennedy assassination - an event that scarred our nation. An event that all who were alive at the time have vivid memories of, where we were when we heard the news, and the controversies, conspiracies, and suspicions that have played such a significant role in the unfolding of subsequent events.

Justice Peter Mahon's seminal commission of inquiry conclusion that a navigational programming error, of which the flight crew was unaware and that sent TE901 winging its way into a mountain, has never been credibly challenged.

This is despite the uproar at the time and the successful legal proceedings over the judge's colourful descriptions of the airline's actions as "a predetermined plan of deception" and "an orchestrated litany of lies".

The fact remains that it was the navigational programming errors that predetermined TE901's fate that awful day, not the actions of Captain Collins and his crew.

Over the years, various loose ends in this saga have been resolved. Nearly two decades after the crash, Justice Mahon's report was tabled formally in Parliament, implying official recognition at last of its conclusions.

Air New Zealand's apology and the 30th anniversary memorial visits to the site in November 2009 were a further step forward. But through all this, one step has remained untaken - there has been no formal exoneration of Captain Collins and his crew for their actions, and consequently no real lifting of the burden their families have had to carry ever since.

So while no one today accepts the preposterous notion put forward at the time that they deliberately and knowingly flew their aircraft into the side of a mountain, the absence of an exoneration has allowed the lingering suspicion to remain that maybe there was more to this after all than Justice Mahon's findings, despite the fact no evidence was produced to support this.

Some may say Erebus was a long time ago, and taking action now to exonerate the crew simply opens up old wounds. Well, the crew's families have had to live with those wounds for more than 30 years now, and it is time to heal them. Besides that, Captain Collins and his crew did not cause the crash, the navigational co-ordinates programming error did.

While Air New Zealand's belated apology was a good start, it needs to be backed up by a formal exoneration by Parliament of the flight crew.

By Peter Dunne

[prospector]

- there has been no formal exoneration of Captain Collins and his crew for their actions, and consequently no real lifting of the burden their families have had to carry ever since.

Why should there be an exoneration, as has been argued on this and other forums Justice Mahons reasoning was not correct, the change of waypoints was not the cause of the crash, the track created by the change of waypoint is irrelevant as using the AINS track below route MSA was not pemitted.


Well, the crew's families have had to live with those wounds for more than 30 years now, and it is time to heal them. Besides that, Captain Collins and his crew did not cause the crash, the navigational co-ordinates programming error did.


Rubbish, typical argument from followers of Mahons reasoning, without any appreciation of route MSA's, and the illegal use of AINS as a primary navigation aid below route MSA. What about the families of the Nav section, the nav section made mistakes but not mistakes that would have caused the crash if everybody else in the team had carried out their tasks properly.

Mr Dunne said he read Paul Holmes' book Daughters of Erebus which also calls on Parliament to exonerate the crew

If that publication is all the Mr Dunne bases his reasoning to call for an exoneration then no more needs to be said. .

[reubee]

I took a little personal interest from Holmes comment page 382 where he attempted to dig the knife into Chippindale...


Mr Ron Chippindale, reported the Star was unavailable for comment. His office said he was in the United Kingdom and he would not be back until July. THis would have been, no doubt, one of his important trips on the taxpayer to the northern hemisphere summer. A day later, he was found in Bedford.

... I'm not sure if he is attempting to paint Bedford as a small backwater, but next time he may want to investigate if there are any places around Bedford (say 12 miles SW) where it would be appropriate for Chippindale to be.

I end up in Bletchley Park. Maybe Mr Chips was honing his codebreaking skills. Holmes would have meant no offence to the residents of Bedford who are alive, but woe betide any who are not.

Look for an airport and associated university where a number of CAD staff members spent time in 70s

[ampan]

Ah ha: Cranfield.

If Parliament is going to consider Mr Dunne's motion, then it should first be referred to a select committee, rather than relying on a report written by a judge who was in the process of losing his marbles.

A case could be made for exonerating F/O Lucas and the two flight engineers, but not the captain and the yes-man seated to his right. ("Might have to drop down to 1500 feet here" "Yeah, probably see further anyway" - "Might have to turn around and climb back to MSA" "Yeah, probably won't kill everyone on board")

I would hope that Mr Dunne does some homework before diving in: "So while no one today accepts the preposterous notion put forward at the time that they deliberately and knowingly flew their aircraft into the side of a mountain ..." No such notion was put forward. It appears that the only research Dunne's done is to read Holmes' book, but the value of that book as an objective reference tool is made clear on page 30:

"Finally, I make no apology for the emphatic views expressed in this book. I have not consulted some who for thirty years have held Mahon to be wrong and have called for the pilots to shoulder at least some of the blame for the Erebus disaster. I have not tried to contact those who for thirty years and for their own various reasons have denied the truth. Above all, the simple logic of Mahon, endorsed by the Privy Council, exonerates the aircrew."

[27/09]

Even Captain Holmes accepts

Ampan

That gives the dwarf far more credence that he deserves.

[prospector]

Above all, the simple logic of Mahon, endorsed by the Privy Council, exonerates the aircrew."

From the Privy Council

There were what in retrospect can be recognised as having been faults or mistakes at the enquiry but which, in the circumstances in which the enquiry had to be held and the judges report prepared, appear to their lordships for the most part to have been manifestations of human fallibility that are easy to understand and excuse.


Hardly an exoneration endorsed by the Privy Council.

[ampan]

Holmes’ deliberately ignores the fact that the cause of the accident had no relevance in the Privy Council case. The issue was whether Mahon was entitled to go outside his terms of reference and make a finding that the Air NZ witnesses conspired together to commit perjury. The five judges who sat on the Privy Council were unanimous in holding that Mahon went well beyond his brief, but Lord Diplock took the opportunity to compliment Mahon on his investigative work. This is Holmes’ so-called “endorsement”, but it was nothing more than one judge sweetening a bitter pill about to be swallowed by another. (It’s similar to the praise heaped onto the airmanship of Captain Collins.) The Privy Council actually went further than it needed to, in that it found that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. This annoys Holmes:

“Despite this, Mahon’s ‘orchestrated litany of lies’ simply could not be proven, apparently. ‘There had been no material of any probative value on which to base a finding that a pre-determined plan of deception ever existed.’ (PC judgment p662) This despite their Lordships’ acceptance that they had not been there through the long 75 days weighing the evidence and hearing the witnesses in person, as Mahon had. Stuart Macfarlane, the Erebus researcher, says that in the end, if what the airline witnesses said was true, then the airline made 54 mistakes concerning the flight path of the airliner and 177 mistakes regarding altitude. It wasn’t possible for a commercial airline to make that many mistakes. Therefore, the airline was lying.” (Holmes p400)

The nincompoop’s argument is that there is an upper limit to the number of mistakes that an airline can admit to, above which, everything said by the airline becomes a lie. And to get to 177 mistakes regarding altitude, Holme’s relies on the work of a similarly-gifted intellectual powerhouse, being the deranged Macfarlane, who gets most of his 177 mistakes as follows:

“Not reading or becoming aware of the contents of the [President of McConnell Douglas’s] article after it was printed and distributed (eleven mistakes). (Mistakes 14-24)

Not becoming aware that the airline had printed one million copies of an article by the President on low level Antartic flights. Seven mistakes. (Mistakes 25-31)

Not being told by any of the airline executives on the Antarctic flights from 18 October 1977 to 21 November 1979 that they had been on flights under 16000 feet. There were 11 flights over two years, but there was no evidence on how many executives and their wives were on each flight, only Mr Thomson’s evidence that it was the usual practice. If one assumes, on average, one executive per flight (and I would welcome precise figures) that is mistakes by seven persons on 11 occasions (77 mistakes). … (Mistakes 32-108)” (Vette pp338,339)

[ampan]

Paul Holmes: A few words can finally give closure on Erebus - Opinion - NZ Herald News (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10789395)


A few words can finally give closure on Erebus

By Paul Holmes 5:30 AM Saturday Mar 3, 2012

I know you've got heaps on your plates, but I feel I have to draw your attention again to the campaign by a few of us for some justice for the families of Jim Collins and Greg Cassin, the captain and first officer respectively on the 1979 Erebus flight.

For 30 years it has been plain as day that neither pilot had any responsibility for that accident. Justice Peter Mahon's report, finally tabled in 1999, holds the pilots absolutely clear of any blame.

I could be asking for a ministerial withdrawal of the Chippindale report from the International Civil Aviation Organisation. I should. But I'm not. I'm not because I think this would be too hard for the Government.

What we're asking for is simple. All I and the Collins family want is a clear, simply worded parliamentary exoneration of the pilots for any responsibility for the accident. I don't want any aggro. I don't want any relitigation of all the old nasty things that went on. All we want is a simple statement to free the spirits of the two families.

But I'm getting a sense of ... drift. When I published Daughters of Erebus I sent 121 books to the MPs, with an open letter to them. I received 30 replies, some of them generous. From others, I heard nothing. One or two MPs have read the book and been moved and shocked by what they found. Peter Dunne is emphatic that there has to be some kind of statement of exoneration. He has no doubt, and I know Peter has followed the case for years.

But I don't get a sense of any burning parliamentary need to do something. Yet the Erebus aftermath is up there with many of the cruelties inflicted on innocent people in this country. It happened under our very noses. It happened under National. With respect, National has a chance to put it right.

Most of the men involved in it - and they were all men - set out deliberately to bamboozle the public. But Erebus was a very simple bungle of an accident caused by a head office deception of the pilots. But when Justice Mahon dared to tell that truth, the entire Wellington and Auckland legal establishments turned on him.

Daughters of Erebus explores the cruel and wicked machinations that went on after the accident but also explains the human toll endured by the Collins family. When Captain Collins flew that aircraft into the mountain that day, he took 256 others with him, he got the blame and he left behind a wife and four young girls who have never recovered from his receiving the initial blame. The headlines from the chief inspector's report were hugely damaging to Collins. But they suited the Government, Civil Aviation, the Ministry of Transport and the airline perfectly.

The chief inspector's report was reprehensible: the pilots were flying irresponsibly, they were too low and they didn't know where they were. He was wrong on all counts.

The Chippindale version of the crash was given vast publicity in the days before the royal commission started. It had a tremendous effect in confirming to public opinion that the pilots were way too low and they didn't know where they were. To shore his argument up, the chief inspector took himself off to London and made his own copy of the tape, making change after change detrimental to the aircrew. No one knew he was doing it. This is the CVR transcript he published.

Then he said some on the flight deck were trying to get the pilot to straighten up and fly right. This never happened. Chippindale made it up. It seems incredible, I know, but that's what he did. Only in the last 20 or 30 seconds was there concern that something wasn't right.

Mahon showed, with his unassailable logic, how the accident happened. The destination co-ordinates had been changed and the pilots not told. And they had been briefed that they would be flying straight down McMurdo Sound, its flat white sea ice stretching infinitely ahead of them. The mountain was way out to the left. Yeah, right. It was a head office muddle.

And Mahon saw that no one alive in any way related to that flight was going to take the blame. And the blame rested solely with the persons who changed the co-ordinates by miles and did not tell Captain Collins.

This is all fairly well-canvassed, I know. But what happened in the trail of it all was a breathtaking, scandalous, concerted process of cover-ups, coercions, obfuscations and simple bloody lies by the Government, the air accident inspectorate, Civil Aviation and, sorry to say it but it can't be avoided, the most senior people in the state-owned airline.

I implore our MPs to give some effort and thought to the matter of a simple exoneration of the pilots. To be read out in Parliament. For the families of the pilots to be there to see it happen. I believe this is something every member of Parliament would be proud to tell their children they were part of.

I'm imploring our MPs, the House itself, to go some way to mending the hearts of the families of the Erebus flight crew.

[Desert Dingo]

Prospector is still having trouble with his reading comprehension.
Hardly an exoneration endorsed by the Privy Council.
Go back a few pages in the report [ AC 808 page 836] and find]The Royal Commission Report convincingly clears Captain Collins and First Officer Cassin of any suggestion that negligence on their part had in any way contributed to the disaster. That is unchallenged.Just what part of "convincingly clears" and "unchallenged" is so hard to understand?

[prospector]

Desert Dingo,

The Privy Council were not asked to give any opinion on the cause of the crash.

They were asked to rule on the question on the lack of natural justice displayed by Mahon in his findings.


That is unchallenged.

That is why it is unchallenged, it was not their brief to offer any opinion as to the cause.

.

From Holmes This is all fairly well-canvassed, I know. But what happened in the trail of it all was a breathtaking, scandalous, concerted process of cover-ups, coercions, obfuscations and simple bloody lies by the Government, the air accident inspectorate, Civil Aviation and, sorry to say it but it can't be avoided, the most senior people in the state-owned airline.


That this completely unqualified talking head, low hour private pilot, with his aviation accident record, can come up with such scandalous statements on the findings of many highly qualified aviators is unbelievable. Holmes in agreement with Mahon's findings, gives them less credence than they ever had.

.


.

[framer]

All I and the Collins family want is a clear, simply worded parliamentary exoneration of the pilots for any responsibility for the accident.
Paul suggests that Jim Collins had as much responsibility for the accdent as my three year old daughter does.
Pauls involvement in aviation at an amateur level was unsuccessful.
The leap from flying VFR privately around NZ in a piston single to commercial widebody jet ops is a big one. Paul doesn't even seem to grasp that it's not ok to fly at 1500ft clean in a heavy jet at your home base let alone in a place youve never been in marginal weather.
If the pollies listen to him they're mad.

[baron_beeza]

From Holmes
Quote:
This is all fairly well-canvassed, I know. But what happened in the trail of it all was a breathtaking, scandalous, concerted process of cover-ups, coercions, obfuscations and simple bloody lies by the Government, the air accident inspectorate, Civil Aviation and, sorry to say it but it can't be avoided, the most senior people in the state-owned airline.

I have not read his book nor do I intend to.
I would have thought there were some big calls there, - and if that is his summing up then I can only imagine the author's thinking throughout the rest of his effort.

It seems almost a case of everyone else but........

Somehow I just cannot see it.

[ampan]

The captain himself told some "simple bloody lies" during the final 30 minutes of his life, given the various references to VMC.

[pakeha-boy]

well Holmes(for what its worth)....did write a great article on "Waitangi day"..and its worth.....outside of that,I never listen to a word the clown says....he,s like a singer who has a one-hit-wonder....

[Flt.Lt Zed]

This article appeared in tuesdays NZ Herald and recieved almost universal approval which is well warranted in my opinion. This was written by an experienced Pilot, not a journalist or Judge with no understanding of Airmanship.
Derek Ellis: Erebus - why the pilot was at fault - National - NZ Herald News (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10791580)

[prospector]

Richard J. McGrane: Do justice to the Erebus facts - Opinion - NZ Herald News (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10791563)

Can anyone still believe the Mahon version is correct after these two articles, one from a very experienced aviator, and one from a legal mind who was very close to the Royal Commission at the time?????

[Ornis]

Consider this scenario:

The coordinates are correctly entered for a waypoint that gives a track down the flat expanse of McMurdo Sound. The pilot has plotted this on his chart. With no confirmation of position, he descends. Unknown to him the AINS has drifted onto a track towards Erebus.

If he hits Erebus, is there any degree of pilot error?

[prospector]

If he hits Erebus, is there any degree of pilot error?

Of course, it would be all pilot error. That is why the AINS was not to be used as the sole means for navigation below route MSA, which was FL160.

[ampan]

Which is why the captain purported to descend VMC, when he knew that he was actually in instrument flying conditions.

There were only two ways down, being the radar or the TACAN. He couldn't get either, so what do you do? You go to the Dry Valleys, where the sun was shining.

"I prefer here first"

[Ornis]

If the AINS drifts, a crash is all pilot error. Self-evident, isn't it*.

I await an answer from DozyWannabe. He might be gone for some time.

To this old VFR pilot, there is a "red light" between VFR and IFR. I stop. I politely suggest to my betters, the light is just as red between IFR and VFR.

Collins descended to 1500ft amsl, (QNH from McMurdo or radioaltimeter?) how high above the surface was he? Was the ground rising slowly as he proceeded south? EDIT: Silberfuchs#135 "crossing the cliffs, about a mile from impact"

*EDIT: If one source of error in the AINS leads to in a 100% pilot-error CFIT then it is not logically possible that some other source of error can lead to a 0% pilot-error CFIT.

How many airline pilots (privately) find Collins blameless? EDIT: Perhaps passengers should ask as they board, so they know if they are sitting behind a pilot or a train driver.

[topend3]

I'm now in the middle of reading the Holmes book. I've got a few other books written on the subject and have been writing a uni paper on the accident and investigation that took place.

The more I read the Holmes book, the more he convinces me, through his one-sided approach to telling his angle of the story, that the pilots should never be exonerated for their actions.

True, the cover-ups and errors made within the airline, the weather conditions on the day, the briefing processes and the lack of knowledge imparted to the crew of whiteout were all contributing factors.

But I am convinced more than ever that Collins and Cassin shouldn't have been poking around down at 1500 feet when they clearly weren't sure of their exact position (confirmed by the CVR transcripts). The angle Holmes tries to paint is that the pilots should be completely free of blame because the airline made them think they were somewhere else. And that doesn't wash.

It's actually draining reading the book, as he repeats himself over and over and over again.

[prospector]

topend3,

To my way of thinking a very astute post. It is gratifying to see that some people can see through the Holmes diatribe.

[Dream Land]

Yes prospector, as I've said before, I fully agree with you, the crew is definitely not free from responsibility.

[4Greens]

At the risk of repetition, pilots are affected by many factors. In this case Management pressure to make sure the pax get their money's worth. All that way and no look at the Antarctic.

[ampan]

He had plenty of fuel and had the Dry Valleys out to the west, with the sun shining. Captain Ruffell, in a similar situation, and with a Japanese film crew aboard, baled out, headed west, and everyone ended up happy - as opposed to everyone ending up dead.


topend3: The real scandal in the Erebus inquiry was NZALPA's manipulation of the evidence given by the line pilots, particularly the evidence of Captain Simpson. Having won their famous victory, via a series of dirty tricks and a judge with a brain tumour, NZALPA now seeks to lock it in, forever. They do not seem to appreciate that exoneration of the crew means the sanctioning of the airmanship displayed on TE901. Perhaps a senior member of the cult could advise whether NZALPA approves of a pilot flying visually when he knows he can't see properly, or flying on instruments below MSA with nothing more than the readout from some gyroscopes.

Here's a good topic for a uni paper: "Has there ever been a CFIT accident where the crew was found to be blameless?" Answer: Yes, one, being TE901. That's it. There are no others, because "controlled flight into terrain" almost presupposes an error by the person in control. It might be possible to invent a scenario where the crew could be exonerated, but this case doesn't come anywhere near it. Doomed from takeoff? Absolute nonsense.

[Ornis]

ampan.

Email the PM. Briefly make the point the crash was not inevitable.
Key John <[email protected]>

EDIT: The two cabinet ministers who were calling for a parliamentary exoneration, Peter Dunne and Maurice Williamson ("dead when they left") have both been very quiet. But one thing organisations can do that individuals cannot, is to keep on and on forever, which is why ALPA has set up the website dedicated to keeping the matter alive.

[4Greens]

There are only two things we know about accidents. One; there is always more than one contributory factor. Two; there is always human error.

Here endeth the first lesson.

[prospector]

Two; there is always human error

And that is exactly why this and other threads on the same subject have been going on for years.

To ensure that the right amount of responsibility for the "Error" is placed on the right humans.

[Brian Abraham]

To ensure that the right amount of responsibility for the "Error" is placed on the right humans.I'm afraid that's not my impression (right or wrong) reading the different threads on this unfortunate accident. There seems to be no understanding of Prof. Reasons swiss cheese model of accident causation. Once again, right or wrong, I come away from the threads here that some people would have preferred Captain Collins to have survived the accident, so that he could be hung, drawn and quartered, and his head stuck on a pike in the town square.

[prospector]

, I come away from the threads here that some people would have preferred Captain Collins to have survived the accident, so that he could be hung, drawn and quartered, and his head stuck on a pike in the town square.

Thats OK, we all have our opinions.

Mine being if the crew had of complied with SOP's and CAA requirements and just plain common sense, there would not have been an accident and everybody would have survived, including Capt Collins.

To then pillory the remaining ANZ staff, who did not make the decision to commence an illegal descent, as Mahon did, is what a lot of people disagree with.

If anybody still agrees with Mahons reasoning that they were justified in commencing the descent when and where they did,after all the evidence and fact to the contrary, then one is surely pushing water uphill.

If one looks at the thread re Pacific Blue and their disputed departure from Queenstown, all because of a minor deviation from SOP's, one wonders how Mahon could so lightly dismiss the requirement to comply.

[Ornis]

Years ago when I requested the coordinates of the VRPs to enter into a GPS, I was advised by a NZCAA staffer to keep my head outside. It was with some satisfaction, after entering the data on a moving map GPS and spotting a discrepancy, I was able to advise CAA that two digits had been transposed, putting one VRP in the wrong place.

As a humble VFR pilot I remain incredulous nobody checked the McMurdo waypoint on a chart; Lucas had been an RNZAF navigator. Collins was prepared to use the AINS to fly at nothingness at 1500ft; why didn't he take a readout when it was pretty clear Mulgrew couldn't see where he was?

The spontaneous change from IFR to VFR was just not a good idea. But it wasn't irretrievable. I know I would have flown along the coast to try to make sense of it, because I am only a simple recreational pilot who needs to see where he is to fly, I would have had no choice.

To me the lesson is not new, in a general sense. It is: stick to the plan if you can. If you can't be very very careful because you have not prepared yourself.

Seems to me some pilots - very experienced professional pilots, some with military backgrounds - who find the crew blameless, are saying that essentially these pilots did not have a free will. I don't buy that, although some, like theoretical physicist Gerardus 't hooft, might.

In my view, and I realise pilots won't value it, at least 51% of the blame rests with the crew. Therefore they cannot be exonerated in any meaningful way. But then, when did politics have anything to do with reality?

[framer]

In my view, and I realise pilots won't value it, at least 51% of the blame rests with the crew.
I think you'd be surprised. I think most professional airline pilots who have done a bit of research on this would feel uncomfortable with crew exonoration. I certainly would. It's not that I feel a need to place blame, it's that I don't want to cover up, or try to ignore, the reality. The reality is there were causal factors in both the organisation and the operation of the flight. The crew certainly played their part in the crash and thats the cold, hard, unpalatable reality.