Paul Holmes and Erebus

[stillalbatross]

Erebus book 'to right a wrong' - National - NZ Herald News (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10747717)

Now that Chippendale is dead, Paul Holmes has decided to state that he was corrupt and dishonest. And because the crew of the Erebus flight are also dead, he has decided that they should be absolved for their portion of the blame in the tragedy.

[27/09]

A more self-obsessed individual you will never find. Well with the exception of Paul Holmes, Ooops that's who we are talking about.

While there may be some valid points in the book, this is a matter that needs to be left to lie. It's been dredged over pretty well in the past and even if some of the claims in the book are true the perpetrators are long gone. Nothing is to be achieved by opening up old sores.

Edit: I see Remoak has removed his post, which is where I got my quote from. :confused:

[Anthill]

Aside from the legacy of fine family memebers who have lost a husband and a Father, the tale remains a cautionary one. The Erebus accident remains a very valueable lesson for our industry and I would not be surprised if there are many younger pilots in our ranks who are unaware of this tragic, avoidable accident and subsequent events.

The book "The Erebus Papers' remains a most instructive discussion on the lengths and breadths to which those at the top will go to cover their @r$e when all the holes in the swiss cheese align. Political interference all the way to the highest offices in the Commonwealth was exposed. They even tried to have the Royal Commissioner declared insane for his unfavourable, yet astute, judgment.

There are lessons regarding the responsibilities of the CEO and management-they hold ulitmate responsibility for safety, but also for those in Command of the aircraft. If anything, this is accident which must re-inforce that at the end of the day, the Captain hold responsibility for the flight. However, it also shows what lengths a dysfunctional management will go to avoid their own responsibilities.

[hoggsnortrupert]

Let it be::(

[slackie]

We could discuss how much of an idiot PHolmes is and what a danger he is to himself and others when he gets anywhere near an aircraft... remember when he owned (and multiple crashed!) a Stearman, having already proven his incompetence in various Cessnas.

[henry crun]

Be reasonable slackie, if we start discussing what you suggest about Holmes, the owners of Pprune will have to upgrade their site to cope with the extra bandwidth needed.

[Massey058]

Seriously whatever happened to honour and dignity? Paul Holmes is becoming an embarrassment and those comments are getting into Michael Laws territory.

Ron achieved a lot of great things in Air Safety Investigation. To out and out slander him in a book like some coward now he has passed is disgraceful.

I hope his book is as successful as his attempt to sing.

[gobbledock]

Below comment is spot on. Bureaucrats are a scourge on life.

The book "The Erebus Papers' remains a most instructive discussion on the lengths and breadths to which those at the top will go to cover their @r$e when all the holes in the swiss cheese align. Political interference all the way to the highest offices in the Commonwealth was exposed. They even tried to have the Royal Commissioner declared insane for his unfavourable, yet astute, judgment. It is interesting, many comments on here relate to 'letting things lay'. The problem is this - had an honest, open, transparent and morally correct path been taken by ANZ starting from the moment the accident occurred then these sort of discussions would unlikely be taking place now. The fact is that ANZ were nothing short of dispicable and morally irreprehensible, and so were Chippendales abilities...257 people died, and the names, reputations and legacy of the Pilots on that flight were stained, tarnished and trashed for no better reason than that they were sadly rostered on that day.

Thank god for Peter Mahon is all I can say.
The truth does deserve to be told, just because Chippendale has died does that mean the lives of the 257 should be forgotten?

Today ANZ is a completely different beast, Fyfe has worked miracles and the airline has achieved goals and milestones they should and can be very proud of. The airline is a truly remarkable outfit, and I agree that 'history' shouldn't be allowed to tarnish an organisation 32 years down the track. But sadly history can be described as an 'event, occurence, episode in time'. Erebus will always be part of ANZ's history, no matter what people will say, and history tends to contain positive and negative lessons and impact on life, sometimes centuries after the event.
Regardless of opinion, may the souls of the 257 continue to be remembered and may they sleep in peace.

[henry crun]

gobbledock: If you are implying that Paul Holmes is the man to tell the truth as you believe it, I feel sure there will be a considerable body of opinion in NZ who will disagree with you.

[hoggsnortrupert]

Look! this has been done already with Justice Mahon, and Gordon Vette.

You want honesty, you think you will get that from Holmes:mad: It is about time the New Zealand AIA, and perhaps to some degree the NZ government, and Air NZ stand up and formally acknowledge the very real and substantial price these two fine men paid.

We as an industry owe a huge debt to both, your CRM & Human Factors of today to a large degree were born out of this.

There is enough documentation about, for those that want the truth, apply to New Zealand Government Archives for the Chippendale accident report to start.

Then go to your local book sellers and ask for Impact Erebus, by Vette & Mahon.

Then get the findings of the court of inquiry led by Justice Peter Mahon.

To say you want HONESTY,:mad:@#$%me! what do you think these two men did what they did for?:ok:

Now as for the times, I remember where I was when this aircraft was first reported overdue, and who I was with.

Rob Muldoon was PM, the CEO of Air NZ Mourie Davis, both these guys where old school mates, and I believe at the time one of them (probably Davis) conspired to cover the details around this issue up.

Through the society of the time, Muldoon himself a friend of Mahons went to Peter Mahon, and asked him to lead an inquiry.

Muldoon probably thought at the time that Davis was not conspiring in any way, when Mahon found out inconsistencies and began to dig deeper, Muldoon and Davis's relationship became strained as Rob felt Davis had let him down.

By now Mahon was into it in depth, and Rob could not stop it, although he tried very hard to discredit Mahon to avert the avalanche of "****e" coming his way.

Muldoon and Mahons relationship to became irreparable & frayed, so much that Mahon could not go into his professional clubs, nor could he even go for a game of golf, such was the anger of Muldoon.

Gordon Vette took a lot of flak from his co-workers.

Two very fine men that stood up to be counted and did not back down against huge political, professional & social odds.

And you think Holmes will give honesty and closure, to say the 257 people are forgotten is a possibility with the younger aviators, but we owe it to them and to the industry to keep it alive through CRM & Human Factors courses for generations to come, and not to allow those that perished to have done so needlessly.

It is factually more open in all its ugliness today than it ever would have been
back then.

As raw today as then.:ok:

[framer]

It is interesting, many comments on here relate to 'letting things lay'.
The people wanting this know that mistakes were made by all parties. No good will come from dragging it up again and making everyone upset just to come around to the same point that mistakes were made by all parties involved. Nobody wins, lots of people get upset because it was such a tragic event involving so much loss of life.
The second you start pointing the finger only in one direction ANZ were nothing short of dispicable and morally irreprehensible, and so were Chippendales others are going to feel compelled to point at the other errors that lead to the disaster, and we enter into a circular, emotional, endless discussion.
The lessons have been learnt. If you want to discuss it openly then all the failings should be addressed. Best to let it be.

[Wally Mk2]

It took a couple of hundred years for 'Crud' to say sorry so sadly this subject has a looooong way to go before it's put to rest.
Lets just say that most know the truth behind this event and we have learnt much from it from aviation related matters to corporate matters, the latter still being applied daily am sure.


Wmk2

[onetrack]

The only substantial reason to revive the Erebus story, is, if lessons aren't being learnt from it, and practised daily.
I think this has been done, and as Wally states, the lessons are being applied.
There's no point in denigrating the dead people involved in the decision-making and deceit, they can't defend themselves.
The truth of the events have been exposed due to the correct application of judicial expertise, mostly by one man.
The judiciary is there to find the truth, regardless of cost... personal or monetary.
The innocent dead deserve this at least, and the truth is required to be uncovered to prevent future potential disasters.
I believe this has been done, and the aviation industry has moved on with one more costly lesson learnt.
The benefit in raking over long-dead coals to try and start another fire is dubious in the least... with no immediate obvious benefit... and the suspicion that the book under discussion, is just one mans vindictiveness and bitterness at work.

[stillalbatross]

Mahon and Vette only told the public what the US DoD had known about for decades. White-out wasn't some mystery never before seen, it was just one of the many problems with operating in Antartica. The US Navy alone had lost 10 aircraft in Antartica in the previous 3 decades. No surprise when AirNZ suggested flying down there that the US DoD wanted nothing to do with them.

The crew were completely lacking in experience for the situation they got themselves into. Morrie Davis may have panicked and behaved badly subsequent to the accident but he wasn't PinC.

Chippendale did nothing wrong. The crew broke the AirNZ SOPs, he saw them as responsible for putting the aircraft where they did. The buck stopped there.

[ThePaperBoy]

Chippendale did nothing wrong. The crew broke the AirNZ SOPs, he saw them as responsible for putting the aircraft where they did. The buck stopped there.

Wow - the buck stopped with the crew? You obviously know little about the crash or have your head in the sand (snow?). That way of thinking goes back to the old days prior to things like HFACS etc were developed to explain the latent organisational problems that contributed to the accident.

[hoggsnortrupert]

Now the albatross?

Is a bird of nature I truly admire and marvel at:

But! mate what you purport to be: "the buck stops there"

This does not help the issue, you have obviously not read the entire facts.
To say the buck stops with a crew that did not know, nor did they have any training in sector white out, the only thing they did wrong was descend below the company mini ma, they had not been trained in white out, you dont know what you are talking about.
You I put in the same camp as Paul Holmes:

How many flights before with company executive pilots, did they do exactly the same as this crew with non being formally training on, let alone understanding white out phenomena.:mad:

I would suggest you stop contaminating the issue with your poison::mad:

[rjtjrt]

There was a TV mini series produced by TVNZ called "Erebus: The Aftermath" which dealt with the investigations.
After seeing it I read Gordon Vette's book, and McMahons book.

[ThePaperBoy]

Also, the crew were not the ones who changed the waypoint data, which put them on a collision course with the mountain.

The holes in the cheese relating to this accident were incredible. However, the crew only controlled the last slice of cheese.

[hoggsnortrupert]

Paper boy, very well put, excellent analogy, well done.:ok:

[framer]

What a surprise that this is getting out of shape.
If at any time, on any subject, your beliefs are in the extreme.....you are probably motivated by emotion, or mentally ill.
Yes ANZ should have contacted the crew and told them of the co-ordinate change.
Yes they should have put someone on the flightdeck who had Antarctic flying experience.
And yes, they lost the plot after the event.
Yes the crew decended below the altitude that they were legally allowed to be flying at (regardless of whether they were VMC or not)
And yes, the buck stops with the PIC.
Both sides of this argument are still focussing on laying the blame.
The focus needs to be on what can be learnt.
I think the lessons have been learnt, if someone offered me a flight down there tomorrow on ANZ I would accept in a flash.

[hoggsnortrupert]

Mate:
I will always be on the pilots side of the fence, so I am biased,
I dont mind debate, as long as all the facts are available to be debated, this has alot of feeling, families, families loved ones have gone onto flying careers, there are equally other arse holes that toe'd the company line with being whiter than white! that are still about, may they never get a good nights sleep!

There but by the grace of God go I:

It is my airman's prayer to my God on high, that I be judged on my truthfulness, and faithfulness to the better good of my fellow pilot, may my stool at the bar be reserved for all my faults..

Last from me on the subject!

[framer]

Also, the crew were not the ones who changed the waypoint data, which put them on a collision course with the mountain
If flying was as simple as that we wouldn't be paid what we are paid. All efforts should be made to avoid errors such as what ocurred and ANZ dropped the ball on that.No doubt there.The PIC is ultimately responsible for navigating the aircraft clear of terrain and wouldn't want it any other way (if they are worth they salt as I'm sure JC was).
The holes in the cheese relating to this accident were incredible. However, the crew only controlled the last slice of cheese.
Again, thats what the responsibility is all about. It's always the crew who have the last opportunity to catch the balls that ground staff, managers, atc, engineers have dropped.They are all at home asleep or watching tv while the pilots are doing this trick. If that wasn't the case they'd be paid a lot more, monitored a lot more, and pilots a lot less because the responsibilty is huge.Thats the nature of the beast and many great pilots have been unfairly set-up and paid the ultimate price. Captains (probably including JC) wear that responsibility with pride.
It was a tragedy.
All parties made mistakes.
People died.
If you point the finger, you need to point it in several directions not just at party A or party B.

[framer]

this has alot of feeling, families, families loved ones have gone onto flying careers, there are equally other arse holes that toe'd the company line with being whiter than white! that are still about, may they never get a good nights sleep!



If at any time, on any subject, your beliefs are in the extreme.....you are probably motivated by emotion

Hey mate, I didn't copy that in to be a w@anker, just to make my point.
There will always be a lot of emotion around this topic. Thats why I've been suggesting to let it rest.
PS I'm not saying there shouldn't be emotion attached to it. Just that if, in a public forum, it is to be discussed in any useful way (ie to learn something) then a balanced view is required with all errors acknowledged.
If that can't be done, then it's probably too soon to get anything useful out of the public discussion and people will just end up upset with no good actually being done.

[hoggsnortrupert]

Look they the crew did not have the tools nor the training to think otherwise! what are you sub 45? idealistic?

I dont want to apologize! but after saying the last from me on the subject! you come up with this ****e, the whole issue around CRM or HF is understanding the pitfalls, they did not mate, they simply did not have the training nor the understanding, period.

To lay it at Jim Cassins feet (yes thats his name) is appalling, and exactly what Mahon & Vette stood up for.

I am sure Jim would be the first to stand up in an arena and say they dropped the ball because!!!!!

I have no doubt that Jim would wear it on the chin, no doubt! but ignorance is bliss, and in the times I have had events, :mad::mad::mad:I have been smarter after the event.

I once meet a retired British airways Capt, flown 747 & Concord, he had 22K hours and said he had never had so much as a generator go off line, and was blessed with a truly professional organization?

FFFRK me! I wish I had his experience of reliability, and so called expertise?

Get real, who ever you purport to be?

The world is not perfect, and we dont know everything, we can only improve on what we know?

Your name is not Paul Holmes? is it!

[hoggsnortrupert]

Quote:
If at any time, on any subject, your beliefs are in the extreme.....you are probably motivated by emotion:

Then I guess there's no room for experience! :mad::ouch::uhoh::ugh::=

[27/09]

Has someone deleted their posts?

Some of these posts aren't making all that much sense, it's as if there are replies that are missing.

[blackburn]

Hogsnort - It was Jim Collins, the FO was Greg Cassin.

Blackburn

[stillalbatross]

Hog snort on the contrary, have looked at all the data. Read pretty much everything on it. There were company SOP's to prevent exactly what they did from happening. I couldn't care less what everyone else who flew the flights previous was doing. It was their decision to put the aircraft below MSA where they did. How much training did/does the US Navy do with it's crews before it allowed it's pilots to operate in Antartica? JC and the crew had none.

Are you saying the company forced them to descend, that their decisions as the operating crew were taken away from them? Not seen that written anywhere.

Chippendale looked at the accident, Mahon looked at corporate governance.

[Luke SkyToddler]

I really can't see where Holmes is getting off by calling on modern politicians to issue some kind of parliamentary pardon for the crew, most of them were probably school kids on that day and none of them know a damn thing about aviation, so what meaning could it possibly have for the crew's families, even if they did what he's suggesting?

I guess P.H. has got as much right as the rest of us to air his opinion about what happened or even write another book about it but he isn't a professional aviator and certainly is not a great analytical mind. Mahon and Vette are two absolute intellectual giants and between them they have pretty much written the defining documents of that whole sad story, I'm really not sure what a book written by a celebrity newsreader PPL holder can possibly add to the discussion and I hope it sinks without trace.

The people who needed to apologize are long dead, present day politicians should leave well alone.

[4Greens]

This accident has been reinvestigated a number of times after the event and quite correctly the Reason model et al showed a number of new holes in the system.

Ron Chippendale investigated using the approach that was standard for his time and training. His conclusion at this level was correct - descent below safety height contrary to the rules.

In modern hindsight this was driven by a commercial urge to give the passengers their money's worth.

Ron was a professional and absolutely straight.

[Jagdfalke]

Hog snort on the contrary, have looked at all the data. Read pretty much everything on it. There were company SOP's to prevent exactly what they did from happening. I couldn't care less what everyone else who flew the flights previous was doing. It was their decision to put the aircraft below MSA where they did.

It was standard practice at the time for those flights to descend below MSA, and ANZ knew all about it - in their brochures advertising the flights, the pictures taken of the mountain themselves (from other flights) were clearly done so from well below MSA. That MSA hadn't been decided by ANZ...


There are few examples better for James Reason's model of Accident Causation. Management had a large hand in causing the crash - not solely responsible as the pilots themselves do play a part, but to overlook the greater systemic causes of this tragedy is both shortsighted and foolish.

[hoggsnortrupert]

My brain is rather foggy, even I forget names and faces, put faces with wrong names, how I find my destination is a daily miracle!

Bear with me please.

As a young idiot growing up in New Plymouth, I borrowed my Dads EH Holden.

Driving up to an intersection I had a green light and proceeded to cross, out of my peripheral right side vision I got the fright of my life, then got hit in the right side of Dads car!!!! thinking this jackass had obviously run a Red light.

It transpired that both sets of lights were in fact green?(not suppose to happen)

I got charged for failure to give way to the right! I pleaded not guilty and defended my self, the magistrate of the day, (Rennie) said he had all the sympathy in the world for a young fella like me, while technically the law was correct, he felt the city council should have been charged as they knew the lights were faulty, the best he could offer me was a discharge without conviction!

Know I know we are talking different things here but there are I feel certain similarities.

Being:
The crew were flying the most sophisticated machine of its time, they were exactly where the INS said they where and where they believed they where 30 odd miles away.

The fact that some one had changed the way points issued to the crew for flight planning and the crew was not told, led them to believe they were well away from where they were.

Now the crew thought they were in VMC, and it was not until all of sudden they became aware of a change with one saying,"bit thick here Burt" then from my memory the GPWS went off at the same instant they lit the candles.

They had been in what they thought was VMC, when in fact they were in sector white out, and they did not have the training nor the understanding of the phenomenon.

Yes they descended below 10000 ft, but the culture of the time and the commercial need to please had been established prior by those executive pilots:

So no training, in white out, not knowing how to identify such, and thinking the were 30miles?? from where they were as their INS's told them!

I know they descended below 10000ft, but!

It was a different time a different culture, and very much the old boy net work, for all its faults, I do believe in some ways aviation has become over regulated in the regards of safety, yet we still have issues surrounding near misses, young 3500 hour Capts in their Jet Star french thingies, with F/o's of 1500 hours, we have issues where no one is taught to fly power setting and attitude configuration anymore, we have in some ways become too reliant on technology that we cant see the wood for the trees!

People cant even think heading airspeed track and ground speed anymore, ask them to tell you the wind aloft with out looking at the read out?

We had a fire drill at HQ the other day, guess what! every one evacuated the building spent 10 minutes counting, but everyone walked past the fire hoses, past the extinguishers, and would have waited 15-20 mins for the fire dept.

What is the point to all this safety, leave people inside because its too dangerous! staff not trained to run out hose's, let alone how to use a extinguisher, decoration & walk right past them.

With out too much of a rant, we had the mine disaster in the south Island, if that had been twenty years ago, the boys and the local cops and fire brigades would have been in like jack the lad to get those men out and utilized the period immediately after the event before the gas built back up, today safety safety safety, and at what cost.

Sorry for my rant, and I do see where alot of you are coming from, but its just not black and white.:ok:

[framer]

Has someone deleted their posts?


I can understand why you think that but no, noone deleted any posts that I am aware of. definately not me.

Hogsnort; the thrust of my posts is this,
if, in a public forum, it is to be discussed in any useful way (ie to learn something) then a balanced view is required with all errors acknowledged.
If that can't be done, then it's probably too soon to get anything useful out of the public discussion and people will just end up upset with no good actually being done.
At no time did I lay the blame at someones feet. I consistantly tried to point out that all parties involved made mistakes. I hope you can understand that.You said
Look they the crew did not have the tools nor the training to think otherwise! and I agree with that, just as I agree with 4 Greens statement that Ron Chippendale investigated using the approach that was standard for his time and training. His conclusion at this level was correct and Chippendale looked at the accident, Mahon looked at corporate governance.
I'l answer your questions just in case it helps in some way;
what are you sub 45? idealistic?

Yes I'm sub 45.....just. Not particularly idealistic.
Get real, who ever you purport to be?
I don't purport to be anyone other than a professional Kiwi line pilot.
Your name is not Paul Holmes? is it! No. I've never met him and don't know anyone who knows him.

I also think Jagdfalke's last statement sums things up pretty well;
There are few examples better for James Reason's model of Accident Causation. Management had a large hand in causing the crash - not solely responsible as the pilots themselves do play a part, but to overlook the greater systemic causes of this tragedy is both shortsighted and foolish.
To overlook the greater systemic causes would indeed be shortsighted and foolish, just as overlooking the operational causes would be.If you remove either one (systemic cause or operational cause) the crash wouldn't have happened, so I come back to the need to identify the causes with the end goal being understanding each element of the accident rather than defending a party or chastising another.

[framer]

but its just not black and white.
I think most of us know that and agree with you there Hog. I certainly do.
Where it starts to come unstuck is that some errors are able to be acknowledged and discussed with a detached scientific approach ( coordinates changed and crew not told, company culture of decending below MSA etc) but another causitive error (decending below the Ministry of Transport MSA of 16000' while north of Ross Island) cannot be brought up and examined for what it is, without the discussion degenerating wildly.Even if the person bringing it up acknowledges the company norms and states that the crew were 'unfairly set-up' in the same breath, as a way of prefacing it, it still attracts an attack and moves away from a technical discussion into something else.
Have a good day, Framer

[Desert Dingo]

A myth that still needs to be debunked;
framer:
Yes the crew decended below the altitude that they were legally allowed to be flying at (regardless of whether they were VMC or not)Mahon report 40(b)
Captains of antarctic flights were specifically briefed in 1978 and in 1979 that they were authorised to descend in the McMurdo area to any flight level authorised and approved by the United States air traffic controller. When Captain Collins accepted the invitation from the United States air traffic controller to descend to 1500 feet where he would find himself in clear air, and with unlimited visibility, he was acting in compliance with authority directly given to him by the airline's briefing officer and under conditions approved by the United States' air traffic controller. The proposed over-flight of McMurdo Sound in the areas specified by the air traffic controller was at a perfectly safe altitude. Contrary to what I think has been a public misconception over this altitude question, there was at no time on 28 November 1979 any unauthorised "low flying" by the crew of TE 901.Even Chippindale’s report states “He was not violating any local restriction by descending to 1500 feet in VMC”

[hoggsnortrupert]

I had totally overlooked this! when back in NZ I will make a point to dig this Chippendale report out again.:ok:

[flatfootsam]

Just go here - you can download all of the files as .pdf's

Erebus Disaster|Mt Erebus Plane Crash OFFICAL Facts Website|1979 Air NZ|NZALPA (http://www.erebus.co.nz/)

[27/09]

Now the crew thought they were in VMC, and it was not until all of sudden they became aware of a change with one saying,"bit thick here Burt"

Some will say that "bit thick here Burt" was never even on the tapes, it was one persons interpretation of a piece of difficult to decipher conversation. Who was Burt anyway?

The people who needed to apologize are long dead, present day politicians should leave well alone.

Precisely, and also left alone by egotistical radio announcers.

[hoggsnortrupert]

Quote: Some will say that "bit thick here Burt" was never even on the tapes, it was one persons interpretation of a piece of difficult to decipher conversation. Who was Burt anyway?

It has always been my opinion that it was a bit of "lite humor" as the period of the day the "MUPPET'S" where the rage, and everyone was being called "BURT":

Only my theory, but I think it would fit with the period and the personalities.:ok:

[flatfootsam]

HSR - read all of the posted info, although thanks for the grin as that's the first time I've seen the muppets referenced in the 30+ year ongoing drama

'One oft-quoted phrase from the Chippindale report has an unidentified crew member saying "Bit thick here, eh Bert?" to support suggestions that the DC10 was lost and flying in clouds.

But there was no "Bert" in the crew, and passenger photos developed after the crash showed the jet was flying at all times clear of clouds.

Now it can be revealed that the phrase, and many others, does not appear in the original transcript, which was made using sophisticated equipment at the headquarters of the United States National Transportation Safety Board in Washington.

Mr Cooper approached The Dominion Post with the transcript after a television reconstruction during last week's 25th anniversary used the "Bert" quote and other disputed comments. He wanted the record set right before the "mythical transcript" became accepted as fact'

“Bit thick eh Bert,” was far more likely to be: “This Is Cape Bird”

[hoggsnortrupert]

To voice my opinion when younger! been sitting on this for 30 odd years too!
Now I am "Growing Old Disgracefully" and dont care what any one else thinks!:ok:

Chr's
H/Snort.

[Desert Dingo]

Another myth that will not die.
The quote in Chippindale’s report is not “bit thick here Bert”, but is actually “bit thick here eh Bert”. This makes it much more likely to have been “this is Cape Bird”
However, the CVR specialist group could not conclusively determine what the words were and therefore deemed the passage unintelligible in their transcript.
See The CVR transcript controversy - Gary Parata’s article under the Investigation tab of the link above (or click here >>Gary Parata's Article Page 1 (http://www.erebus.co.nz/Investigation/TheCVRTranscriptControversy/GaryParatasArticle.aspx)
Chippindale, though, changed the transcript in his report from unintelligible to “bit thick here eh Bert” as well as making numerous other changes to make the CVR transcript fit his pre-conceived theory of pilot error and the crew being unsure of their position.
Gary Parata writes:
The transcript actually published in the formal accident report was significantly different to the version produced by the CVR Group. Chippindale made 55 changes to the transcript without consultation with the CVR Group and in direct contravention of accepted protocols. Chippindale’s actions were inexplicable - ‘at best, an extraordinarily non-standard performance; at worst, a highly improper and prejudicial act.’ Instead of all the ad hominem attacks being made on Paul Holmes, I would like to see what new information he has about Chippindale, and then debate the facts.

So far, Chippindale has not been too impressive.
For him to state in his report
Quote: 2.5 The flight plan was printed for each flight from a computer stored record which, until the night before the flight, had the longitude for the McMurdo destination point incorrectly entered ………….
……… In the case of this crew no evidence was found to suggest that they had been misled by this error in the flight plan shown to them at the briefing. I find that utterly incredible
No evidence to suggest that they had been misled by this error ????
They flew into a mountain they thought was 25 miles away fercrissake !!!

This does not help his credibility either
Obituary: Vale Ron Chippindale: Erebus investigator was one of the many victims of TE 901, the disaster that will not go away
In November 1989, 10 years after the crash of Air New Zealand flight TE 901, chief air accidents investigator Ron Chippindale admitted to me that he knew Air New Zealand had lied about sightseeing flights to Antarctica not being allowed lower than 16,000 feet. But he’d gone along with that fiction, during his own investigation of that terrible disaster, and all through the long royal commission that followed, at the end of which Justice Peter Mahon accused the airline of concocting “palpably false evidence” and “an orchestrated litany of lies.”
Because of that ringing phrase, Justice Mahon became another victim of Mt Erebus, driven from the Bench for it by his fellow judges and a furious prime minister, Rob Muldoon. But Ron Chippindale was an Erebus victim too, never forgiven by many pilots for obstinately supporting the airline’s lie that TE 901 had no right to be flying below 16,000 feet when he knew otherwise.
But even his 1989 admission did not stop Chippindale continuing to accuse the pilots of causing the crash by bad airmanship. Despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, he still held that they were flying at a low altitude knowingly uncertain where they were in the hostile, mountainous Antarctic environment. And he bizarrely told me that they could have saved the DC10 and its 237 passengers and 20 crew by sliding it across the icy slopes it hit to a standstill, rather than letting it smash to smithereens after the ground proximity warning system shrieked its awful “Whoop whoop! Pull up!” That would have been a feat of airmanship unparalleled in aviation history.
(link (http://poneke.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/te901/) now dead) There are still many questions still unanswered.

If you had a suspicious mind you might wonder why the only documents recovered at the crash scene and shown at the enquiry were ones that supported the company argument.

Why were there no pages left in Captain Collins’ otherwise undamaged ring-binder notebook?

What happened to the rest of the documents carried by Captain Collins on that flight?

Why did the company recover FO Cassin’s briefing notes, then they were never seen again?

Who was behind the burglaries?

Does “an organized litany of lies” apply here?

Believe in conspiracies and a cover-up? Who, me?

[hoggsnortrupert]

I did not want to be the first! to go here, I felt it would contaminate the "discussion":

But! thank you for bringing it up:

As someone else said and quite rightly, alot of stuff went down:
Yes houses broken into,
Files disappearing.
A hanging by suicide from an individual in the flight planning office:
Maps disappeared.
Executive pilots whereabouts on such & such a date and Time as matches the approximate times of said break ins, un accounted for!. ( and these Bstards are still alive) and went out of their way to ^&%( over Gordon & Peter:
Note books of Collins and Cassins seen at the crash site, & documented, but never recovered.
Just to name a few from memory:

To show the importance of aviation understanding this event:

When with Zimex we had to attend a CRM & HF's course by a Twin Air Tutor in Bern:

Guess what he used as an example?

He proceeded to lecture the class on the fact that the pilots deliberately moved waypoints in the INS around a mountain to circumnavigate it:

At which point I stood up! and kindly, ever so gently! explained: it went down Like a lead balloon, but enlighten him and the class of my peers I willingly did:

To which he replied, to me and the class: that my event was totally different to what he had studied at university!#)&%, me with a ripe 25 yr old size 6 athletic virg,N:

Maybe it is time to put ghosts to rest, maybe it takes a creep like Paul Holmes to sort it out? truly I don't know:

But yes I would welcome debate in the area,s you mentioned.:ok:

[gobbledock]

Desert Dingo, you nailed it in one post mate, great work :ok:

As for Muldoon, he was just another sickening example of government bureacracy and he was a national disgrace. NZ was lucky not to enter economic ruin under the leadershp of 'Piggy', and as for the entire Erebus saga well he should also be remembered as one of life's egomaniacal turds that should be forever forgotten.

[hoggsnortrupert]

QUOTE: As for Muldoon, he was just another sickening example of government bureaucracy and he was a national disgrace. NZ was lucky not to enter economic ruin under the leadership of 'Piggy', and as for the entire Erebus saga well he should also be remembered as one of life's ego maniacal turds that should be forever forgotten. ( I corrected ego maniacal for you)

Have you ever read the book the rise & fall of a young Turk:

Or have you ever read the book, MY WAY:

Both by Robert Muldoon:

This is a guy that studied for his accountancy qualifications in the western deserts, in WW11, under attack and between battles, under his C/O of the period: and his Prime minister predecessor, the Rt Honorable Jack Marshall.

He was not all as you say, I know:

Right or wrong, if ever two adversaries where to be recognized for their "caring intent" to NZ, it was two non other than , David Lange, & Robert Muldoon, let some other than me judge them:

NOW, if you wish to get into a debate about the most corrupted NZ politician, bring it on? non other than ROGER F*(KING DOUGLAS::ok::E

[gobbledock]

NOW, if you wish to get into a debate about the most corrupted NZ politician, bring it on? non other than ROGER F*(KING DOUGLAS:http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/thumbs.gifhttp://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/evil.gif No major arguments there !! How about a different approach? How about naming for me a modern day (past 40 years) Politician who does not or did not lie, deceive or create a smoke screen environment to protect their own personal agenda?
Mr Tony Fitzgerald QC used the following terms to describe a particular Politician, however these words aptly describe today and yesteryear's leaders.He quotes;
“Access can now be purchased, patronage is dispensed, mates and supporters are appointed and retired politicians exploit their connections to obtain 'success fees' for deals between business and government".
“Neither side of politics is interested in these issues except for short-term political advantage as each enjoys or plots impatiently for its turn at the privileges and opportunities which accompany power."
“Politicians obey political instincts to obfuscate, spin, evade, deny, blame someone else, create a distraction to deflect attention from the real issue''.
Politicians = Bowel movements. (my quote).
I corrected ego maniacal for you I don't recall asking for spelling corrections, but thank you. Perhaps that sort of 'eye for detail and accuracy' would have been handy prior to 28 November 1979?

[Desert Dingo]

Perhaps that sort of 'eye for detail and accuracy' would have been handy prior to 28 November 1979? You want a perfect example of an eye for detail and accuracy? Just look at Mahon’s analysis of the CVR and FDR data.

The last 3.5 seconds of the recordings showed the rudder moved to 3.5 degrees left then to full l left rudder (13 degrees) and the elevators moved to full nose up. There was no aileron/spoiler movement at this time, although just prior to this there was slight wing rocking, first right then left.

That is the data; now for the interpretation.

Chippindale had his pre-conceived idea that it was all pilot error, so this confirmed it. They were blatting along at low level in cloud or poor visibility, unsure of their position. They suddenly saw the mountain ahead and in a moment of panic tried to make a climbing left turn to avoid the ground.

See. Simple. Perfectly clear from the data. Who could possibly disagree with that?

Justice Mahon did.

He looked at some very significant pieces of information


The “Joe Cool” attitude of the pilots with absolutely no sudden exclamations or expression of alarm.
He had expert opinion that such violent rudder travel could not have been caused by pilot input.
He noticed a cautionary note that auto-pilot data had some doubtful information because of a break in the tape.

Shift the synchronisation by a few seconds and a completely different picture emerges.
The break in the tape had caused difficulty synchronizing the FDR and CVR events.. The transcriber, acting in perfectly good faith, believing that there must have been at this point a fault in the electronic readout sequence moved the synchronisation to match the go-around power call and what was obviously (to him) a panic evasive maneuver.

Put the FDR/CVR synchronisation back to its original position and you now have:

The wing rocking was caused by HDG SEL being pulled and the aircraft starting to turn right to the previously selected heading. Then when HDG SEL was turned to straight ahead the aircraft rolled to the left to correct.

Impact then occurred in a left wing down attitude so the #1 engine hit first and caused the aircraft to slew violently to the left .

There was also a violent movement of up elevator at the same time as a pitch attitude change from 5 to 11 degrees nose up as the fuselage matches the slope of the terrain at the impact point.

Now we have the control surface deflections being caused by their inertia during rapid heading and attitude changes at impact.
This is the exact reverse of what Chippindale assumed.

A brilliant analysis by Mahon. The crew never saw what they hit.

[stillalbatross]

The crew never saw what they hit.

If they had followed the SOP's at the time they would have remained above MSA and had nothing to hit.

I have no trouble with Vette's findings that the atmospheric conditions made the mountain difficult to see, but someone was flying a perfectly servicable aircraft into the side of a mountain and it wasn't Morrie Davis or Ron Chippendale or Robert Muldoon.

The crew put the aircraft into a place they couldn't recover it from doing some sort of wierd INS Nav/VMC Below manoeuvre and all I hear on this thread is they would have been fine to carry on if the co-ordinates hadn't been changed.

Bleating on about AirNZ's behaviour subsequent to doesn't solve or add cause to the chain of events that led up to the accident. Mahon's idea in his unbalanced conclusion that you could throw the SOP's out the window showed he was only ever a lawyer, not a pilot.

Are we going to dredge up a dozen more NZ accidents and absolve the crew of their portion blame because the years have passed. I take it that everyone on here who disagree's with me would have done the same as that crew on the day and also put the plane into the side of the mountain?

[gulfairs]

There has bee a million words written about the accident of ZK NZP.
I will not get into who was or was not at fault.
One issue that has never been raised is the NZALPA's attitude was that one of our pilots could not have made such a serious mistake.
Hence the huge move to move the blame to the administration of Air New Zealand.
Morry Davis was at fault, Flight planning department was at fault.
Justice Mahone did some live tests down on the ice but he was led by ALPA members, to not blame the pilot.
Chippindale was correct(in my opinion) it was 'Pilot error" nothing else.
Jim Collins was an adept pilot but on this fateful day he made an error in judgement.
It is also very strange that Chippindale was killed by a waywould motorist some time after the accident not for from his home.
Should all the preaching of terminal and absolute inexactudes get swept away we might get a bit closer to why Jim Collins waded into a navigational trap

BBG

[hoggsnortrupert]

stillalbatross: SO tell me or us, please about an incident in your career where you have failed in HF's:

Now the crew, and I say CREW, no one until about the last 20 odd seconds from what I remember of the transcripts ever voiced any concern's, and they were a functioning, harmonized professional crew:

I fail to see your logic, or any of your argument: You obviously no nothing of "WHITE OUT" or OPTICAL ILLUSIONS, white out, mirages, the northern lights, the southern lights, spatial disorientation, inner ear & balance and the list goes on:

If you really think as you do, and you are not "trying to wind us up" I would go as far as to say, I Pity your Professionalism:

There but by the grace of God go I:

My question to you and in part to others that think as you, is this!

Next time , or if ever an event happens in your flying career that you cant understand when you need to, how will you react? do you think you can never get into such an event in your career, or is there no room for such in your flying career? is it an impossibility that something as happened to TE-901 crews, could ever happen to you? can you tell me or us that nothing could ever happen to you, that you would not recognize and instantly understand? think wisely!:ugh:

[TDK mk2]

I have a sim instructor who drills us on LPC/OPCs to follow every SOP to the letter, saying things like "the lawyers will argue that if you knowingly break that SOP which other ones will you break". I've never flown with him but am told that on the line he is quite happy to 'vary' the SOPs as we all do from time to time. I'm sure there will be people who will say they never ever 'interpret' the ops manual but really is anything ever truely black and white?

I've heard that there was a company notac on board specifying an MSA of 16000' until south of Mt Erebus and then the minimum altitude allowed was 6000', however this had apparently been issued without the knowledge of the Director of Flight Operations (International), Doug Keesing. Although he had retired by the time of the accident he thought he had agreed with Civil Aviation that aircraft could descend to 2000' agl in VMC at the descretion of the Captain for sightseeing purposes, in February 1977. He then travelled a flight in November 1978 when the aircraft did descend to 2000' as it passed Mt Erebus, which he apparently felt perfectly comfortable about as he believed that it was what had been agreed with the authority.

I know there are people who want to take an absolute view that the crew were responsible for the crash, but they really were just the last slice in the pack of cheese and for their part in that error chain they (and their families) paid the ultimate price. The company and their insurers stood to save a lot of money by having a finding of "pilot error" due to payouts being capped in that case. Might that have affected their willingness to accept their share of the substantial failures that lead to this accident?

[ampan]

D. Dingo : "Then when the heading select knob was turned to straight ahead the aircraft rolled to the left to correct it."

P. Mahon, 'Verdict on Erebus', page 282: "The captain had then pulled out the Heading Select knob, thus disengaging the aircraft from its Nav track. The moment he disengaged the Nav track, the aircraft began to roll to the right in obedience to the heading which had previously controlled the Heading Select dial. But the captain had then turned the Heading Select dial to the left so as to command a left turn and the aircraft had immediately responded by correcting the right-hand roll and starting to roll to the left, and it had struck the mountainside with the aircraft probably rolling just to the left of the centreline."

[Exaviator]

The Erebus Disaster was a sad play in three acts.

In Act 1.

We have the Flight Operations Dept. of ANZ scheduling a crew for a flight for which they had been insufficiently prepared, and on the closing scene changing the navigational data to the Area Nav System without informing the operating crew.

In Act 2.

We have the crew for what ever reason failing in their situation awareness, descending below the MSA and placing the aircraft in a dangerous situation, which resulted in the accident.

In Act 3.

We have the cover up by management and the now famous, “Orchestrated Litany of Lies”

The Finale.

Most of the players were either killed, are now well retired, or have passed on, and I am sure that most, if not all of the lessons have been learned.

It is a discussion, which at this point in time as no end, unless you choose to end it.:hmm:

[ampan]

Act 1

Briefing: Captain told that nav track goes to McMurdo Station, but not told that such a track goes over Erebus.

Act 2

The Night Before: Captain plots track and notes: (1) A track to McMurdo Station goes over Erebus, but: (2) The track does not actually go to McMurdo Station.

Act 3

The Day of the Flight: Captain and First Officer enter the co-ordinates and Captain does not check the final waypoint, despite have received conflicting information about it.

Act 4

At 1500 feet, in the jaws of Lewis Bay: Flight Engineer says “I don’t like this”. Captain decides to climb out. First Officer says it’s clear to the right – wrong: Mount Bird to the right. Captain says “no negative” and turns left.


Comedy Sequel – Flight safety award named after Captain.

[stationary]

Daughters of Erebus (16:55) | Breaking & Daily News, Sport & Weather | TV ONE, TV2 | TVNZ (http://tvnz.co.nz/sunday-news/daughters-erebus-16-55-video-4383320)

[framer]

Thanks for the link.
From watching it I think it will result in a continuation of the debate because it seeks to remove "all blame" from one party. It doesn't matter what party that is (in this case it's the pilots) , the approach will never be successful because all parties made mistakes.Like most accidents.
The cover up isn't relevent as to the cause of the accident, it was subsequent. (obviously terrible, but not relevent to the cause of the accident).
The reality is that many errors were made and the crew made the last one, as is always the way.That doesn't make them bad people or bad pilots, everyone reading this makes mistakes. That is just life no matter how unsatisfying it is not to be able to blame soley ANZ or soley the pilots. The error chain had many many links and only the last one or two were contributed by the crew.With that being the case, should the NZ govt state that the crew were 'totally without blame'. Would that be accurate or a way of making people feel better? Maybe they should state that "there were many many mistakes made by several parties and the crew made the last one after being set up by shoddy company practices and a weak Ministry of Transport" ....... but that wouldn't satisfy many people.

[hoggsnortrupert]

QUOTE: Maybe they should state that "there were many many mistakes made by several parties and the crew made the last one after being set up by shoddy company practices and a weak Ministry of Transport" ....... but that wouldn't satisfy many people.

It would be a start framer, and you are correct! in that it: :wouldn't satisfy many people"

It is a sad fact that no matter which way this sad episode is debated, it will continue to remain "unpalatable", If I had a loved one involved, I too would continue to have a feeling of "perhaps" Resentment! and understandable it is.

I think the professional amongst us need to get what they can out of it as operators, "where was professor James Reason" back then?

Aviation is a hard taskmaster, and will continue to be so, today we have a debate on "Pilot manipulative" skills, born from what? Accidents and lost lives, this has always been the norm for the industry.

The first recorded passenger death, was piloted by one of the "Wright Bros" and the industry on both sides (American & French) have done what they think best philosophy approach to their products, and now its the (dare I say it) "European Automation" that has gone along way to remove the pilot from the issue as being the main cause, and the reverse is being recognized, that pilot still is the issue as the automation has reduced his "normal" pilot skills to one of having to think how to fly, having to think electronically, "what law" is this in?

The day will come when I have no doubt, aeroplanes will have no pilots and the "generation to come" will accept the odd loss as acceptable.

Back to Erebus! (respectfully) Long may it be a "shinning example" of Professor Reasons, what happens when?:ok:

[flatfootsam]

Muldoon says in the clip - "just come out point blank and say 'I accuse so and so of a conspiracy"

Well here goes: there was a predetermined and comprehensive effort by the entire board of anz, the exec pilots/management of anz, the govt up to and including including the very highest echelons of the NZ govt, including Muldoon, to purposely mislead and deceive the investigation, including misappropriation of evidence and deliberate misrepresentation to the commission, including the NZ public (by extension)

They conspired to destroy evidence related to the investigation (documentary and actual retrieved evidence), obstruct the investigation and the Mahon commission, including deliberate and knowingly false testimony to the commission ect

The presumption on the part of the conspirators that the absence of evidence would in fact be the evidence of absence- a loose argumentum ad ignorantiam - or at least the presumption of that absence of evidence, was enough to get them off the hook. The fact the pilots documents - including the maps and pre-plotted route was never presented (although recovered in dubious circumstances), is one very good hint as to the motive.

The fact that there were maps being used with pre-plotted track to run distances ect is contained in the CVR as the crew read off the distance to run on the radial azimuth vectors. Ipso, no maps/atlas and briefing notes and then there's nothing to argue: it's all just supposition and testimony.

Chippendale, who was clearly naive in the the darker arts of investigation and the shady shadow boxing of Muldoon's Machiavellian mechanics of the political spectrum and should have been aware of the old gamblers adage 'if you don't know who the pasty is, then you're the pasty'.

[my oleo is extended]

flatfootsam, that's a slam dunk mate! Absolutley correct. Lies, deception, dishonesty,corruption, spin, denial and pure evil.
As has already been mentioned, the James Reason model would have been handy a few years prior to 79, but that doesn't mean the accident would not have happenned. My 'beef' is not with those who contributed to the accident or were part of the cause, but is with those who acted in the way so accurately described by flatfootsam. Had those actions not taken place then the ongoing debate/discussion/anger and frustration that many express today, 32 years after the accident, would not be so prevelant.

Historically we live and learn from mistakes, Erebus was no different. We investigate, we learn, we make changes, we adapt and we improve. Hence no other 'Erebus' has occurred on NZ soil in that sense. You can't turn back the clock, you move in one direction only - forward.
But the grey cloud that sits over this accident and the way in which the government and business acted by joining forces and undertaking such a despicable act without proper recourse or punitive action will not ever be forgotten. How can it?

[framer]

Had those actions not taken place then the ongoing debate/discussion/anger and frustration that many express today, 32 years after the accident, would not be so prevelant.


Spot on.

But the grey cloud that sits over this accident and the way in which the government and business acted by joining forces and undertaking such a despicable act without proper recourse or punitive action will not ever be forgotten.
Spot on.

Where it starts to get ugly is when people try to analyse just the accident, just the events leading up to the accident, and others get upset because of the way certain parties behaved after the event and therefore won't accept that the fault doesn't lie squarely in one camp.
The fault/responsibility/blame....whatever you want to call it, is distributed unevenly over all the parties involved, just like most other accidents.
So to ask for complete absolution of blame for the crew is going too far in my mind. Maybe ask for recognition that actions by the airline led to a difficult and confusing situation for the crew, and that the subsequent behaviour of execs and politicians was gutless/corrupt etc.
Complete absolution is P Holmes not quite understanding what it means to be the PinC of an airliner.

[waren9]

Or PIC of anything else for that matter. That man is hardly a shining example with his own exploits.

[Wally Mk2]

It's amazing that this accident gets so much attention after 32 yrs or so.

Look on the morning of the accident Capt Collins got out of bed to conduct a sight seeing flight & with good intentions to complete that mission to live another day. Obviously he wouldn't have had any other intentions. ANZ & it's employees likewise had no other intentions other than to do their part in an operation that was to make money for the Co. Chippendale am sure also didn't get out of bed that morning to do anything other than his normal tasks for the day.
BUT & yes there always a but when the accident occurred & it was becoming obvious that ANZ had played a major part in the chain of events then self protection by way of lies etc came into play on an individual basis as well as a corporate basis.
Pure & simple we ALL will go to extraordinary lengths at times to protect ourselves, our beliefs or integrity, fight or flight as they call it.Nobody wants to be hung out to dry so a human trait is to save face when their up against it, our courts would be full of lies & deception every day due fear of being found guilty & all that entails, self preservation is a powerful thing.

Capt Collins was human, he 'may' have made judgment errors (we ALL make errors)but am sure he did so without malice, the latter can't be said for the way the whole mess was handled at a higher level.

Let the dead rest in peace & the living rest assured that life is precious & finite.


Wmk2

[prospector]

My comments taken from a previous thread on this subject.

Your comments re Ron Chippendale are far from the truth, it would really help if you did a bit of research on these people before printing such garbage. I have taken the following from "New Zealand tragedies,Aviation" compiled by John King.

Ron Chippendale was the first witness to take the stand when the hearing began in an Auckland office building on 7 July 1980.

But while Mahon praised his witness for being a model witness, composed, impertuble and sure of his position, he belittled the capabilities of both the Chief Inspector and his staff. None of them, he said had ever been jet pilots, etc etc

The commissioners assessment of his first witness ignored Chippendales considerable experience as a flight instructor and transport pilot in the RNZAF.He had been formally involved in military flight safety and accident investigation for several years before being seconded to similar duties in civil aviation, and his standing in the world community is such that as someone scrupulously fair and independant, he has been asked to help investigate some accidents of a particularly delicate political nature. (Recently, for instance, he was appointed to the five strong United Nations team to investigate the loss of the Korean Airlines Boeing 747 airliner, Flight KAL007, shot down by a Soviet fighter near the Island of Sakhalin in 1983.)

Credentials far from the qualifications and aeronautical experience that the poisonous toad called Holmes can call on to offer to back his opinion on the events of that day and subsequent to that day.

[framer]

Credentials far from the qualifications and aeronautical experience that the poisonous toad called Holmes can call on to offer to back his opinion on the events of that day and subsequent to that day.
Yeah Paul is totally out of his depth here.As was Mahon when it came to understanding what is said and done on a flight deck. Don't get me wrong, I think Mahon's work on the corporate/political side of things was astute and probably principled. Some of the flightdeck stuff was off the mark though.
The thing that amazes me about Holmes's book is that it derides Chippendales professional abilities as well as his character, yet Holmes is quick to say in interview that the dead can't defend themselves when he is talking about the crew and how their good names were forever stained. Hang on Paul....isn't that what you're now doing to Chippendale? Are you qualified to do that? I guess if crashing planes is a qualification then you are.
In my book Collins, Chippendale, and Mahon were all most likely men of good character, each with different jobs and skills.

[hoggsnortrupert]

History judges us all, by our deeds, not by our intent, and alot of the time without understanding the individual.

Yes! thirty + yrs on and it still invokes debate such as this:

It is not a bad thing, but Paul Holmes for *&^% sake::ugh:

I can think of no other aviation accident, or event, that has evoked so much debate, and emotion:

Neither do I think emotion as being misplaced in such:

[gulfairs]

I always had a chart in the cockpit and checked the latitude and longtitude readout, but the crew of the fatal flight never referred to it."

In those days we were overawed in the accuracy of the triplex INS compared to the nearly correct doppler that was still used on the DC8.
After loading a flight plan into the computer, if it wasn't aleady loaded as a route as a 'from via to format', one rarely if ever cross checked the CDU waypoints with the printed edition at hand.
It wasn't until we operated the steam driven, cable operted switch, B747-200 was the stage by stage cross checked; and that was because the 747 INS was almost clockwork, as well we had all had our arses kicked after the horse got out( so to speak)
A.G Vette's redition of mind set, visual accurity ,seeing what you expected even it it did not quite fit theses, is probably closer to the truth than most pilots would or will admit.
It certainly was not Morry Davis's fault that the accident took place, but the brains in Flight route planning/flight planning do really have to look at them selves and try and be honest about the pre 901 events.
Jim Collins and crew were victims of a system that was run by a bunch of men who did suffer from alto ego, particularly if one challenged them over any point in navigation ,operation and performance.
Air New Zealand broke more rules in performance operation because of cost in useable dollars than most people would ever believe.
Another incident was discovered by a very poor take off performance at Hong Kong one evening, due to a power plant change in allowable limits, the aircraft then increased in mauw for take off but the new limits on the engines were not applied because it woudl shorten the hot section overhaule life.
I succeeded in getting 5(five) consecutive route checks because I challenged aircrew management over this issue and we were technically taking off over weight.
Such was the thinking in those days.
In fact I retired 5 years early over a disputed take of performance in a steam driven aircraft out of LGW again because it would increase operating costs if we did it according to the manufacturer's specifications.
I could write on but Have diverted a little from Poor old Jim Collins case.
He was not at fault---Air New Zealand flight management was.
I flew on after leaving Air NZ, working in Europe, Ireland NZ and self employed,.
I make the unreserved statement that.
In all my working life, Air New Zealand LTd stand head and shoulders above the rest as being the WORST employer I ever worked for.

Now go back and look again at the Mahone report, Impact Erebus, and other publications on that accident and the route cause is obvious.

[prospector]

I will copy and paste from the other thread to.

" Now go back and look again at the Mahons report, Impact Erebus, and other publications on that accident and the route cause is obvious."

Yes, the cause certainly is obvious.

Mahons publication,containing what one would expect it to contain, is actually titled "Verdict on Erebus".

Gordon Vettes publication is entitled "Impact Erebus"

There are many other publications and reports on this accident, many by Pilots with many years of experience in airline flying, and very few of them agree with Mahons findings, which is not suprising as he had absolutely no aviation experience or expertise.

His findings were admittedly of value in the aftermath of the accident, the political sheenanigans, the shortcomings of some of Air New Zealand's operational staff, but his knowledge of cockpit behaviour in large, or for that matter, any aircraft, as he accused the Chief Accident inspector of, was non existant.

All this happened after the accident, if the mandatory descent requirements were adhered to, even one of them, then the accident would not have happened.

[Fantome]

hoggsnortrupert


Framer:

. . .there are equally other arse holes that toe'd the company line with being whiter than white! that are still about, may they never get a good night's sleep!

There but by the grace of God go I:

It is my airman's prayer to my God on high, that I be judged on my truthfulness, and faithfulness to the better good of my fellow pilot, may my stool at the bar be reserved for all my faults..

Last from me on the subject!


Dear Rupe . .. . . so glad it has not been. (I'd insert an amen or two in the above.)

[framer]

All this happened after the accident, if the mandatory descent requirements were adhered to, even one of them, then the accident would not have happened.

Well one of the things that we as an industry do better in 2011 than back then is respect hard altitudes. Maybe Erebus contributed significantly to that? Although I can think of another more recent loss where the defence of the hard altitude was given away. Whether the altitude is from CAA, the manufacturer, or the company, it is there for the same reason, it's the last backstop, to protect against all the other factors/problems/errors leading up to that point that you may or may not be aware of as the pilot.
Now days, 99% of the time, if management suggested to a pilot that he could go below a hard altitude, the pilot wouldn't do it, they'd say "no thanks, it's my licence".
By decending below a hard altitude you are giving away a very important layer of defence. I don't think that was understood as well in 1979 as it is today. I'm sure it wasn't.

[Mr & Mrs Rocketboots]

This report on Radio New Zealand's Mediawatch summed up the value of this book brilliantly (IMHO).

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2497660/mediawatch-for-11-september-2011.asx

Starting point 7:27 into the programme.

:D

[prospector]

To me. all that that interview with Holmes does is just confirms what an odious little man he is.

[4Greens]

I knew Ron Chippendale well. He was as straight as a die.

[Old Fella]

I recall some reference to the crew of the accident flight "not understanding white-out". If this is true I find it inconceivable. I was involved in several flights to McMurdo as part of Operation Deep Freeze during December 1978 and we were most certainly well briefed regarding "white-out". We, in fact, maintained HF skeds with McMurdo en-route to get the trend and if "white-out" was likely we would not go beyond PSR and return to Christchurch to await more favorable conditions at McMurdo.

[27/09]

I recall some reference to the crew of the accident flight "not understanding white-out". If this is true I find it inconceivable.

Why do you say inconceivable? I don't doubt you knew all about whiteout, but who's to say these guys had been briefed correctly about it. These guys hadn't been there before, plus I think that many peoples understanding of whiteout is/was a little flawed.

Many think of it as being in conditions where visibility is obscured by ice crystals or similar, and never ever realise that it's to do with the inability to see terrain ahead even though visibility is good, due to the ambient light and the colour of the sky and terrain playing devious tricks on the vision of those experiencing whiteout.

[reubee]

The book didn't really add anything new, except for telling you that Paul Holmes and the family doesn't like Chippendale (Starts right from the beginning, digs the knife in as early as Page 15), and some innuendo against Geoffrey Palmer.

I'd like to have seen Paul Holmes the investigative journalist try and uncover the outstandinging questions. How did the US Navy manage to erase their ATC recordings, the 2 burglaries, the missing exhibits recovered from the Antarctic. If anyone did something untoward they must be getting on and maybe willing to confess

What did the Air NZ Board of Directors discuss in the months after Nov 1979?

Can the CVR tape be reexamined using 2011 technology? Will it be released publcially in 2049. (70 year limit applies I believe)

[flatfootsam]

[Can the CVR tape be reexamined using 2011 technology? Will it be released publcially in 2049. (70 year limit applies I believe) ]

Good question. Under the US freedom of information act, it can be released 2 years after the event, providing the authority has a copy.
It is not clear if a copy exists, but perhaps the manufacture has a copy as that is where it was downloaded before heading to Washington.
Air NZ have a copy as it under the previous legislation, it was considered the property of the airline (See Mahon - Verdict Erebus).
Running it through a modern CVR analysis would be very interesting

[prospector]

Have just attended a book sale meeting with Paul Holmes giving his version of events as seen by Mahon. One example, Holmes went on at some length to explain that the descent was approved by McMurdo Radar, but did not explain to the audience that at no time was the flight identified by radar, or that the Captain had requested a VMC descent, which Mahon and Holmes neglect to explain that by definition the crew are now responsible, by their own request, for their own terrain and traffic separation.

His treatment of Ron Chippendale was quite disgusting, at the end he would not answer any relevant questions, just said to read the book.

[ampan]

bbg #66: A DC-10 captain in 1979 might not usually have checked all the waypoints against the chart, but what if he had received conflicting information about one of them? What if he had been told at the briefing that the final waypoint was at X and then discovered, the night before, that an old flightplan he had taken from the briefing had the waypoint at Y? Wouldn’t you check that particular waypoint, especially before going down to 1500 feet in the vicinity of 16000 foot mountain? Wouldn’t you check that particular waypoint before descending VMC through a hole in the cloud when you knew it was “very hard to tell the difference between the cloud and the ice”? As Prospector points out, he went down without verifying his position. All he had was the AINS, which was completely dependent on the final waypoint being at Y, rather than at X, as he had been told at the briefing. And there is absolutely no doubt that Captain Collins was told, at the briefing, that the waypoint was at McMurdo Station, rather than at a point 27 nms to the west, in middle of nowhere. The briefing used an audiotape, the transcript of which contained the following: “A standard route definition will be used employing the From-Via-To format. Enter NZAA then 78s/167E being the approximate co-ordinates of McMurdo Station.” Even if the captain was asleep during that bit, he then went into the simulator and practised and a descent procedure to McMurdo Station. The procedure was not a straight line descent from a point to the west of McMurdo Station. Instead, it was an out and back procedure from directly overhead McMurdo Station. So where would that suggest the final waypoint to be?

[reubee]

Have just attended a book sale meeting with Paul Holmes giving his version of events as seen by Mahon. ...

His treatment of Ron Chippendale was quite disgusting, at the end he would not answer any relevant questions, just said to read the book.

... was that you getting a mention in the Herald today then Paul Holmes: Book tour brings out all sorts - friend and foe - National - NZ Herald News (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10753942)

[27/09]

was that you getting a mention in the Herald today then Paul Holmes: Book tour brings out all sorts - friend and foe - National - NZ Herald News

Well, the pompous prat hasn't improved with age.

We started in Taupo where we booked into a flash hotel, the Hilton, on the lakefront looking across....

By the way Paul, the Hilton isn't in the lake front at Taupo in fact you'd probably struggle to even see much of the lake from the Hilton. If you can't get that right one does wonder how much poetic licence you used in the book.

[prospector]

Could be, it was Paraparaumu, not Raumati that I attended, actually I would have said that he got hysterical trying to answer my question.

He spent a lot of time explaining how Jim Collins, and his family, were poring over the charts for the flight, and how it went down McMurdo Sound.

My question was that if the weather was as good as he was trying to portray, and they knew the route so well from their chart perusal, why did nobody pick up they were on the wrong side of Beaufort Island, a very distinctive landmark.

The answer was that Mahon had explained that, but nowhere have I seen any explanation that ties up with how good the weather was with the fact that they missed this obvious anomoly.

He mumbled something about a DC10 cruises with an 8 degree nose up attitude which may explain why the Island was not sighted, even though during the second descending orbit they were tracking directly towards the Island, and a number of photographs recovered showed the Island.

The general public lapped up his story, even though very few, if any, have any knowledge of the CAA rules, Company SOP's, that had been formulated for these trips, were completely ignored, with the end result that the rules that were in place to prevent just this scenario were negated.

Is it just coincidental, that after 33 years Holmes book comes out after Ron Chippendale is not here to answer these charges of malfeasance??

[framer]

Is it just coincidental, that after 33 years Holmes book comes out after Ron Chippendale is not here to answer these charges of malfeasance
It's pretty disgusting really.
PH spends a lot of time denegrating RC and crapping on about how little he knew about jet airliner accidents, but never addresses the fact that he himself knows less. He also spends a lot of time expaining how the good name of JC was smeared and tarnished when he was no longer there to defend himself.......and then goes on to smear and tarnish the name of RC now that he also is not here to defend himself.
And the worst bit? PH doesn't actually understand what he is talking about. I am sure that he thinks/ believes he does, but he doesn't.
He never will either, just like the people who read his book and take all the flowery romantic rubbish in like it's gospel. It's all very emotional, but he'l never understand why so many airliners DON'T fly into hills. Thats one thing he'l never understand. If you asked him he'd probably think its because airlines have such good navigation sections now and systems are so reliable that they never need cross checking , if only he knew. I had a flight plan a few months ago that put me more than 400nm off track at my destination and the fuel burn predicted was out by six tonnes......by PH's reckoning its a miracle we made it.
RC did his job, it's sad to see his character assaulted publicly by a novice chasing some quick cash.

[DozyWannabe]

One issue that has never been raised is the NZALPA's attitude was that one of our pilots could not have made such a serious mistake.

Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that - NZALPA backed Gordon Vette's assertion that:

"I realised that if Jim Collins, a Captain I had known for 20-odd years, [and] an exceptional pilot in all respects, could be a victim of this terrible crash then so could I, and so could any of the rest of us".

It wasn't just a case of defending Collins and his crew, it was the case that Vette believed that if ANZ had altered the co-ordinates in the same manner before *any* of the Antarctic flights, then it would have been that pilot and not Collins who ended up hitting Erebus - this was a belief he was willing to give up his seniority and eventually his career for.

A DC-10 captain in 1979 might not usually have checked all the waypoints against the chart, but what if he had received conflicting information about one of them? What if he had been told at the briefing that the final waypoint was at X and then discovered, the night before, that an old flightplan he had taken from the briefing had the waypoint at Y?

There's no evidence to suggest that he had conflicting information at any time prior to receiving the "corrected" co-ordinates (that he was not told had changed) the morning he took off. The alteration to the navigation computer was performed at 1:40 AM the morning of the flight, and Collins had checked the route he was given (with the waypoint that turned out to be incorrect) several hours previously. The most recent nav chart he was given showed the route down McMurdo Sound and this was the one that the airline tried to have destroyed. He had no reason to believe that the co-ordinates he was given in the morning were any different from the ones given at the briefing, and so the cross-check he did against the morning's printout as it went into AINS was sufficient.

As Prospector points out, he went down without verifying his position.

He was invited down by Mac Central and at the time, his transponder was coding, giving the impression that they had him on radar. The radar tapes themselves were erased, and a condition of Mahon's visit to Mac Central the following year was that he was not permitted to ask why. Vette's research gives a ton of detail on how it was possible in those conditions to perceive Cape Tennyson as Cape Royds, and Cape Bird as Cape Bernacchi. He could have dialled in the TACAN, but the route he had plotted the previous night (the route he thought he was following) did not go to the TACAN, instead ending at an arbitrary point just west of the Dailey Islands. He may have elected to use the TACAN as a navaid after he made the left turn he was expecting to make south of Ross Island, but it's something we'll never know.

How, other than visually (which he did - and was misled by optical illusion and whiteout) was he supposed to verify his position? As I've said in another thread, Prospector makes much of the position of Beaufort Island, but if you look at the descent track flown, the aircraft would have emerged from clouds south of Beaufort Island, with the island itself out of visual range of the flight deck. This would have happened even if he was on the McMurdo track, as the longitude at which the aircraft came out of clouds would have been the same in both cases.

The Night Before: Captain plots track and notes: (1) A track to McMurdo Station goes over Erebus, but: (2) The track does not actually go to McMurdo Station.

The track plotted was with the "erroneous" co-ordinates (that had nevertheless been used since 1978). Those co-ordinates (164.48 east), as stated, ended up west of the Dailey Islands, miles from either McMurdo Station or the TACAN. None of the briefing materials considered current included a track over Erebus, and the last flight to the McMurdo NDB was in early 1978, before the NDB was withdrawn. The Collins flight was the first INS-driven flight to have the correct TACAN co-ordinates (166.58 east) entered into the flight computer, but neither the change, nor the fact that the TACAN was intended to be the destination was communicated to any crew.

The briefing video (that mentioned the limits *and* Erebus) was shown to Chippindale, but Chippindale was *not* shown the photocopied sheet depicting the track with the error, nor was he even made aware that the error even existed until much later, when his report was almost finished - ANZ management presented it to him almost as an afterthought, and acknowledgement of the existence of that error occupies only a small section of that report as a consequence, just as I suspect ANZ intended.

Because of the fallout from the reports, I get the idea that amongst the NZ aviation fraternity the tendency has been to come down firmly on Chippindale's or NZALPA/Mahon's side - and by extension that to believe Mahon's report necessitates a belief that Chippindale was complicit in the shenanigans that ANZ was playing. This is a false dichotomy - I accept from people who knew Chippindale that he was a very honest man and a good investigator for the time who held his convictions to the very end. I also understand that given his military background it may have been inconceivable to him that airline operations were not as stringent when applying their rules as the military operations he was used to. I find it harder to accept the willingness with which he brought Chief Pilot Gemmell into the process of re-writing the CVR transcript, and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight over 32 years it looks very much to me like he was a good man who in this case was led around by the nose by ANZ management - who made sure that the only evidence they supplied would support the conclusion they wanted. As such I believe Chippindale was an honest man put in an impossible position by his employers at NZCAA (who also had a vested interest in a pilot error conclusion), and who based his conclusions on his military experience and the incomplete information he was provided.

Remember that the only fault the Court Of Appeal found (and Privy Council upheld) with the Mahon report was the accusation of a top-down campaign of deception. They neither disagreed with his assertion that ANZ management were lying to him, nor did they find fault with any of his findings regarding the crash itself - though it did not stop Muldoon from spinning it that way and causing most of the continuing acrimony on the subject.

Mahon certainly never intimated that "SOPs should be thrown out of the window" even slightly. What Mahon and Vette uncovered was that Chippindale had only been given half the story. The hard MSAs applied to IFR only, and the Collins flight was under VFR rules at the time. SOPs and regulations stated that under radar guidance, the flight could legally descend to altitudes as low as 500ft if invited to do so by the radar controller. Collins was invited to descend to 1,500ft and his transponder was coding during the descent, giving him the indication that Mac Central was tracking him on radar. Visual range below the overcast (i.e. below 2,500ft) was all the way to the horizon and so he was in VFR and thus not breaking any regulations. Whether it was Chippindale's own erroneous conclusion that they were in IMC, or whether that suggestion was advanced to him by Captain Gemmell as they reviewed the tape will never have a satisfactory answer.

NB: As mentioned on the other thread, Capt. Vette's "Impact Erebus" documentary has been uploaded in it's entirety to YouTube by NZALPA. Part 1 is here (Double-click to open in a new window and get the rest of it) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my0FkYwOV0g

[prospector]

DozyWannabe,

Just a few points from your post I would like to question.

" He was invited down by Mac Central and at the time, his transponder was coding, giving the impression that they had him on radar."

Really? the only record appertaining to descent was that a VMC descent was requested, as you are no doubt aware that makes the crew responsible for their own terrain and traffic clearance during the descent requested.

I know Gordon Vette in his book Impact Erebus states that his (Collins) transponder was coding, but I find it very difficult to understand how this could be ascertained by anyone who was not in the cockpit at the time.

One would think if they were indeed on the radar then their VHF and DME would also have been giving a reading.

The question of McMurdo Radar was very well covered by Judge Harold Greene's hearing in the US District Court in Washington who wrote in his ruling

"It is clearly established that, when the pilot told MacCentre he wished to descend VMC, he effectively told the controllers he could see where he was going. In so doing he took sole respnsibility for separating the aircraft from other aircraft and from terrain, and he was on his own"


" the aircraft would have emerged from clouds south of Beaufort Island, with the island itself out of visual range of the flight deck"

Really? after requesting a VMC descent? naughty naughty.

"
The hard MSAs applied to IFR only, and the Collins flight was under VFR rules at the time. SOPs and regulations stated that under radar guidance, the flight could legally descend to altitudes as low as 500ft if invited to do so by the radar controller. Collins was invited to descend to 1,500ft and his transponder was coding during the descent, giving him the indication that Mac Central was tracking him on radar. Visual range below the overcast (i.e. below 2,500ft) was all the way to the horizon and so he was in VFR and thus not breaking any regulations. Whether it was Chippindale's own erroneous conclusion that they were in IMC, or whether that suggestion was advanced to him by Captain Gemmell as they reviewed the tape will never have a satisfactory answer."

Are you trying to say that McMurdo radar could see through Ross Island and Mt Erebus? That must have come from the Holmes account, from where else could it have come?? Not even Mahon came up with that proposition.

There is only one answer to that statement, it has been made many times but here it is again

Delete all reference in briefing dated 23/10/79. Note that the ONLY LET/DOWN procedure available is VMC below FL160 (16,000ft) to 6,000ft as follows.

1. Vis 20 km plus.
2. No snow shower in area.
3. Avoid Mt erebus area by operating in an arc from 120 Grid through 360 Grid to 270 Grid from McMurdo Field within 20nm of TACAN Ch29.
4. Descent to be coordinated with local radar control as they may have other traffic in the area.

There is no doubt the crew were aware of these requirements, a copy was recovered from the cockpit after the crash.

"

'"Mahon certainly never intimated that "SOPs should be thrown out of the window" even slightly. What Mahon and Vette uncovered was that Chippindale had only been given half the story"

In view of the mandatory descent requirements printed above, which were required to be complied with both by the company and CAA, and the lack of credence given these requirements by Mahon, I find that statement hard to digest.

[FGD135]

prospector,

How would you apportion blame for this accident? Was it 100% the fault of the flight crew?

Or maybe 50% to the crew and 50% to the airline, or somewhere between the two?

As you are well versed in the associated evidence, I am interested to hear you opinion as to the blame allocation.

My leaning is towards 50/50.

[prospector]

FGD135,

All been stated in a previous thread but my estimation would be,


CAA: 5% for lack of proper oversight, although I do believe there
was an airline inspector scheduled to travel on the flight but had to pull
out due to family circumstance. I very much doubt the flight would
have been conducted the way it was if it was known a CAA inspector
was onboard.

Company: 10% for sloppy operating procedures, and not following up on
reports of low flying. An invitation from a McMurdo Radar operator to
perform a low level run surely does not overide CAA regs or Co SOPs.

Crew: 85% for not complying with either CAA requirements for these flights
or company SOP's, and for not confirming their position before
commencing descent. If even just one of the mandatory requirements
for descent were compled with the accident would have been avoided.
The tools for getting a precise position were available to them prior to
descent, and as this was their first flight to the ice one would have
thought a high degreee of caution would have been the order of the day.

[Dream Land]

For crying out loud, this mission is a VFR tour, if the pilot decides to take it upon himself to go scud running in a DC-10, where he dives through a hole down to 1500 foot, how can this be anyone else's responsibility other than the PIC?

Running for cover...

[27/09]

Dreamland if the pilot decides to take it upon himself to go scud running in a DC-10, where he dives through a hole down to 1500 foot,
Perhaps you should check your facts. They weren't scud running and he didn't dive down through a hole to 1500 feet.

The phenomena they experienced was sector white out, something not well known or understood at that time nor nowadays either judging by the comments of some posters on this forum.

[framer]

My apportioning would be

Regulator 10%
Company 35%
Crew 55%

there are always two camps in this discussion, and the notion that one is right and the other wrong is just not realistic.
People tend to argue that it is like this
Company 100%
Crew 0%
or Crew 100%
Company 0%

Things just aren't that simple.

[ratpoison]

Dream Land,

As usual, fu*kin idiots as yourself continue to run a muck according to your ego as 'supreme'.

Go and have a look at 'Flight to Erebus Part 6' on youtube and then after observing the ANZ management filth and scum of Capt C***by, still advise us all it was Capt Collins fault.

Do some research di**head, before posting! :ugh:

[FGD135]

prospector,

Thank you. How did Justice Mahon apportion the blame? I could look it up for myself, but I suspect you could probably quote his finding exactly.

framer,

Thank you. I was just about to ask you that question.

ratpoison, 27/09, Dream Land, hoggsnortrupert, bbg, reubee, ampan, could you please give your opinions as to the blame apportionment.

I am curious as to whether anybody here thinks that any one party is 100% to blame.

Thanks.

[DozyWannabe]

Really? the only record appertaining to descent was that a VMC descent was requested, as you are no doubt aware that makes the crew responsible for their own terrain and traffic clearance during the descent requested.

I know Gordon Vette in his book Impact Erebus states that his (Collins) transponder was coding, but I find it very difficult to understand how this could be ascertained by anyone who was not in the cockpit at the time.

You'd have to take that up with him, but requesting a VMC descent under radar guidance would be a very different kettle of fish from doing it without, and a whole different set of rules would apply, would it not?

One would think if they were indeed on the radar then their VHF and DME would also have been giving a reading.

From what? The NDB had been withdrawn the year before, and the TACAN would have served no purpose until the left turn south of Ross Island had been made - in fact you can hear them discussing dialling it in on the CVR.

The question of McMurdo Radar was very well covered by Judge Harold Greene's hearing in the US District Court in Washington who wrote in his ruling..."

The Americans had their own vested interest in the case, don't forget - the "small matter" of five minutes of radar records that were destroyed some time between the time of the accident and the inquiry.

Really? after requesting a VMC descent? naughty naughty.

Not really - the cloud was patchy until reaching the area of Ross Island/McMurdo - enough for a VMC letdown, and Beaufort Island is not that large from 16,000ft. Look at the track graph - the published letdown has them rejoining the track south of the island, and they'd have been looking ahead. Once under a certain altitude, the logical visual fixes were Cape Bird, Cape Bernacchi and Cape Royds - which they thought they saw (but in fact were looking at Cape Tennyson on the left and Cape Bird on the right).

Are you trying to say that McMurdo radar could see through Ross Island and Mt Erebus? That must have come from the Holmes account, from where else could it have come?? Not even Mahon came up with that proposition.

No - I think they were being tracked on radar at the start of the descent, and somewhere toward the end of the descent radar lost them, and they went out of radio range because Erebus was now in the way. The transponder may have continued coding for some time after then to re-establish contact, leading them to believe they were on radar until shortly before impact. The note of concern raised by the flight engineer and Collins related to the fact that they had lost radio contact and nothing more. I do not believe Chippindales assertion that they were in cloud.

Delete all reference in briefing dated 23/10/79. Note that the ONLY LET/DOWN procedure available is VMC below FL160 (16,000ft) to 6,000ft as follows.

1. Vis 20 km plus.
2. No snow shower in area.
3. Avoid Mt erebus area by operating in an arc from 120 Grid through 360 Grid to 270 Grid from McMurdo Field within 20nm of TACAN Ch29.
4. Descent to be coordinated with local radar control as they may have other traffic in the area.

And they had every reason to believe those boxes were ticked. Below 2,500ft Mac Central posted 40km visibility, no snow, they believed their INS track was headed into McMurdo Sound and they thought they were on radar.

This is the reason that I have a hard time finding the crew responsible in the legal sense - because of the presence of weather conditions on which they had never been briefed, they made the best possible decision they could with the information presented - that the information was erroneous because of such conditions at that particular time and in that particular place, there exists reasonable doubt that they could have known it was erroneous even if the nav track had not been altered, or if the track was down McMurdo and an INS error had misdirected them. They knew that the INS was accurate to more or less two miles on that route, so even if an INS error had taken them off-course they would still be over McMurdo Sound.

If this was a one-off flight planned with the military-like precision that Chippindale seems to have expected then I'd have more truck with his conclusions, but as it is, ANZ had been treating the flights as more-or-less routine and had infact been gradually removing more and more of the safeguards that were supposed to protect their flights.

In view of the mandatory descent requirements printed above, which were required to be complied with both by the company and CAA, and the lack of credence given these requirements by Mahon, I find that statement hard to digest.

As hard to digest as I find Chippindale's assertion that they were in cloud when that contradicts the contemporary weather report as well as the data later obtained by Vette.

Now - please don't be offended, but I want to ask you an honest question. How much of this do you really believe in your own heart, and how much of your vehemence is attached to a belief that to think otherwise is to automatically denigrate the work of Chippindale - a man who is no longer with us that you clearly respect?

I posted a few paragraphs in the AH&N thread on why I believe this to be a false dichotomy which I won't repeat here, but suffice it to say that I think that Chippindale honestly believed in what he was saying and I don't think he was intentionally out to deceive - I believe that this is why Mahon went out of his way to call him a model witness even though he clearly was not convinced by the conclusions he made. However I do believe that his employers at NZCA had a vested interest in an outcome of pilot error, because they had failed to update their regulations in accordance with ANZ starting to take on sightseeing flights - the regulations up until that point only really suitable for regular line flying (and the changes they did make were repeatedly flouted by ANZ over the two years between the start of the flights and the accident). I also believe that ANZ only presented the evidence to Chippindale that they wanted him to see (Ironically doing to Chippindale what the whiteout did to Collins) - going to some lengths (including B&E!) to conceal their own lowering of standards regarding Antarctic flights between 1977 and 1979. Chippindale himself admitted in 1987 that he believed ANZ pulled the wool over his eyes regarding how the Antarctic flights were operated, but at the same time said that did not alter his opinion.

Where I have a harder time explaining his actions relates to his editing of the CVR transcript, which in itself broke almost every known protocol relating to CVR handling in accident investigation, but in particular inviting Captain Gemmell - a known party with a vested interest in the conclusions of his report - to listen to the tapes with him. That, to my mind, was inexcusable - but I'm willing to accept that was down to naivete rather than malice.

Those that come down on Chippindale's "side" tend to have a belief that Captain Vette's research was largely to clear the name of his good friend Captain Collins, but he himself has never been that clear cut. What he said at the time of the Mahon report was actually that he believed that given the way ANZ were operating those flights at the time, presented with the same whiteout conditions and with the nav co-ordinates changed without their knowledge - any of ANZ's pilots, including him, would have ended up on the slopes of Erebus. That in itself is a pretty big admission to make, given that he was no slouch at navigation himself (having famously helped navigate a lost Cessna pilot some time previously).

For all my opinion is worth (which admittedly isn't much), if ANZ had not changed the co-ordinates and briefed the pilots correctly on whiteout, then I'd have been willing to accept some responsibility on the part of the crew. The corollary of that is that I believe that if whiteout had been briefed correctly and the co-ordinate change had been either notified or not made until after the Collins flight, the accident would never have happened.

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.

Furthermore, I believe that Prime Minister Muldoon deliberately engineered the political split and media manipulation that fostered an adversarial relationship between members of the NZ aviation community in an attempt at damage limitation on the reputation of his national carrier, which he knew would have been in considerable financial difficulty were it not for government subsidy.

@FGD135 :

The Mahon findings are right here:

http://www.erebus.co.nz/Portals/4/Documents/Reports/Mahon/Cause of Disaster.pdf

[prospector]

DozyWannabe.

" and how much of your vehemence is attached to a belief that to think otherwise is to automatically denigrate the work of Chippindale"

I hope my replies have not come across as vehement, my interest in this thread is to put forward my belief that Ron Chippendale's report was in fact correct

Lets just follw along on the points you bring up about the radar, that many people including holmes, have completely misinterpreted..

The transponder was interrogated and showed up as such for perhaps a minute or two. This was at the western most point of the first orbit, it was mentioned in the CVR as "Transpnder now responding" flollowed a minute or two later with "We've lost him again".

If you look at the track the flight took on the descent it is possible the radar may have got a return for a minute or two, it was certainly never identified, and certainly no radar controller would approve a descent if the flight was not identified. They requested and it was approved a VMC descent.

Now look at Ross Island and Mt Erebus, the position of the radar Tx and the position of the aeroplane during the descent. It is physically impossible for the radar, being line of sight, to ever pick them up again.

"As hard to digest as I find Chippindale's assertion that they were in cloud when that contradicts the contemporary weather report as well as the data later obtained by Vette."

Why was this unapproved descent commenced in the first place? because the weather conditions at McMurdo were below those required for the approved let down procedure, that had been practiced in the simulator prior to the flight.


"However I do believe that his employers at NZCA had a vested interest in an outcome of pilot error,"

Another of your beliefs that is erroneous.
From Maurice McGreal's publication. " The office was given administrative support from the Ministry of Transport but the Chief Inspector was independent and had no statutary responsiblity to the Civil Aviation Authority."
I do believe he reported directly to the Minister of Transport.


All this has been pounded to death many times on this site, as well as others, I would suggest you try and get hold of books, and reports penned by people who have many thousands of hours aviating behind them. All who disagree with Mahons findings.

A few I would recommend:
New Zealand Tragedies Aviation John King. Very good if you are interested in New Zealand aviation history,
A History of Civil Aviation in New Zealand Maurice M McGreal,
Chapter 20 Echoes of Erebus, has very good further references and reports.

[DozyWannabe]

I hope my replies have not come across as vehement, my interest in this thread is to put forward my belief that Ron Chippendale's report was in fact correct

And I hope my reply stating my belief that it was not was not construed in any way as disrespectful.

All this has been pounded to death many times on this site, as well as others, I would suggest you try and get hold of books, and reports penned by people who have many thousands of hours aviating behind them. All who disagree with Mahons findings.

I've read the relevant extracts from most of those as well as several taking the other side over the years, and in my experience opinion seems fairly evenly split. My opinion is based on the fact that Chippindale's interpretation of the CVR was incorrect (no "Bert" on the flight deck, mixing together of statements that are unidentified, some of which are clearly from outside the flight deck), his apparent willingess to allow ANZ to be privy to processes they had no right to be involved with and a belief that his interpretation of the regs was too severe, especially given that every single prior flight either broke or skimmed very close to the limits of those same regs. Add to that the fact that he went to his grave believing they were in cloud despite no supporting evidence and I can't take the conclusions he drew without a significant pinch of salt. But I don't blame him for it - he was "guided" towards a set of conclusions without being privy to contradictory evidence.

I'll always think there was something fishy about the radar situation. What you say is correct about the positioning, however, given that the crew (I believe including the F/Es) had every reason to think they were over McMurdo Sound, they had a minute or less to work out why the radio had gone dead and if the transponder had stopped coding, why it had done so. They were in clear air according to the weather reports, they had not been briefed on that particular whiteout scenario, and they started an escape maneouvre almost as soon as anyone first raised any serious concern. I can't see any reason to conclude that they did anything less than the best they could with the information they had at the time.

[prospector]

" and a belief that his interpretation of the regs was too severe, especially given that every single prior flight either broke or skimmed very close to the limits of those same regs. "

Once again your belief would appear to be erroneous. How can an interpretation of a written order be to severe?

'they had a minute or less to work out why the radio had gone dead'

The only radio contact, at any time was by HF, and that never went dead

From Captain Mayne Hawkins:
" I was in no doubt at the briefing yhat the lower limit was 6,000ft", he says" The weather on my flight was perfect, with clear skies and 100 miles of visibility. Ice tower asked me for a low run, but I kept to 6,000ft."

Here we have again the request from Ice tower for a low run. Does a request from the controller in Ice Tower overide a standing order from both the Company and Civil Aviation? I think not.

One would get the impression from Mahons report that this crew were in fact the owners of the aircraft and could do as they wished, Bob Thomson covers this aspect very well when he wrote that" these people were taking a Sunday drive"
That taken from History of New Zealand AntArctic Research Programme 1965-88

We get back to the fact that a perfectly serviceable aircraft with the most up to date nav equipment was flown in to Ross Island, not Mt Erebus, remember it was only 1480ft that the impact occured, and that after a climb was initiated. And it would appear that you believe, along with many others, that the crew was blameless??

[DozyWannabe]

I believe they made an error, but that the error was understandable given a root cause of lackadaisical planning, poor procedural practice by the nav section and failure to correctly train crews on the conditions they could expect.

Was Capt. Hawkins a management pilot perchance? Their claims that they stuck to the regs was in such lockstep that they might as well have set them to the tune of "I Got Rhythm". ANZ themselves had to keep up appearances and chastise pilots who gave evidence saying that the regs were broken despite the fact that prior to the crash, promotional material was released making it clear to the public that flights as low as 2,000ft were taking place as a matter of course.

A transmission from the tower (I believe something along the lines of we can let you down to 1,500ft on radar vectors) indeed *could* override the regulations in a purely legal sense, otherwise Mahon would not have been permitted to take his conclusions as far as he did.

Thomson's "Sunday Drive" statement was based on Chippindale and Gemmell's erroneous CVR transcript - there's no evidence that he had seen the original "Washington Transcript" version, and I suspect that if he had, he'd have drawn different conclusions. The most notable in this instance being Chippindale's insertion of question marks to "where are we", "right about here now". With question marks it sounds like they're lost. Without (as in the original, agreed transcript) it sounds like they're following their expected course on a map, which picks a gigantic hole in Chippindale/NZCA/ANZ's argument - and indeed Thomson's assertion in the same statement that they weren't tracking progres on a map, at least as far as I'm concerned. Another example is Chippindale and Gemmell having Peter Mulgrew saying "The Taylor or Wright now or do yah?", and the agreed Washington version has him saying "Taylor on the right now", a clear indication that even the guide thought they were over McMurdo Sound.

I don't think, given the time between the call for go-around power and impact that there was any time for the aircraft to climb significantly. Incidentally another error made in the original report involved synchronisation of the CVR and FDR, due to the FDR tape being stretched around the capstan. What the report cited as last-ditch evasive maneouvres were just as, if not more likely to be, the reactions of the flight controls to impact.

[27/09]

FGD 135
could you please give your opinions as to the blame apportionment.

I've never sat down to think about how blame should be apportioned, except to say that there are several parties that contributed to this very sad event. Some of whom it would appear went to great lengths to distance themselves from any blame.

Here are the main contributing factors in my view, not in any order of significance.

1. Last minute change of co-ordinates which were not advised to the crew.
2. Lack of knowledge about sector white out.
3. A crew that was going to the South Pole for the first time.
4. Previous trips that had openly operated in contravention of the agreed rules, thus setting a precedent.
5. The decision of the crew to descend when/where they did.
6. Substandard regulatory oversight.
7. No comment to the crew from McMurdo Radar regarding the 25 mile lateral displacement from previous flights.

If we then allocate responsibility for each of the these factors (some factors may have more importance than others) then we can start to apportion blame.

Air New Zealand has to take the blame for items 1,2,3, and 4. Regarding items 2 and 3 I see them as being responsible for the training of the crew and ensuring the operating crew are well prepared for the trip.

The crew have to take responsibility for item 5,

NZCAA item 6

McMurdo radar for not being as vigilant as you might expect for item 7

I'm not sure what level of significance you should place on each item but for now I figure it as follows.

AirNZ 60%
Crew 25%
CAA 10%
McMurdo 5%

[prospector]

" A transmission from the tower (I believe something along the lines of we can let you down to 1,500ft on radar vectors)"

Has it not been shown, and proven, that at no time were they in radar contact with McMurdo, please explain how this could be with a 13000ft mountain between them and the TX aerial, the only contact with McMurdo had been with the HF radio, not restricted to line of sight, and normally used for long range comms.

The tower was working VHF, at no time did they have VHF contact with the tower, once again there was a 1arge lump of land, Ross Island between them, and the same for the DME. If they were on the ball, and were where they believed themselves to be that alone should have sent warning bells to someone. No radar, no VHF, no DME, and only 40 odd miles from the station.


"Thomson's "Sunday Drive" statement was based on Chippindale and Gemmell's erroneous CVR transcript"\

RUBBISH. Use some more of the same statement
"The co pilot of Flt 901 never opened his flight bag to look up the co-ordinates. I always had a chart in the cockpit and checked the Lar and Long readout, but the crew of the fatal flight never refesrred to it" .

Where in that statement can you read into anything about erroneous CVR transcripts. And it also answers your previous question of how they could establish their position, with a great degree of accuracy, put the lat and long from the INS on the chart, befor descent was commenced..

But that still leaves unanswered why this "home design" descent was even contemplated. The quite specific descent requirements were formulated because the powers that be were aware of the lack of AntArctic experience of the Air NZ crews. The only answer would appear to be that, I say AGAIN, that the WX conditions at McMurdo were below that required for tha approved descent procedure, so they invented their own with the end result that we have all seen.
Perhaps the word they is inappropriate here, that infers the whole crew invented the let down procedure, The other first officer. Mr lucas was for some reason down the back and had no say in this, it would appear that Mr Cassin did not question the Captain's decisions at all.

[DozyWannabe]

Has it not been shown, and proven, that at no time were they in radar contact with McMurdo

No -and certainly not proven by Chippindale

please explain how this could be with a 13000ft mountain between them and the TX aerial, the only contact with McMurdo had been with the HF radio, not restricted to line of sight, and normally used for long range comms.

Who authorised the let-down then - Santa Claus?

The tower was working VHF, at no time did they have VHF contact with the tower, once again there was a 1arge lump of land, Ross Island between them, and the same for the DME. If they were on the ball, and were where they believed themselves to be that alone should have sent warning bells to someone. No radar, no VHF, no DME, and only 40 odd miles from the station.

Vette disagrees - he says the transponder was coding, the letdown was authorised and there was no NDB from which to get a DME until after the left turn aruond the island, having been decomissioned the previous year.


"The co pilot of Flt 901 never opened his flight bag to look up the co-ordinates. I always had a chart in the cockpit and checked the Lar and Long readout, but the crew of the fatal flight never refesrred to it" .

So how do you explain "Where are we... about up to here now." if they're not checking it against a map? We've already established that ANZ used the fact that Chippindale was not a qualified CVR transcriber to add lies to the transcript about being lost.

Where in that statement can you read into anything about erroneous CVR transcripts. And it also answers your previous question of how they could establish their position, with a great degree of accuracy, put the lat and long from the INS on the chart, befor descent was commenced..

Captain Collins, being the meticulous type, had done that the previous night - before it was changed without his knowledge. He was checking it off against a chart he had already drawn. Why else do you think that ANZ destroyed the evidence in his ringbinder and was prepared to break and enter into Collins' and Cassin's family homes in order to make sure everything that contradicted the lies they were telling Chippindale went through the shredder? Morrie Davis ordered those shredders fired up not after they came back from the ice, not when the Royal Commissions was announced, but *the day after the crash*. These are not the actions of a company interested in the truth, or in air safety.

But that still leaves unanswered why this "home design" descent was even contemplated.

It's not home design, it was a published procedure - that Chippindale allowed the press to assert that they were lost and going round in circles simply showed his inexperience.

The quite specific descent requirements were formulated because the powers that be were aware of the lack of AntArctic experience of the Air NZ crews.

Then why did they include in the regulations a stipulation that crews were allowed to descend as low as 500ft if invited to do so by Mac Central (who indeed invited Collins' crew down to 1,500ft)? This is a matter of record.

Perhaps the word they is inappropriate here, that infers the whole crew invented the let down procedure, The other first officer. Mr lucas was for some reason down the back and had no say in this, it would appear that Mr Cassin did not question the Captain's decisions at all.

There was no dissension at all, because the "crew loop" system was working. The only way ANZ, NZCA and Chippindale could claim that there was concern in the flight deck any more than a minute before impact was to falsify the CVR. Surely this has to cast doubt on their conclusions? As soon as F/E Brooks said "I don't like this", Collins started planning and initiating an escape procedure, but unfortunately they ran out of time.

Chippindale was a good pilot and an honest man, but he clearly was not prepared to deal with the level of corporate malfeasance that ANZ were willing to engage in to protect their public image.

[FGD135]

Mods: Please leave this in "DG&P Reporting Points" as it relates to the thread "Paul Holmes and Erebus" that is already there.


This essay is titled after the "oils ain't oils" advertising campaign that was used to promote a motor oil in Australia about 30 years ago. The punchline "oils ain't oils" was to convey the message that some oils were better than others.

The subject is "SOPs" - "standard operating procedures". How they are regarded by pilots and how they can be viewed very differently by the law.

Some SOPs are better than others. Some will be recognised by the law as lawful requirements, while others aren't worth the paper they are written on.

The latest Erebus thread has once again revived the debate over which parties were culpable. There are many people that believe the pilots were partly to blame and their argument rests entirely on the existence of an "SOP" which the flight crew did not observe.

That "SOP" specified minimum altitudes around Mt Erebus and set out some other rules governing descent. If the pilots that day had observed the directives given in that "SOP", the aircraft would not have struck terrain.

Those that believe the crew partly responsible cite this "SOP" as the smoking gun evidence.

But did these descent directives really constitute an SOP?

The Mahon Royal Commission found that they did not, and that therefore, there was "no unauthorised flying at any time". Justice Mahon went on to find that the pilots bore no blame whatsoever.

Every commercial pilot is familiar with SOPs. But when pilots say "SOPs", what they are actually referring to are directives that have been published somewhere (typically the "Operations Manual").

But do the underlying directives sometimes undermine the lawfulness of the SOP?

Definitely, and the result is that the directive does NOT constitute an SOP. In other words, this means that despite the direction/instruction being published somewhere - and giving all the appearances of an SOP, the law may not later regard it as legally binding.

These directives can be:

1. Wrong. For example, imagine this statement in the Ops Manual: "Prior to the first flight of the day, all oil tanks must be drained and sampled for the presence of water". This was a typo. The word "oil" was used where "fuel" should have been.

2. Out of date. Operational circumstances may have changed over time and to now observe the directive may be illegal or unsafe.

3. Ambiguous. The directive may be open to numerous different interpretations.

4. Dishonoured. The directive is mostly, or fully, ignored by the company. The check and line pilots know the directive is there, but it has become routine to ignore it.

5. Unreasonable. The directive is almost impossible to comply with. For example: "Before landing at an ALA, the pilot must ensure that it meets the obstacle clearance and gradient requirements of CAAP 92."

Some pilots have strange ideas about written directives. They automatically regard them as SOPs, and will happily parrot the view that "if you break one, you will find yourself in court having to defend yourself".

I have known pilots to express views related to SOPs that are just plain stupid. For example, if somebody was to say "if the manual says I must drain the oil tanks - and not the fuel tanks - then I would be breaking the law if I did not drain the oil tank".

To ascertain whether a particular directive amounts to a lawful SOP may require a court judgement. And this is exactly what happened in the case of Erebus.

The descent "SOP" that the pilots did not observe was judged by the Royal Commission to be NOT an SOP afterall.

This was because nobody at Air New Zealand or the CAA were observing, or had ever, observed it.

SOPs ain't SOPs!

[FGD135]

Yesterday, I was of the opinion that the blame should be apportioned 50/50 between the airline and the pilots.

Today, however, after having read Mahon's findings (thanks DozyWannabe) and read Macarthur Job's account of the accident (and his views on the Royal Commission) I now completely agree with Mahon.

The pilots were NOT at fault. They could not reasonably have been expected to do anything different to what they did. Air New Zealand and the CAA created the circumstances that made the crash inevitable.

That descent SOP - so often quoted here by prospector - was not really an SOP afterall. That was Mahon's view and it is mine too.

Sometimes, SOPs aren't really SOPs. Please refer to the post I have just written on this subject:

http://www.pprune.org/6840912-post100.html

[Sunfish]

I think you are confusing the concepts of an instruction and a recommendation.

An SOP is an instruction as to exactly what you will do in a particular set of circumstances which may be either normal or abnormal. If the SOP contains errors of fact then the SOPS must be corrected.

A recommendation is well, nothing.

Which SOP did you contravene?

[prospector]

DozyWannabe,


" no NDB from which to get a DME".

The NDB and DME are two entirely different systems. The DME is paired with the TACAN and uses VHF frequencies, the NDB can be either LF or MF, thst is why, depending on the power capacity it can be usedas a long range aid. VHF is only line of sight, can be picked up from up to 120 miles depending on aircraft altitude.

The rest of your statements are also nonsensical such as

" It's not home design, it was a published procedure "

I am not going to waste bandwidth replying to your statements, the only conclusion I can come to is that you have a very apt username.

[Tagron]

Prospector

I am having difficulty in agreeing with your interpretation of the briefing document which you are continually quoting and on which you appear to base your judgement.

The statement Note that the ONLY LET/DOWN procedure available is VMC below FL160 (16,000ft) is primarily a warning that no IFR procedure is available. The applicability of the described VMC procedure is to an arrival over the TACAN at 16000ft. And it says Available, not mandatory. I see nothing in that statement to prohibit an en route descent below MSA before reaching the TACAN if en route conditions are judged satisfactory.

If I choose to fly an en route VMC descent I do not need a “procedure”. I will descend subject to ATC clearance maintaining my own visual terrain clearance using whatever aids are available to assist in navigation. That is a well established practice. That is what I would have planned had I been in Jim Collins position.

And this same flight briefing document has nothing more to say about the radar at McMurdo, other than to imply it is useful for traffic deconfliction ? So here is a really useful aid which could provide an additional layer of safety in monitoring or assisting the descent, but this briefing document cannot provide any recommendation or requirement as to its use or otherwise. For a supposedly mandatory document that is quite remarkable.

I have not worked for Air New Zealand nor attended their Antarctic briefings and clearly I am not aware of their SOPs of the time. so if there is a wider context which I am missing I would be interested to hear that.. But as a standalone document I do not believe it carries the weight you attach to it. If the provisions really were intended to be mandatory I can only suggest the drafting was incompetent.

Finally you claim that the reported weather was below limits. As I read it (Mahon para 322 is the reference) the reported visibility at the time at McMurdo was in excess of 40 miles,essentially meaning unlimited, compared with the quoted minima of 20 kilometers. Yes there was “some” snow reported, but with such visibility surely one is entitled to assess its real effects would have been immaterial.

[prospector]

Tagron,

"The statement Note that the ONLY LET/DOWN procedure available is VMC below FL160 (16,000ft) is primarily a warning that no IFR procedure is available."

That mandatory requirement was to satisfy both the Company and CAA. All other operaters to the AntArctic, RNZAF, USN, USAF all had to have had a minimum exposure to AntArctic conditions prior to operating as P1 to the ice.

ANZ were given a dispensation to this requirement, but, only by complying with what would appear to be a very restrictive descent procedure. The 6,000ft minimum was imposed because it was known that above that height, and with all other parameters being complied with, whiteout, sector or otherwise, would not have presented a problem.

There were flights that did not comply with these requirements granted, but they had CAVU conditions, in which Erebus can be seen from 100 odd miles away, the fact that some pilots elected to descend lower at the request of controllers at McMurdo is understood, but should have been stopped.

This crew went down there with crappy weather conditions, they were advised that Ross Island was under a low overcast with a base of 2,000ft.

To even consider going down to an altitude to get below this cloud base, on your first trip to the area, in a DC10 that could not go below 265 kts beggars belief, especially when they had been advised that the alternative sight seeing area was clear of all cloud and unlimited visiblity. The pax had been prewarned that the flights were governed by Wx conditions and would no doubt been disappointed, not to see McMurdo, but they would have got home.

[framer]

Question for everyone but I´m particularly interested in hearing the answers that FGD and Tagron give.

In what situation, under what circumstances, would you, as Captain of an airliner weighing 150 tonnes, feel comfortable doing 250 knots, clean, straight and level, below 1500 feet?

Please give examples eg ¨at my home base, day VMC on a normal scheduled passenger flight¨etc etc

[FGD135]

In what situation, ... , feel comfortable doing 250 knots, clean, straight and level, below 1500 feet?


In daytime VMC with visibility > 20km.


An SOP is an instruction as to exactly what you will do ...

Sunfie, you naivete is most probably because you have not done commercial flying for any substantial period.

If you had, you would well know that the written directives underlying the SOPs are frequently flawed. So flawed in fact, that the question as to whether the "SOP" is truly an SOP cannot be resolved by mere pilots, but requires a court judgement.

This is what happened in the case of TE901. There was a set of descent instructions contained in a "briefing note". Those instructions are regarded as an SOP by those insisting that the pilots were partly responsible.

The Royal Commission, however, found that this "SOP" was not really an SOP afterall. Their reason was no. 4 on my list of reasons why SOPs sometimes aren't SOPs. Please see my post on the subject of SOPs (#100 in this thread).


If the SOP contains errors of fact then the SOPS must be corrected.

Sure. But in the real world, the flawed directives tend to remain in print for many years.

In a perfect world, every directive would be correct, unambiguous, reasonable, not out-of-date and respected.

The simple reality is that rather than 100% black and white, the directives that constitute SOPs frequently contain considerable grey.


.. in a DC10 that could not go below 265 kts beggars belief ..
prospector, yes this beggars belief, but it tells us that the crew had got themselves into a situation about which they had no awareness.

Was this the fault of the crew? Or was it ANZ and the CAA that put them there?

[prospector]

" but it tells us that the crew had got themselves into a situation about which they had no awareness."

With the most modern Nav equipment, a Lat and Long readout immediately available, a set of rules that were formulated to prevent just such an occurence as this for guidance, and many years experience in the front seats, and they got themselves into a situation of which they had no awareness????

If that then is the fault of CAA and the Company then the sooner the world develops passenger carrying UAV's the safer the pax will be.

[Pontous]

We have discussed the techical details of the accident. We still need learn what management will do to protect themselves. We are simply collaterial damage.

ANZ management did it then and also in 2001 with Ansett. Protected themselves.

[FGD135]

If that then is the fault of CAA and the Company then the sooner the world develops passenger carrying UAV's the safer the pax will be.

prospector, according to your logic, you could send a crew into ANY situation (provided they have lat/long, rules, many years experience, etc), but if they crash, it would not be your fault!

[compressor stall]

a Lat and Long readout immediately available

Not much good without a topo map with accurate lat long lines and useful graduations. And I wouldn't think that pages 184 and 185 of his Atlas counts....

Oh if only he'd been given http://usarc.usgs.gov/drgs/dir1/c77190s1.jpg and http://usarc.usgs.gov/drgs/dir1/c76191s1.jpg :(

[prospector]

Nice charts, but be a bit difficult to map read at 260kts and 1500ft.

[grusome]

Prospector, credibility zero. Try 200 ft and twice the speed for difficult map reading - and what was that you said about DME frequency?

[framer]

Ah come on Grusome keep it real. What has fast jet low level navs got to do with getting grandmothers and wives and childeren around in an airliner?
We are talking about an airliner. The only time I can imagine that it would be appropriate to be clean and straight and level in a heavy full of pax at 1500ft is if ATC gave you a hold down as you departed a busy airport but even then you probably wouldn't be clean and it would just be a neccessity due traffic.
I honestly can't think of one other scenario where it'd be wise to do it.
Can you?

[prospector]

grusome,

.
" and what was that you said about DME frequency? "




A US Air Force TACAN Antenna.
TACAN in general can be described as the military version of the VOR/DME system. It operates in the frequency band 960-1215 MHz. The bearing unit of TACAN is more accurate than a standard VOR since it makes use of a two frequency principle, with 15 Hz and 135 Hz components.

The distance measurement component of TACAN operates with the same specifications as civil DMEs. Therefore to reduce the number of required stations, TACAN stations are frequently co-located with VOR facilities. These co-located stations are known as VORTACs. This is a station composed of a VOR for civil bearing information and a TACAN for military bearing information and military/civil distance measuring information. The TACAN transponder performs the function of a DME without the need for a separate, co-located DME. Because the rotation of the antenna creates a large portion of the azimuth signal, if the antenna fails, the azimuth component is no longer available and the TACAN downgrades to a DME only mode.

[compressor stall]

That'd be this one - ZPG in the bottom left of the ND. However I can't tell you that it is exactly the same frequency after 30 odd years. Its position does change slightly every year though along with the runway :)
http://www.remoteadventures.com/webpics/efis.jpg

Also note the dates on my maps I linked to earlier. They predate the flight by sixteen years. Why weren't they given to the crew? I am sure than the crew would have drawn the tracks on the map and the most cursory cross check of lat/lon (note this is not map reading at 265 kts) on descent would likely have alerted them to the longitudinal displacement error.

And through my highlighting of this link in the chain, I don't mean to undermine or reduce in value the other errors made on all sides in this accident.

[DozyWannabe]

In this case I don't think there was a co-located VOR, just the TACAN. If they dialled it in. you'd get a DME, but no directional information. In any case it would have been no use to them until they rounded the south of Ross Island had they been on the course they were expecting to be on. McMurdo had an NDB at the ice runway, but it was officially withdrawn in 1978.

[prospector]

compressor stall,

The charts that you have indicated would appear to be better quality then the charts issued to the crew. One would have thought the Nav Dept would have been able to procure these charts, surely the US of A aircraft going down there would have had them. But the Lat and Long could still be established on the charts they were issued with, enough to show up the longtitude error between where they were and where they thought they were.

The map reading comment was a bit tongue in cheek.

[compressor stall]

I was always under the impression that Capt Collins' atlas was not terribly detailed - but I could be wrong. I can't recall seeing a copy of the relevant Antarctic pages anywhere; do they exist?

I'd be intrigued to know just how easy it would have been to read lat/long compared to a 1:250k map.

Mind you, in any case a pilot should not have been supplying his own maps from an atlas at home!

And as for plotting the position on IFR charts, the closeness of the longitudes there does take a bit of getting used to, especially for first timers (1 degree of longitude is about 12 nm at the northern end of Ross Is) A quick glance at my 1:3000000 McMudro map here at home shows that they were about two degrees of longitude out. It also has the longitude lines labelled every 5 degrees of longitude, but only at 75s and not on the bottom of the map. It takes a fair bit of work to accurately plot a position, and there are many ways to get it a bit wrong. Again, I don't know what chart they actually had, but again I'd be interested in seeing how easy it was to plot the position given the chart design.

[prospector]

Gordon Vette's publication "Impact Erebus" has copies of charts issued. They are of limited value being shrunk so much to fit the page, but the strip chart would be sufficient to detect the Longtitude error I would think.

Even on that miniscule scale there is 11mm between impact point and track they thought they were on.

[compressor stall]

Thanks, I'll have a look at it.

I've just had a quick look at the royal commission report, and it seems that he was issued with a large "topographic map" the morning of the flight. This, along with much other evidence, was (conveniently is the implication) never recovered....

It's not stated though, what area it covered. I'll hold fire now and do some rereading. :8

[DozyWannabe]

The check against the atlas at home was just that - a check to get the best idea of where he was going. The issue is that those co-ordinates were changed the night before they left, so all of Collins' crew thought they were on the McMurdo Sound track that had been discussed at the briefing with Captain Simpson (of the previous flight) and his crew.

The data sent to McMurdo by ANZ that morning was also incorrect - the co-ordinates for the waypoint simply substituted with the term "MCMURDO", so a second chance to catch the error was missed.

[prospector]

DozyWannabe,

The changed co-ordinates that Mahon thought so important are to my way of thinking irrelevant as to the cause of the accident.

The mandatory descent requirements stated that 16,000ft be maintained until overhead TACAN29, and then commence .the approved let down.

No where it would appear is there any approval for a VMC descent prior to reaching the TACAN.

Other flights apparently commenced descent earlier, but they had all been identified by radar and were in CAVOK weather conditions.

If one wishes to disregard the rules one must make sure your reasons are fireproof.

In this case they were not, the obvious proof is the end result.

[compressor stall]

and were in CAVOK weather conditions
Several aircraft have inadvertently been flown into the ground in Antarctica in CAVOK conditions....

SKC however is a different story. That's, as I am sure you are aware, one of the traps of whiteout and that until you have seen it for real is just so hard to imagine for most out of a textbook.

I once had an experienced met forecaster on her first ice deployment on board and brought her up to the flight deck to show her whiteout under a thin 6000 agl altostratus deck over the plateau. She was speechless.

End of digression....:cool:

[prospector]

You are correct, I should have used SKC, and that is no doubt why the descent requirements state that the only VMC descent procedure between 16,000ft and 6,000ft must be carried out in the specified area, for no other reason than to avoid Erebus.

It may also be worth remembering that the initial flights were limited to not below FL160. Even from that altitude people must have enjoyed the experience, the visiblity being so good many probably thought they were lower.

[FGD135]

The mandatory descent requirements stated that 16,000ft be maintained until overhead TACAN29, and then commence .the approved let down.


This descent directive looks and feels like an SOP, but Mahon found that this was not a requirement they were lawfully obliged to observe. And on the evidence, I fully agree with him.

Sometimes, what appear to be SOPs are not really SOPs. I wrote an essay (post #100) called "SOPs ain't SOPs".

Mahon's reason for why this one was not an SOP comes in at number 4 on my list. I listed 5 circumstances where SOPs could be later found by a court to be not SOPs afterall. There are probably a few more.

[prospector]

You may think that, and Mahon obviously thought that, and the result of not complying with a CAA requirement, and a Company SOP is perfectly obvious in this case.

" not a requirement they were lawfully obliged to observe'
At what time, and by whom, do you think this crew was advised there was no legal requirement to comply???? must have been prior to the descent below 16,000ft, who of the crew was legally qualified to state such a thing??

For a starter why would you say that the route MSA was established. You would agree that it was not a legal requirement??

This from John Kings publication:
"This was referred to in a Company Memorandum to AntArctic crews', OAA: 14/13/28 dated 9th November 1979 Headed MCMURDO NDB NOT AVAILABLE; it was succinct and unambiguous." and then the mandatory requirements as printed many times on this and other threads.

So many people think for some reason that the radar was the prime requirement for any descent, but read what the SOP stipulates.

4. Descent to be co-ordinated with local radar control as they may have OTHER TRAFFIC IN THE AREA.

How much more specific could these instructions be??? Note the only let down procedure available is VMC below 16,000ft to 6,000ft..


"where SOPs could be later found by a court to be not SOPs afterall"

That may well be so, but the SOP's are not written for a court, they would , I think, be normally written by company ops people, not lawyers. And the intent, as in this case, was perfectly obvious for Aviation experienced people. Obviously very murky for legal people.

[DozyWannabe]

and the result of not complying with a CAA requirement, and a Company SOP is perfectly obvious in this case.

Really? They'd been "getting away with it" for 2 years...

" not a requirement they were lawfully obliged to observe'
At what time, and by whom, do you think this crew was advised there was no legal requirement to comply???? must have been prior to the descent below 16,000ft, who of the crew was legally qualified to state such a thing??

The de facto status quo for the Antarctic flights was that you were allowed to descend below 6,000ft upon invitation from Mac Central. This turns out to have been the de jure case as well - the only reason there's any argument over this is because ANZ led an inexperienced (in terms of line operations) investigator around by the nose.

And the intent, as in this case, was perfectly obvious for Aviation experienced people.

Only Chippindale's mates and those with a vested interest in ANZ - the rest of the public sided with Mahon.

[prospector]

" The de facto status quo for the Antarctic flights was that you were allowed to descend below 6,000ft upon invitation from Mac Central. This turns out to have been the de jure case as well - the only reason there's any argument over this is because ANZ led an inexperienced (in terms of line operations) investigator around by the nose."

Yes, there was a precedent set by people who should have known better, but it still did not make it legal. Since when does an invitation by a radar operator overule a regulation set by CAA????

Ron Chippendales qualifications and experience have been documented many times, they were impeccable.

Mr Mahon had never had anything to do with anything aeronautical, and I could just as easily state, with a lot more veracity, that Mahon was led around by the nose by members of ALPA, some of whose members surely had a vested interest in Mahons findings ending up the way they did.

" the rest of the public sided with Mahon."

Did they? many who have a knowledge, and experience of things aeronautical certainly did not.

[DozyWannabe]

Yes, there was a precedent set by people who should have known better, but it still did not make it legal. Since when does an invitation by a radar operator overule a regulation set by CAA?

When the CAA effectively endorses it by not keeping the national airline under the close observation it warrants.

Ron Chippendales qualifications and experience have been documented many times, they were impeccable.

In aeronautical and military terms, certainly - in terms of understanding corporate politics and the tendency for civil operations to develop "grey areas" over time, he was little more than an ingenue.

Mr Mahon had never had anything to do with anything aeronautical, and I could just as easily state, with a lot more veracity, that Mahon was led around by the nose by members of ALPA, some of whose members surely had a vested interest in Mahons findings ending up the way they did.

Mahon knew that. He didn't just take NZALPA's submission as read - he states himself that he wasn't entirely convinced by the "false horizon" part of their theory and crucially, when he went to the Antarctic himself he asked the RAAF pilots of the Hercules that flew him out to demonstrate a whiteout effect in the same manner as he experienced with the NZALPA representatives - this time on a snow ridge rather than Erebus. Only when it was confirmed by a party with no interest in the outcome was he entirely convinced.

Did they? many who have a knowledge, and experience of things aeronautical certainly did not.

How many of them had a personal relationship with either Chippindale, Morrie Davis or Rob Muldoon?

[henry crun]

DozyWannabe: In relation to McMurdo radar you have used the term "invited to" a number of occasions.

It is not, to the best of my knowledge, a term that would be used by a controller, so can you please explain how it would be phrased, and what you understand that invitation to mean in respect of the authority it commands.

[chris lz]

I'm jumping into this discussion from another Erebus thread. In it, I was hoping to get feedback from pilots on two very basic questions that seem to get lost in the shuffle of technical points thrown back and forth. As an amateur aviation safety enthusiast, I'm wondering if there is general pilot consensus here:

1) that reliance on AINS (at the time) is/was not considered a fail safe alternative to ground-based instrument guidance, and therefore is not permitted as a substitue when in IMC?

2) A visual descent not only requires being VMC, but requires firmly establishing your position visually BEFORE dropping below MSA? (If this is so, how can anyone find the crew of 901 100% blameless?)

After reading countless debates on many forums on F901 I still am not sure I have the definitve answers to these questions.

Thanks

[framer]

This is just a circular argument thats been going on for years. At the end of the day, regardless of how many mistakes were made by people who work on the ground, regardless of how corrupt Air NZ were in covering up, regardless of how terrible the whole event was, regardless of what other pilots did on other days in other weather, prior to descending it's the Captains responsibility to ensure, by whatever means he/she thinks is neccessary, that they are not going to hit a hill. If thats by overheading the TACAN, great, if if it's by doing a radial/DME check, great, if it's by radar identification, great, plotting lat/longs on a map, great. But verifying position prior to descending below MSA was not done satisfactorily. That is a mistake by the crew that would have prevented the crash just as successfully as if the coordinate change mistake had not been made. The diference is that the Captain is soley responsible for keeping the aircraft in one piece all of the time, not just when flight planning make no mistakes, but all of the time.There is no moment in time when the flight planners are soley responsible for the aircrafts safety. As pilots we enjoy the respect of the position, the pay packet, and the responsibility when things are going nicely, we have to own that responsibility when things go wrong as well.
I fully acknowledge that this crew was set up to a large extent and that it was a very very tricky situation that would have caught many crews out, so although it may read like it, I'm not actually having a go at the crew. It just seems so short sighted when people put ALL of the blame on one party and refuse to acknowledge that the crew also made mistakes.
All of the parties involved made mistakes.

[chris lz]

prior to descending it's the Captains responsibility to ensure, by whatever means he/she thinks is neccessary, that they are not going to hit a hill.


I take it then that AINS alone isn't good enough? (Or is it, provided you've checked the actual inputs with a map?)

[compressor stall]

White Out vs Sector White Out

Yes, Sector White Out is the more widely accepted term. I'm prone (for the sake of brevity) to use the term "whiteout" with the knowledge that my colleagues are aware of the double entendre and that I'm meaning no ground definition but 100km visibility. Yes, not the best approach on this inter web thingy though. :}

I was recently told a great story about some of the guys exploring in the Southern PCMs back in the 50's mistaking a sleddog turd on a nearby snowdrift for a distant mountain range on a cloudy dat. It had them fooled for a while.

[framer]

I take it then that AINS alone isn't good enough? (Or is it, provided you've checked the actual inputs with a map?)

Normally you cross check with an independant system in order to ensure that you are in fact where your screens are telling you. Probably the most common method is to use a VOR and check which radial you are on and then check the distance from a DME, but you can use any method you like to satisfy yourself that you are where you think you are. If you don't have a DME you generally either have to get visual prior to going below MSA or overfly the station or be identified by radar.
I'm not familiar with Air NZ SOP's from that time (or now for that matter) , I'm not suggesting it was an SOP to do this check.It's just a way of ensuring that you are where you think you are prior to descending towards the earth.

[Chronic Snoozer]

What a fascinating thread. Having known of the Erebus accident, this thread prompting me to research it further. One cannot help but put yourself in the same situation and think what you (as Captain) would or could have done differently to prevent the outcome. The Impact Erebus program talks about 'Sets' and clearly from a psychological standpoint I think there is trememdous merit in Vette's discussion of mindset and expectancy. These 'sets' can invariably lead to a loss of situational awareness because data which contradicts the 'set' is either disregarded or deemed invalid. Worse, poor data ie weather conditions, is accepted because it fits what you expect.

To simply point to pilot error would ignore the specific circumstances and deny everyone the opportunity to learn the full extent of the causes. I suggest that the thread has descended somewhat into a tit for tat on certain points. I see no reason why both investigators' reports should not be able to coexist without one's merit having to be challenged over the other. Good has come from both viewpoints. Nor is it necessary to denigrate the characters, it seems both carried out their duties, not faultlessly, but with honest intent.

Ultimately I can agree with the assessment of pilot error, however not in isolation. Similarly, absolution of the crew is a laudable goal but not one that I understand Vette was pursuing. The nub of his quest was mentioned earlier "I realised that if Jim Collins, a Captain I had known for 20-odd years, [and] an exceptional pilot in all respects, could be a victim of this terrible crash then so could I, and so could any of the rest of us". However as is human want, blame must be apportioned, but it is not the purpose of investigations. I like to think that of the slices of Swiss cheese which formed the barriers preventing this accident, those responsible for each barrier were holding a slice of cheese with differing sized holes.

In what situation, under what circumstances, would you, as Captain of an airliner weighing 150 tonnes, feel comfortable doing 250 knots, clean, straight and level, below 1500 feet?


I guess the answer would be if you worked for ANZ doing pre-planned Antarctic scenic flights. Part of the 'set', its been done before, this is normal, this is how you do it.

It is a very good question particularly in view of comments on the CVR such as Doesn't sound very promising, does it? and Actually, these conditions don't look very good at all, do they? Didn't sound all that 'comfortable' did it?

Where's Erebus in relation to us a the moment? Left, about 20 or 25 miles. That is chilling. The factors that put an aircraft and its crew in such 'situational unawareness' are factors I want to know about and learn from.

[DozyWannabe]

Actually, these conditions don't look very good at all, do they?

There's a significant amount of evidence that they were referring to the conditions ahead that they would soon be in as opposed to the conditions they were in at the time. As i said before, Collins started planning an escape maneouvre the second F/E Brooks said "I don't like this".

My guess is that they weren't attempting to escape high ground as much as get out of the conditions that were affecting their perception.

Framer, the only checks they had at the time were visual, and it's just a tragic coincidence that they happened to be at the one spot in the sky where it was possible to mistake the set of features defining Lewis Bay for those defining McMurdo Sound.

[27/09]

Silberfuchs

Thank you for your post on on sector whiteout and the conditions present prior to the crash.

While there is no doubt some blame must rest with the crew I think one or two on here find it hard to accept how this crew were trapped by circumstances, some they didn't know about and some they didn't understand, and cannot be solely blamed for the crash.

Right until a minute or two before they crashed they thought they were in clear air with good visibility tracking over an area 25 miles to the west of where they actually were, an area devoid of high terrain.

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?

[DozyWannabe]

While there is no doubt some blame must rest with the crew...

I doubt it wholeheartedly.

Could they have done more? Possibly - but they did everything it was in their power to do and in complete accordance with how the flights were managed and regulated. Would they have done more, or done things differently if the information was presented properly and completely as opposed to systematically withheld from them? Almost certainly.

By "systematically withheld", I mean the following. If Collins knew that he would be entirely reliant on INS, visual fixes and US Navy controllers and had been informed :


That the nav computer co-ordinates were changed overnight,
that conditions existed whereby it would be possible for Erebus to be lost in whiteout - even in clear air, and
that the US military flights did not consider those controllers reliable


then there's no way he'd have made the descent under those conditions.

This was a company for which a lot was at stake and one which was not in the rudest of health - companies in that situation tend to cut corners. As such, ANZ shaved the safety margins year on year, but didn't bother telling their line crews they were doing so, after all - had the crews known that barely 2 years prior there were SOPs that stated 2 Captains were to be carried and that no-one was allowed to command an Antarctic flight without first taking on a familiarisation flight - both of which had been quietly dropped, then you might have found some crews unwilling to go.

Qantas were about to start their own Antarctic flights with larger and longer-ranged aircraft (747s), which would almost certainly have put a dent in ANZ's profits - Mahon notes this, but it doesn't get brought up very often.

For their part, NZCA never said "Hang on a minute, we authorised these flights based on your assurance that you would stick to these conditions - you're now degrading those conditions, so we should take another look at it".

[FGD135]

While there is no doubt some blame must rest with the crew ...

There is considerable doubt. I believe the crew deserve NO blame at all.

They were lured into a very carefully laid trap. Very few pilots, myself included, would not have fallen for it.

Can any pilot here say that this accident would not have happened had they been the captain that day?

If somebody comes forward and says "yes - it would not have happened to me because I would have been observing that descent SOP" then I will inform you that you are deluded.


... prior to descending it's the Captains responsibility to ensure, by whatever means he/she thinks is neccessary, that they are not going to hit a hill.
Ok, framer, just how do you go about making an instrument approach? You do it by placing trust in people that have designed and drawn up the procedure.

This is the whole point that Mahon was making.

If, for several years, your fellow pilots make successful RNAV approaches into a place, then after a datacard update that accidentally shifted the waypoints, you attempted the approach but crashed into a hill, would that be your fault?

[framer]

Ok, framer, just how do you go about making an instrument approach? You do it by placing trust in people that have designed and drawn up the procedure.



Yes you do FGD. Good point.There is a certain amount of trust required to operate. You also do it with a lot of checking and cross checking and a healthy amount of distrust. eg do you just assume that the glidepath is accurate or do you use your altimeter to cross check and confirm it is by referenceing to a DME when you commence the approach? That cross check isn't part of the proceedure, it is an SOP or a personal habit designed to identify any holes in the cheese or loss of S.A.
Although I was talking about confirming position prior to descending through MSA the concept is similar. Do you assume that the RNAV system is faultless and that flight planing and your crew and you yourself have made no errors? Or do you relentlessly cross check, confirm and verify things? It is a constant part of the job, we are always doing this.

Framer, the only checks they had at the time were visual
I don't think that is true.
Prior to leaving 16,000ft they needed to verify their position.
If they had plotted the lat/longs onto a map it would have highlighted the anomaly.
If they had remained at MSA until a radial DME check confirmed their position it would have highlighted the anomaly.
If they had remained at MSA until visually past Erebus it would have highlighted the anomaly.
If they had remained at MSA until overhead the station their position would have been verified.
I imagine you'l respond to this by saying that they couldn't get the DME or a radial, my response to that is that is even more reson to remain at MSA, it casts doubt as to why things aren't as expected.
When I argue this point it always sounds as though I'm saying I would have done better. I'm not. I don't know how I would have gone in the same situation. I'm using the luxury of hindsite and reports and also have the decades of learning the industry has gone through to help me. I'm lucky enough to be able to learn from the mistakes this crew made.
By saying they never made a mistake we are running the risk of missing out on some very important lessons.

[DozyWannabe]

Although I was talking about confirming position prior to descending through MSA the concept is similar. Do you assume that the RNAV system is faultless and that flight planing and your crew and you yourself have made no errors? Or do you relentlessly cross check, confirm and verify things? It is a constant part of the job, we are always doing this.

As did Collins and his crew to a reasonable level. The problem in their case was that they were not given all the information that should have been required.


I don't think that is true.

The NDB at McMurdo had been withdrawn and was to all intents and purposes unusable. The TACAN could give them a DME, but it's position south of Ross Island meant they couldn't rely on it until south of the volcanoes. What was there other than visual fixes and radar letdowns?

If they had plotted the lat/longs onto a map it would have highlighted the anomaly.

They did plot the lats/longs on a map, but did it the previous night - based on the co-ordinates they were given in their briefing. They were not told that it had changed the following morning and as such had no reason to believe that the work they had done was invalid.


If they had remained at MSA until a radial DME check confirmed their position it would have highlighted the anomaly.

Radial DME check from what? The TACAN was of no use until they were south or Ross Island if, as they believed, they were following the McMurdo Sound track.

If they had remained at MSA until visually past Erebus it would have highlighted the anomaly.

And risked getting complaints from passengers that they couldn't see anything. Again, even at 16,000ft they couldn't really see Erebus because of the overcast - the whole point of the let-down was because between sea level and 2,500ft the air was clear.

If they had remained at MSA until overhead the station their position would have been verified.

The track they were expecting to fly never went overhead the station, that was the whole point - no-one noticed this until Captain Simpson reported the anomaly.

I imagine you'l respond to this by saying that they couldn't get the DME or a radial, my response to that is that is even more reson to remain at MSA, it casts doubt as to why things aren't as expected.

They weren't expecting to get it until they had passed south of Erebus and Ross Island - again, that's the point. There were no other navaids in the area to help them and they had been told that they could rely on the AINS and Mac Central radar to keep them out of trouble until they passed south of the island.

By saying they never made a mistake we are running the risk of missing out on some very important lessons.

No-one's saying they never made a mistake - simply that the mistake was entirely understandable given the information they had, or more importantly the information they didn't have - and that *if* they had been told the nav track had been changed, *if* they had been properly trained on sector whiteout, and *if* they had known to take radar letdowns with a pinch of salt then the accident would not have happened.

[prospector]

DozyWannabe,

" Only Chippindale's mates and those with a vested interest in ANZ - the rest of the public sided with Mahon."
That is a quite ridiculous statement. As this and other threads on the subject have shown, many people, pilots and others, share the view that there were errors made by everyone involved. and the reason this thread has been resurrected is the stupid claim by Paul Holmes that an apology to the family of Collins is due from the NZ Parliament because the crew were blameless

Following from Capt Dereck Ellis appeared in the British Airline Pilots magazine "The Log"

From John Kings publication "NZ Tragedies."

Ellis was at the time a British Airways Captain, flying Concordes, later flying 747's for Singapore Airways.

"Before reading Impact Erebus my knowledge of the event led me to gratefully and happily accept the view of the Hon P.T. Mahon as stated in the findings of the Royal Commission of Enquiry-" In my opinion, neither Capt Collins nor First Officer Cassin, nor the Flight Engineers made any error which contributed to the cause of the disaster, and were not responsible for its occurrence.

The effect of reading Gordon Vette's book, which is dedicated to supporting the views of the Commissioner, has been in fact to convince me that the findings of the New Zealand Office of the Air Accidents Investigation are infinitely more realistic".

There are many other publications along the same lines by very experienced aviators, but as you stated earlier you have read them all.

But it would appear you and others do not really understand what the Captains responsibilities were after requesting a VMC descent. At no time was Mt Erebus ever sighted, that alone should have rung very loud warning bells before descent below MSA.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"that conditions existed whereby it would be possible for Erebus to be lost in whiteout - even in clear air, and "

That is a complete figment of your imagination, the whole of Ross Island was covered in cloud with a reported base, just before descent began, of 2,000ft.

"They did plot the lats/longs on a map, but did it the previous night - based on the co-ordinates they were given in their briefing. "

You completely miss the point, if there was any doubt about their position, and there was considerable doubt, as Peter Mulgrew stated just prior to impact 4 minutes I believe it was, that when he had any idea of their position he would let the pax know, this was announced from the cockpit.
The Lat and Long should have been checked before descent below 16,000ft. The readout was just above their heads.
One thing that has not been mentioned in this thread is where was First Officer Lucas during this critical phase of the flight. We have been told there was up to eight people in the cockpit during this time, may be there was no room left in there for him???

From a different thread on the same subject that may or not be true but from people who knew the man say it was the response they would expect.

" did see a hand written transcript of the voice recorder that commenced with "You are wrong, stick it up your arse." Bang door slammed( ostensibly from Lucas). thence the rest of the 30 minutes of tape recording."

[DozyWannabe]

That is a quite ridiculous statement. As this and other threads on the subject have shown, many people, pilots and others, share the view that there were errors made by everyone involved.

No-one is doubting that errors were made by the crew. Where Mahon's findings were distinct from those of Chippindale related solely to findings of responsibility, specifically that to hold a crew that had not been made aware of the change in the INS co-ordinates, the alleged shortcomings of the Mac Central radar operators or the insidious effect of sector whiteout responsible for an accident in which all of these played a part was not fair.

and the reason this thread has been resurrected is the stupid claim by Paul Holmes that an apology to the family of Collins is due from the NZ Parliament because the crew were blameless

It's not a stupid claim at all, whatever you may think of the man. If a crew is told to expect to be placed in a given situation and that situation is changed without their knowledge, and with limited facilities to work that change out for themselves, then it is ludicrous on the face of it to hold that crew responsible for any problems that occur - this isn't an aviation-specific thing, it's just common sense.


"The effect of reading Gordon Vette's book, which is dedicated to supporting the views of the Commissioner, has been in fact to convince me that the findings of the New Zealand Office of the Air Accidents Investigation are infinitely more realistic"

Now this is something I haven't seen, and I would like to. However there is at least one error in the statement he makes. Firstly, it was Vette's research that set Mahon on the track of research he took - not the other way around. Not having read the article, I find it hard to see how he could come to that conclusion. The NZCA report said that Collins' crew were in cloud, when Impact Erebus has more than enough proof that they were not. It also takes as read that the briefed track always went over Erebus, when it did not (and Morrie Davis went to considerable lengths to shred any evidence to the contrary, including permitting B&E at the family homes of both Collins and Cassin). He may have come to the conclusion that there should have been more checks performed on the flight itself, but I for one do not see how that was possible - they were not informed that anything had changed, the ground aids were severely limited and they had been briefed that a let-down from the Mac Central tower was valid to altitudes as low as 500ft.

Was Ellis aware that Chippindale had falsified the CVR?

There are many other publications along the same lines by very experienced aviators, but as you stated earlier you have read them all.

I never said I had "read them all", I said that I had read most of the relevant excerpts over the years, and while I understand where they are coming from, it does not alter my opinion.

Not all "experienced aviators" are right - just look at Capt. Van Zanten. If this flight was briefed as one requiring all the aviation know-how that the crews had, then I'm sure the argument would stand, but it was not. As I said before, ANZ had been shaving the safety margins away year-on-year and informing neither their crews nor the NZCA that they were doing so. The flights were briefed such that a combination of AINS, visual fixes and supervision from Mac Central were enough to ensure safe passage and that is exactly what Collins and his crew did.

But it would appear you and others do not really understand what the Captains responsibilities were after requesting a VMC descent. At no time was Mt Erebus ever sighted, that alone should have rung very loud warning bells before descent below MSA.

Oh, b*gger "Captain's responsibilities". If this were a military or one-off civil flight in which every potential "gotcha" had been briefed, or if Collins had been briefed at all to expect to have to improvise in a navigational sense, then maybe that argument would hold water. But it wasn't and neither was he. To all intents and purposes this was treated as a regular scheduled flight with the only operational difference from the norm being the manual keying of the AINS co-ordinates, which with tragic irony was performed perfectly. Collins and his crew had all been given briefing materials that showed a track down McMurdo Sound, with an NZCA dispensation to descend to altitudes as low as 500ft if invited to do so by Mac Central control tower. They had not been briefed on the phenomenon of sector whiteout, which was a regular occurrence in the area they were flying to and they were not informed via what should have been a compulsory NOTAM that their track had been changed overnight. Every preceding flight since the AINS track was adopted had been let down to between at least 2,000ft in order to satisfy the advertised purpose of the flight, which was sightseeing. Visual letdown with radar confirmation was all they had to go on since the withdrawal of the McMurdo NDB, and the crew followed their briefing to the letter.

That is a complete figment of your imagination, the whole of Ross Island was covered in cloud with a reported base, just before descent began, of 2,000ft.

My docs have it as 2,500-3,000ft, but it is immaterial as the letdown was performed north of Ross Island, where the cloud was broken and it was possible to discern landmarks below, as proven by the recovered still photographs and film from the unfortunate passengers. Even if the base was 2,000ft it would still shoot down Chippindale's assertion that they were in cloud at 1,500ft.

[prospector]

" No-one is doubting that errors were made by the crew" You said


"Originally Posted by 27/09
While there is no doubt some blame must rest with the crew...

"I doubt it wholeheartedly" You said..

"No-one's saying they never made a mistake" You said.

" and it was possible to discern landmarks below"

And they discerned them wrongly, is that not a mistake? Beaufort Is shows up quite clearly in some of the photo's, not twigging they were on the wrong side of it, is that not a mistake??

I am not implying they were negligent, and the cards were stacked against them, but they could have broken that chain of errors by confirming their position before descent below MSA, As has been written many times in this thread there were a number of ways this could have been achieved.

That is what this whole thread has been about, whether the crew were blameless as claimed by Mahon, Vette, and now Holmes.

You agree some errors, and mistakes were made by the crew but they are blameless???

That would be a nice world to live in where one is not responsible for one's mistakes or errors.

[FGD135]

eg do you just assume that the glidepath is accurate or do you use your altimeter to cross check and confirm it is by referenceing to a DME when you commence the approach?
In Australia that check is a required part of the procedure - and every ILS procedure has a means for facilitating that check.


Do you assume that the RNAV system is faultless and that flight planing and your crew and you yourself have made no errors?
They had crosschecked the accuaracy of the AINS visually at Cape Hallett (about 45 mins before the accident), but there is only so far you can *reasonably* go to check errors that have made by others.


If they had plotted the lat/longs onto a map it would have highlighted the anomaly.

This is nothing like something that could reasonably be expected of the pilots. At which stage of proceedings should they have done this?


If they had remained at MSA until ...

Is that what you would have done?

They had been informed that the cloud base was 2,000' with visibility below the base >20km. While still north of Ross Island and in VMC, they had the opportunity to descend to below the cloud base, and they took that opportunity.

prospector,
I appreciate your thoughts and contributions to this and the earlier Erebus threads. To make your posts more readable when quoting others, could you please show the quoted section the way posters normally do.

To do that: "select" all the text that you are quoting (click at the start of the text, then drag the mouse pointer down to just past the end of the text). Then press the little button above (near the "YouTube" button) that looks like a speech bubble. Please PM me if you need further assistance. Thanks.

[framer]

Dozy it looks like we'l just have to agree to disagree. Some things look white to you and appear black to me. I guess thats an indication of how many grey areas there are in this episode.

you said The TACAN could give them a DME, but it's position south of Ross Island meant they couldn't rely on it until south of the volcanoes.

then wait until you're south of the volcanoes or radar identified or can clearly see the terrain.

They did plot the lats/longs on a map, but did it the previous night
That doesn't cut it. Seriously.

And risked getting complaints from passengers that they couldn't see anything.
Yes.
No-one's saying they never made a mistake - simply that the mistake was entirely understandable given the information they had, or more importantly the information they didn't have
I agree that the mistakes are understandable. Most mistakes are. That doesn't mean that we can't defend against them.

[prospector]

FGD135,
Thanks, was wondering how that was done , certainly makes replies easier to read. (Even if I had to read your PS with a magnifying glass

[framer]

Is that what you would have done?


I honestly can't say FGD.
I have had completely different training in completely different times from that crew, flying different equipment.
What I can say is that if I am flying an aircraft without ANP alerting and GPS input to the FMS I confirm position prior to descending below MSA. Normally this is done using a VOR and a DME, sometimes by being radar identified, and rarely by overheading a station.Maybe I do that because of lessons learnt back then and if I was there I would have done the exact same thing as they did. Unless you were a Captain back then (I wasn't)I don't think you can say what you would have done.Times have changed.

[chris lz]

If I may chime in hear again, homing in on general prinicples of fail-safe flying:

if you asked most commercial pilots both today and in 1979, would there be/have been a consensus that a visual descent below MSA must ALWAYS be preceded by something more "positive" than the unquestioned assumption your (actual !!) AINS flight plan, unaccompanied by any additional crosschecks or corroboration, could not possibly be fallible? The "Vette" position would appear to say no, not always. Isn't this essentially what the debate reduces to?

[chris lz]

Hi Dozy,


If a crew is told to expect to be placed in a given situation and that situation is changed without their knowledge, and with limited facilities to work that change out for themselves,


But doesn't this cut to the heart of the issue though? Doesn't this show that AINS is much more subject to error than a ground aid, which (I presume) is not being programmed and re-programmed every day, thus not as prone to slips of the finger? ( I am not a pilot, so please correct me.)

Also, how difficult would it have been for the crew to check the coordinates of the end point to McMurdo? They had what, 4 hours after take off to do this? That wouldn't have required more than a check of a few waypoints on the final leg of the inbound route. (Again, this is all with hind sight of course, and the context of some really bad luck coincidences. This is not an attempt to villify Collins.)

[Dream Land]

The "Vette" position would appear to say no, not always. Isn't this essentially what the debate reduces to? I agree, and I feel the company had little responsibility due to the fact that the INS coordinate was changed. This tour was to be conducted in VFR conditions, specifically mentioned in the brief to be above 160, the responsibility lies with the decision to drop through 160. Leave the tours to tour pilots!

Flame suit on

[grusome]

Prospector,
Thanks for the lecture - I used to install and flight check the things. And what was that you said about the DME frequency?

[DozyWannabe]

if there was any doubt about their position, and there was considerable doubt, as Peter Mulgrew stated just prior to impact 4 minutes I believe it was

He then said "Taylor on the right now" after they came out from beneath the cloud, indicating he firmly believed they were over McMurdo Sound.

" did see a hand written transcript of the voice recorder that commenced with "You are wrong, stick it up your arse." Bang door slammed( ostensibly from Lucas). thence the rest of the 30 minutes of tape recording."

Presumably that would be Chippindale's notes - though I find the provenance to be highly dubious and I've never seen it in 20 years reading about it, but we already know he falsified the agreed CVR transcript with assistance from ANZ's Chief Pilot Gemmell.

As a result of this, even if it was on the tape and his transcription is correct (which requires a considerable pinch of salt in the first place), shorn of context it is completely useless. It could be about anything, not necessarily to do with the flight. Even if all these things are satisfied it does not gel with the otherwise good CRM ("crew loop" in those days) on the rest of the tape.

(Re: checking against the map the previous night)

That doesn't cut it. Seriously.

Really? Given that the whole basis of the NZCA's argument was that the pilots left themselves ill-prepared, I'd say it demonstrates that they went to considerable lengths to have all their ducks in a row. How many pilots of late '70s vintage would have checked the printout they received in the morning against the one they received at the briefing if they had no idea that a change had been made?

I agree that the mistakes are understandable. Most mistakes are. That doesn't mean that we can't defend against them.

Defend against them yes - to do so by falsifying evidence to make the crew seem more responsible for the mistake than they were is completely out of line.

Doesn't this show that AINS is much more subject to error than a ground aid, which (I presume) is not being programmed and re-programmed every day, thus not as prone to slips of the finger? ( I am not a pilot, so please correct me.)

The AINS is not normally subject to significant error (I think 2 miles was the max on a trip of that length), neither were any tracks being "programmed and reprogrammed every day". Hewitt's "mistake" was in the computer for practically a year before anything changed!

Also, how difficult would it have been for the crew to check the coordinates of the end point to McMurdo? They had what, 4 hours after take off to do this?

Why do this if you're not aware of any change, nor are you expecting any to be made?

[prospector]

Grusome,
See post 115 this thread for DME associated with TACAN,

Can only surmise you a referring to the AWA 200 Mhz DME, this was only used in Australia and New Zealand to the best of my knowledge.

[framer]

Really? Given that the whole basis of the NZCA's argument was that the pilots left themselves ill-prepared
Dozy checking a map at home the night before is fine, nothing wrong with it, but it is not the same thing, and it in no way replaces or changes the actions required during the flight.It seriously doesn't cut it and is not an argument that many profesionals pilots would accept. To many things change between the night before and when you go flying. (Maybe that is one of the lessons we have learnt?)
I'd say it demonstrates that they went to considerable lengths to have all their ducks in a row.
I agree with that. I imagine that their efforts and intentions were spot on. No argument from me there. It still doesn't change the fact that when the MSA is FL160, and there are mountains around you, you should not leave the safety of MSA until you can verify your position. There was uncertainty as to what they were seeing, there was no explanation as to why they were having trouble with VHF comms, they were low level high speed in an unfamiliar area. Mahon said time and time again that there was no signs of alarm on the flight deck. I suggest that he doesn't understand the subtilties of flight deck communication and things were becoming progressively less comfortable for the crew by the second. Questions like "where is Erebus now?" are asked for a reason.

Defend against them yes - to do so by falsifying evidence to make the crew seem more responsible for the mistake than they were is completely out of line.


You lose focus here, i didn't mention anything about behaviour subsequent to the crash (I won't call it an accident), we're not arguing about whether Air NZ behaved poorly after the event, I agree they did behave poorly. I'm talking about identifying the mistakes the crew made and learning from them. ie what can we do different today?
eg, verifying position before descending below MSA, and creating a culture within our airlines where we don't breach SOP's, if the SOP's are too restrictive then management can change them.

[prospector]

And another one of the holes in this Swiss cheese that has not been discussed is the fact that ANZ could well have only used two senior, or management pilots for these flights. They then would have accumulated some experience in AntArctic conditions.

But, it is a known fact that ALPA put pressure on the Company to share these flights around the senior captains. This in itself sounds a fairly innocuous thing to do, but surely shows up why all the other operators going to the ice required a minimum of three trips as an observer or first officer before going down as P1

Dozywannabe,
The CVR tapes were obviously not easy to interpret. One of the reasons being that there were up to eight different voices recorded. What were all these people doing in the cockpit at this critical time??

The remark attributed to First Officer Lucas, was to those who knew him, just the way he would react if he did not agree with something, in this case the descent procedure.

Your insistance that Ron Chippendale and Capt Gemmel were involved in some sort of conspiracy is ridiculous. The one third to CAA and 2 thirds of the cost to ANZ of the enquiry, that Mahon awarded to be paid to the estates of Collins and Cassin, and some of that to cover the costs of NZALPA, and the $150,000 fine to ANZ, were thrown out by the Appeal Court, and upheld by the Privy Council because as they stated there was no evidence of , or as they stated "No clear proof " of any plan of deception.

[DozyWannabe]

...it in no way replaces or changes the actions required during the flight.

What actions? The CVR indicates they were checking progress off against a map and/or Collins' notes from the previous night.

To many things change between the night before and when you go flying.

Changes were not that frequent, as I said before - and any changes should have been NOTAMed on the printout given to Collins that morning. They were not.

It still doesn't change the fact that when the MSA is FL160, and there are mountains around you, you should not leave the safety of MSA until you can verify your position.

They verified their position to the best of their ability with the materials they had to hand.

There was uncertainty as to what they were seeing

Not once they were out under the clouds.

there was no explanation as to why they were having trouble with VHF comms, they were low level high speed in an unfamiliar area.

Not that high speed, and the loss of communication only happened in the last minute or so. In fact it can be argued that the loss of comms was the trigger that convinced the crew to abandon the low-level part of the flight, unfortunately they were a few seconds too late.

Mahon said time and time again that there was no signs of alarm on the flight deck. I suggest that he doesn't understand the subtilties of flight deck communication and things were becoming progressively less comfortable for the crew by the second. Questions like "where is Erebus now?" are asked for a reason.

I think you underestimate the late Justice. He didn't do all the work himself based on his knowledge alone, he went to Washington D.C. to visit the NTSB and the AAIB at Farnborough to canvas their opinions. "Where is Erebus now" was immediately followed by an emphatic assertion that it was to their left.

verifying position before descending below MSA, and creating a culture within our airlines where we don't breach SOP's, if the SOP's are too restrictive then management can change them.

As I said, they verified their position as best they could and they did *not* breach SOPs, because they had a dispensation to descend as low as 500ft if invited to do so by Mac Central under radar guidance.

And another one of the holes in this Swiss cheese that has not been discussed is the fact that ANZ could well have only used two senior, or management pilots for these flights. They then would have accumulated some experience in AntArctic conditions.

The management pilots were certainly fast learners - they managed to master breaking and entering with considerable aplomb.

But, it is a known fact that ALPA put pressure on the Company to share these flights around the senior captains. This in itself sounds a fairly innocuous thing to do, but surely shows up why all the other operators going to the ice required a minimum of three trips as an observer or first officer before going down as P1

Or they could have been doing it to save money. Nothing stopping them from sending senior non-management captains down with experienced F/Os or F/Es now, is there?

What were all these people doing in the cockpit at this critical time??

They weren't - the flight deck door was open.

The remark attributed to First Officer Lucas, was to those who knew him, just the way he would react if he did not agree with something, in this case the descent procedure.

Any proof? Which brings to mind another question - if this supposed altercation had taken place and the door had been slammed, what was it doing open again shortly afterwards?

Your insistance that Ron Chippendale and Capt Gemmel were involved in some sort of conspiracy is ridiculous.

I think that heavy pressure was applied from Morrie Davis and Rob Muldoon on down to make the company look good - that does not necessarily imply a conspiracy between Chippindale and Gemmell, but it does make their alterations to the CVR transcript look suspicious.

The one third to CAA and 2 thirds of the cost to ANZ of the enquiry, that Mahon awarded to be paid to the estates of Collins and Cassin, and some of that to cover the costs of NZALPA, and the $150,000 fine to ANZ, were thrown out by the Appeal Court, and upheld by the Privy Council because as they stated there was no evidence of , or as they stated "No clear proof " of any plan of deception.

Actually it's less clear cut than that - they said that there was no clear proof of an "orchestrated" plan of deception - they did not dispute the findings regarding the accident and they did not dispute that some ANZ personnel had lied at the inquiry. Two of the panel dissented and wanted the rest thrown out, both of them had family working for ANZ.

[prospector]

DozyWannabe,

Could you please name the family links to the Privy Council???

You obviously are so convinced of the invicinbility of Mahon and Vette you do not read and digest fact.

Your comment re communications is wrong, they never at any time lost communication, but it was all via HF, no VHF.

You were invited by a previous poster, henry crun, from memory, to give your version of how a tower, or radar controller would 'Invite" a descent to 500ft. You have not supplied an answer yet. Regardless of Company SOP's it was a CAA mandatory requirement that no flight below 6,000ft was permitted. The fact that a senior Check and Training captain carried out such a descent at the invitation of a controller, and made it public that he had done so, certainly made a rod for the back of later crews, especially when the weather was not SKC and unlimited visibility.

You have not as yet described how the transponder could possibly be working when it was physically impossible for radar to get any returns when the descent was carried out as it was, and there is no dispute on the reported track of this descent. They got a return for a min or two, no more.

[ampan]

DozyW - You’re doing a fine job but there are two points that have yet to be put to bed. You would accept that if the captain had received conflicting information about the final waypoint, then he had to check it if he planned on going below MSA. You say that there was no conflict re the information but, in fact, there was: The briefing used slides and an audiotape. When making the audiotape the briefing officer read from a script. Both the tape and the script were produced as exhibits to the Royal Commission, so there is no doubting that the words in the script were actually heard by those in attendance. I have a copy of the script, which was Exhibit 12. This is what it says: “A standard route definition will be used employing the From-Via-To format. Enter NZAA then 78S/167E this being the approximate co-ordinates of McMurdo Station.”

What was said at the briefing leads into the other point that requires an explanation: Why did the captain decide to turn left when attempting to climb out? The logical explanation is what was said at the briefing: “Your nav track goes to McMurdo Station.”

The night before, the captain plotted the track on his atlas and discovered that it went from Cape Hallett to a point 20nm to the west of McMurdo Station. He would have also noted that a track from Cape Hallett direct to McMurdo Station went over Erebus, but not to worry, because that wasn’t to be his track. So he folds up his paperwork and goes to bed. The next morning, he and the F/O manually entered the co-ordinates – but he never checked that final waypoint. And he had plenty of time to check it on the way down, but never did. There would have been a pre-descent briefing, where going below MSA would have been discussed. At that point, it was imperative that he check the final waypoint, because that was the only thing keeping the aircraft from hitting terrain, and yet he did nothing. The problem only dawned on him at 1500 feet in the jaws of Lewis Bay when the F/E expressed alarm and he decided to climb out. The F/O told him it was clear to the right, but pennies were starting to drop very quickly and he recalled what was said at the briefing, realised he should have checked the final waypoint, and appreciated that Erebus might be dead ahead, which would explain the radio problems. If so, the only way out would be to the left, so he overruled the F/O, pulled out the knob, and initiated a left turn using the autopilot.

[prospector]

DozyWannabe,
In the Bolt/Kennedy report that was instegated to investigate shortcomings by the Civil Aviation Division in relation to ANZ and the Erebus flights, one of the points made in the Royal Commission Report in para 223e Mahon made an assertion that in his OPINION CAA would have approved a lower MSA for these sightseeing flights. He apparently did not understand that MSA's are set by standards laid down by ICAO, not picked out of the sky by CAA or the Company.

No where have I been able to find any confimation of your statement that CAA approved a descent to 500ft if approved by Ice control. Perhaps you could give me a reference?

[chris lz]

and appreciated that Erebus might be dead ahead,


Can anyone really say? Vette makes the case if Collins for even one second had any such concerns, when the terrain warning sounded he would have firewalled the engines. Vette's take here is that Brooks, seated farther back, began to experience the effect of full whiteout. But Collins may never have reached that stage, and may well have been convinced to the last second he was getting a false warning.



The AINS is not normally subject to significant error (I think 2 miles was the max on a trip of that length), neither were any tracks being "programmed and reprogrammed every day".


The tracks are not being reprogrammed daily, but the coordinates entered into the AINS (I am assuming) was something done before each flight? By "more subject to error" I mean in terms of: 1) the kind of mistake that actually was made; and 2) The fact that when entering the waypoints a pilot may inadvertantly also enter them incorrectly.

Would anyone else here care to comment on whether most pilots would regard AINS the way Vette does - as reliable as ground based instruments, and therefore an adequate substitute for an IMC let-down.

Dozy, would your views at all change if regulations had required an actual visual confirmation of landmarks - (in this case, including Mt. Erebus itself (or the clear absence of it) before leaving MSA, unaided by any help from or assumtions about AINS? Because I'm under the impression this is in fact the self-imposed mandate of many (most?) pilots. :) Anyone: am I wrong here?

Finally, once beneath the clouds, Vette seems to be equating terrain that's "consistent with" what you would expect to see, with a "positive fix." For the benefit of us amateur nonaviators, How "positive" must a "positive fix" be?

[framer]

They verified their position to the best of their ability with the materials they had to hand.


That is not a true statement. Can you not concieve of another way to verify their position?

Changes were not that frequent, as I said before - and any changes should have been NOTAMed on the printout given to Collins that morning. They were not.

Things change minute to minute and few of them are Notam'd. That is flying.

Not that high speed,
Ahh Dozy we just think differently I guess, 250kts at 1500ft is fast in a jet that heavy IMO.

I think you underestimate the late Justice.
Fair enough. Why do you hold him in such high esteem? Do you not think he's a bit lite on aviation experience to understand fully what the environment is like?

they had a dispensation to descend as low as 500ft if invited to do so by Mac Central under radar guidance.


Who issued the dispensation?

[FGD135]

Do you not think he's a bit lite on aviation experience to understand fully what the environment is like?
It really is time this ludicrous notion is put to bed. Mahon did NOT need to have any aviation experience at all. I think this is where a lot of aviation "experts" come unstuck when it comes to this accident.

What Mahon really needed was experience in getting to the bottom of complex cases, and he had plenty of that.

I find it naive in the extreme to suggest he needed aviation experience. All he needed was knowledge of what was reasonable and he was able to acquire this from the many experts called to testify.

[FGD135]

Could you please name the family links to the Privy Council???


Justices McMullen and Woodhouse. McMullen's son was a pilot for ANZ and his family had a close association with a solicitor that was acting for ANZ.

The daughter of Woodhouse worked in the PR office of the ANZ head office in Auckland.

These links were not disclosed at the time, but came to light in the years after the appeals.

ampan, you are drawing an exceedingly long bow to suggest that the left turn was because the "penny had dropped"! There were probably numerous, far more likely, reasons for the left turn. I would suggest the most likely was that Collins had seen flat ground to the left less than a minute before.

framer, you seem to lack any grasp of the concept of "reasonable".


Can you not concieve of another way to verify their position?

What I think you are getting at here is that they could have plotted their position onto a map.

At what stage should they have done this? Do you do this as you commence an instrument approach? If there was uncertainty as to their position, then yes, they should have done it, but there was not sufficient uncertainty.


Things change minute to minute and few of them are Notam'd. That is flying.
This is a quite ridiculous statement. If any pilot was to seriously embrace that view then he would never get off the ground!

For example: the aircraft underwent daily inspection an hour ago, but it may not be ok NOW, because "things change minute to minute". Had better go and redo that daily inspection!

The weather forecast, issued two hours ago, indicated we did not need an alternate, but "things change", so we had better try to get an update; etc, etc...

Totally unreasonable!

There was nothing that the crew could reasonably have done differently.


Who issued the dispensation?
They were not in the wrong by descending when they did. Even Chippendale was of this view.

[ampan]

Times are GMT

0018:11 – Captain: “Clouds come down a bit *** may not be able to ** McMurdo. Very hard to tell the difference between the cloud and the ice”


0019:39 – Captain: “Doesn’t look very promising does it?”

F/O: “No”

F/E: “No”


[Then two descending orbits through a hole in the cloud layer]


0046:39 – F/E: “Where’s Erebus in relation to us at the moment?”

[Various unidentified voices, whereby the word “left” is used three
times]


0046:48 – F/E: “I’m just thinking of any high ground in the area that’s all.”


[Down to 1500 feet]


0049:24 – F/E: “I don’t like this.”

0049:30 – Captain: “We’re twenty six miles north we’ll have to climb out of this”

0049:33 – F/O: “It’s clear on the right and (well) ahead.”

Captain: “Is it?”

F/O: “Yes”


0049:38 – F/O: “Yes you’re clear to turn right there’s no high”

Captain: “No negative” [Four seconds later, the Heading Select knob
was pulled out and a left turn was initiated using
the autopilot. Two seconds later, the GPWS
sounded.]

[framer]

At what stage should they have done this? Do you do this as you commence an instrument approach?
Around and around we go.
To answer your first question, after they had levelled at MSA
(FL 160) and a) couldn't verify by visually sighting the appropriate landmarks b) couldn't pick up the TACAN c) couldn't pick up the DME d) HF told them that the tower was trying to contact them on two different VHF frequencies but with no reply.
They could stay at MSA until they either get visual, pick up the TACAN and DME, or are in the sector that allows for safe descent to the south of Ross Island. If they had remained at MSA they would have picked up the TACAN /DME on passing Erebus, realised the error in planning, and that would be the end of the story. Now I'm not suggesting that they are an inferior crew for not doing that, but I am saying that that is a lesson we can take from this. MSA is there to keep you from hitting terrain. Can we at least agree that that lesson needed to be learnt?
If the passengers arrived in the descent sector area at FL160 and descended there it would not have been the end of the world.
As for the second question, I do verify my position prior to descending below MSA yes. I don't have to plot on a map but I would if the other four or five methods of doing it proved fruitless.

They were not in the wrong by descending when they did. Even Chippendale was of this view. That does not answer the question. The question was "who issued the dispensation? "

[DozyWannabe]

Hi all, I'll reply to this for now and pick up the rest later, it's been a long day and I'm shattered...

I have a copy of the script, which was Exhibit 12. This is what it says: “A standard route definition will be used employing the From-Via-To format. Enter NZAA then 78S/167E this being the approximate co-ordinates of McMurdo Station.”

Was this not superseded by the INS routing? I know that they'd used the same video and script since before the 1978 switch, though I'd need to see more context in what you are quoting (namely the rest of the script if possible, along with any addenda that may have made it into their briefing wallets).

What was said at the briefing leads into the other point that requires an explanation: Why did the captain decide to turn left when attempting to climb out? The logical explanation is what was said at the briefing: “Your nav track goes to McMurdo Station.”

I don't think McMurdo Station came into it - though I have no proof for or against - I believe the decision to turn left had a far more simple explanation. They're headed southwest into Lewis Bay on INS and draw ever further into the sector whiteout, until they are confronted by full whiteout in the forward windows. Some terrain is still visible from the side windows however, to Cassin's right and Collins' left. I believe that Collins elected to turn left because his view through Cassin's window was obscured by total whiteout and he elected to turn towards the terrain that he could see through his own window, and which he knew to be low enough in terms of elevation to be safe. An additional possibility is that he knew that the western edge of McMurdo Sound was defined by the towering cliffs of Cape Bernacchi - yes, Erebus would have been to his left in that scenario, but it would have been 26 miles away.

He would have also noted that a track from Cape Hallett direct to McMurdo Station went over Erebus

I'm not so sure that he would - I think he'd have noticed and made a note of where Erebus was, but would not have tracked direct over McMurdo Station itself because the nav printout he used to plot the course (which was handled by the computer and would have been accurate to plus or minus 2 miles) stated categorically that the track would not involve Erebus directly.

It's also possible that Capt. Simpson's discovery of McMurdo's position being 27 miles west of where the programmed track took him would have been passed around the crew room in the 2 weeks between Simpson and Collins' flights.

At that point, it was imperative that he check the final waypoint, because that was the only thing keeping the aircraft from hitting terrain, and yet he did nothing.

I believe he checked it against his notes, which were based on the printout given to him at the briefing and was, as far as anyone other than Hewitt and maybe one or two people in the nav section was aware, exactly the same as the one he'd been given that morning. I used to have one of those old dot-matrix printers and the text generated by them in the pitch used is not an easy thing to read when in motion - my theory is that he copied the whole thing along with his map trace into his notebook and used that exclusively, being far more able to read his own writing than the printout (also that having material required for cross-check across two facing pages of a ringbinder is far more easy to deal with on a busy flight deck than separate sheets of paper).

I believe that the printout they were given in the morning was not referred to after departure, but used to enter the co-ordinates at the gate, requiring one pilot to verify the other's inputs against the printout, which means it may well have been Cassin doing the verification. There's scope for more tragic irony there - if they were using the printout to program the computers in order to comply with SOP (which is logical), then if Collins had been the kind of pilot to treat SOP as guidelines then he'd have used his notes as opposed to the printout and the accident would never have happened.

It would also have answered the question as to whether Chief Navigator Hewitt would have ever admitted that the error he made was much larger than they first thought, had he not been forced to by the tragic consequences.

Had Collins been told of a change I believe he would have gone and re-worked it, even if it meant delaying the flight, or postponing it altogether.

The problem only dawned on him at 1500 feet in the jaws of Lewis Bay when the F/E expressed alarm and he decided to climb out. The F/O told him it was clear to the right, but pennies were starting to drop very quickly and he recalled what was said at the briefing, realised he should have checked the final waypoint, and appreciated that Erebus might be dead ahead, which would explain the radio problems. If so, the only way out would be to the left, so he overruled the F/O, pulled out the knob, and initiated a left turn using the autopilot.

It's a workable theory certainly, and as good as many others, but for what it's worth, here's my take - it's based on the fact that the original investigation failed to take the damaged FDR tape into consideration when synchronising the CVR with the FDR, and transposed the last few FDR data points earlier in the sequence. The effect of this is to render what some consider to be violent evasive maneouvres as actually being the flight surface response to the impact - remember it bounced in the snow before disintegrating on the mountain.

So here goes - I believe that the last FDR traces are symptoms of the impact rather than an attempt to avoid it. I believe the last deliberate control inputs were the autopilot left turn and the power increase, neither of which came soon enough to avert the collision. Consequently I believe they never saw what they hit, even when they were right on top of it, as a result of full whiteout through the front windows. As I stated above, I believe that Collins' decision to turn left was based on the fact that he could not see anything out of Cassin's window and that it's possible he was more concerned with snagging something on the Cape Bernacchi cliffs than hitting Erebus, which he believed was 26 miles southeast. I think they died believing they were over McMurdo Sound.

@FGD135 - many thanks for doing the lookup of the ANZ families - it's a rare day that this happens, but I'm too knackered to face doing an evidence dive today.

[prospector]

FGD135
The names you have mentioned were all in the Appeal Court, When Mahon took his appeal to the Privy Council they agreed with the findings of the Appeal Court. None of the members of the Privy Council had any connection with anybody involved in any previous proceedings.

[DozyWannabe]

@prospector - You're skirting around the main issue here which was that the Appeals Court did not find anything substantively wrong with Mahon's findings, *other* than his assertion that the inaccuracies presented to him were part of a co-ordinated effort, and they overturned the costs for that reason and that reason alone. I wonder if the Privy Council would have felt differently had they known of the blatant conflict of interest within the Appeals Court panel.

EDIT :

The section relating to the NZCA's limits versus the dispensation is Mahon, page 17-18 section 40(b). It was the airline who gave the dispensation as part of the briefing, and I think it reasonable to assume that the contradiction between the airline's operating procedure and what NZCA had originally specified in 1977 would not have been covered in the briefing. Had this been clear in the Chippindale report, it could have caused difficult questions to be asked of ANZ (for contradicting the regulation in the first place), and of the NZCA (for not effectively regulating the national airline by letting the dispensation stay unchallenged for 2 years).

[ampan]

AIR NEW ZEALAND LIMITED
FLIGHT OPERATIONS DIVISION
ROUTE CLEARANCE UNIT

PHOTOGRAPHS MARCH 1977
TWIN SLIDE PRESENTATION AND SCRIPT UNDATED NOV. – 79

ANTARTIC BRIEF


ALL FLIGHTS FOR THE ANTARTIC REGION WILL BE PLANNED TO DEPART AUCKLAND WITH FULL TANKS. AS AN APPROXIMATE FIGURE THIS WILL BE 109 TONNES OF FUEL. BASED ON AN ANTICIPATED ZERO FUEL WEIGHT OF 140 TONNES A TAKE-OFF WEIGHT OF ALMOST 250 TONNES CAN BE ANTICIPATED FOR ALL FLIGHTS.

TWO ROUTES ARE AVAILABLE. FLIGHT DESPATCH HAS BEEN INSTRUCTED TO PREPARE TWO FLIGHT PLANS REGARDLESS OF THE FLIGHT FORECAST. BOTH ROUTES FOLLOW COMMON TRACKS TO CAPE HALLETT, THEN DEPENDENT ON WEATHER CONDITIONS EXISTING IN THE REGION ONE ROUTE PROCEEDS TO MCMURDO AND RETURN WHILST THE SECONDARY ROUTE IS VIA THE NINNIS GLACIER AND THE SOUTH MAGNETIC POLE. IT IS ANTICIPATED WIND FORECASTING WILL BE SCANT, HOWEVER A COMPONENT OF MINUS 10 –15 KNOTS CAN BE EXPECTED.

HEMISPHERICAL RULES WILL APPLY REGARDING FLIGHT LEVELS EN ROUTE – REFER TO THE RNC4 CHART – BUT NO PROBLEMS ARE ANTICIPATED WITH DRIFT CLIMB PROCEDURES AND BLOCK CLEARANCE ALTITUDES. REMEMBER THE LIMITING FACTOR WILL BE THE TIME SPENT IN THE MCMURDO OR SOUTH MAGNETIC POLE AREA AS THE FUEL REQUIREMENT FOR THE RETURN MUST BE BASED ON THE THE DEPRESSURIZED LEVEL. DETAILS OF THE ROUTE INFORMATION WILL BE SUPPLIED IN A SEPARATE HAND-OUT.

A STANDARD ROUTE DEFINITION WILL BE USED EMPLOYING THE FROM-VIA-TO FORMAT. ENTER NZAA THEN 78S/167E THIS BEING THE APPROXIMATE CO-ORDINATES OF MCMURDO STATION. NZCH IS ENTERED IN THE NORMAL WAY. NEW PLYMOUTH AND NELSON MAY BE ENTERED AS STANDARD IDENTS HOWEVER ALL OTHER ENTRIES WILL BE REQUIRED TO BE BY LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE. REMEMBER FLIGHT PLAN OVERFLOW WILL OCCUR WITH MORE THAN 15 LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE ENTRIES. NO DIFFICULTY WILL BE EXPERIENCED IN ASSEMBLING THE ROUTE TO BEYOND MCMURDO SOUND IN THE FIRST INSTANCE.
THE DIVERSION ROUTE NZCH-NZAA WOULD BE ACCESSED FROM THE AVAILABLE AIRWAYS FROM CH.
MCMURDO TACAN IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE TAPE THEREFORE NO UPDATE WILL OCCUR BEYOND THE RANGE OF THE CHRISTCHURCH VOR/DME.

[The next two and half pages deal with changing to grid navigation. Slides were then shown, several of which turned out to be misdescribed.]

WE ARE ALMOST 77 DEGREES SOUTH FROM CAPE HALLETT TOWARDS ROSS ISLAND. MT EREBUS ALMOST 13,000 FEET AHEAD. MCMURDO STATION AND SCOTT BASE LIE 20 MILES BEYOND THE MOUNTAIN IN THE DIRECTION OF GRID NORTH.

NOW APPROACHING EREBUS AT 16,000 FEET, THE MINIMUM SECTOR ALTITUDE. IN VMC A DESCENT TO THIS MINIMUM ALTITUDE UP TO 50 MILES BEFORE MCMURDO WILL BE FOUND ADVANTAGEOUS FOR VIEWING.

THE LOW FEQUENCY NDB APPROACH AT MCMURDO, WHICH PREVIOUSLY PROVIDED OUR ANTARTIC FLIGHTS WITH AN AUTHORISED CLOUD BREAK PROCEDURE TO 6000 FEET, HAS BEEN WITHDRAWN, CONSEQUENTLY THE LET-DOWN BELOW THE COMPANY SECTOR SAFE ALTITUDE OF 16,000 FEET, IS STRICTLY VISUAL AND PERMISSION HAS BEEN GIVEN TO DESCENT TO 6000 FEET QNH IN VMC.

[Then follows the SOP re height, then sightseeing info, then homeward leg.]

[DozyWannabe]

OK, so that's the original '77 briefing with additions, but it doesn't tell the whole story - there would have been addenda and changes, as well as verbal ad-libs to the script at briefing time. Testimony given (albeit reluctantly) indicates that the 6,000ft lower limit was verbally amended to any altitude cleared by the McMurdo controllers - if that was the case then it would almost certainly have been in Collins' or Cassin's notes, both of which disappeared under highly dubious circumstances.

(Also, a little tip - if you're going to copy and paste from Word, copy and paste it first into Notepad (or any other raw text editor) and then copy/paste again into the form - it won't muck about with the fonts then.)

[ampan]

That was definitely what was said to the crew of the flight. They were even given copies of the script as part of their briefing materials. Mahon accepted all this, but said that other materials indicated a route down the Sound and said that “these displays would, not unnaturally, take precedence over the spoken words indicating a direct track from Cape Hallett to McMurdo Station.” (page 60 of the Royal Commission report)

But it would never have happened like that. The pilots would not have sat there thinking ‘eenie meenie’. They would have raised the issue, as they were obliged to do. Mahon’s “displays” were promotional materials, not charts. The only navigational map they were given at the briefing was a photocopy of the inset of this chart:
Antarctic Ross Sea Region | Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) - Toit (http://www.linz.govt.nz/topography/topo-maps/antarctica)

If you have the whole chart, you don’t even need a straight edge to tell that a track from Cape Hallett to Mac Station goes over Ross Island. But if you only have the inset, you can’t tell. All the pilots must have left the briefing on the understanding that their track was to Mac Station, but some may well have thought that such a track would take them down the Sound with Erebus to the left.

[DozyWannabe]

@ampan - The problem that I have is this; that the documents to which you refer were submitted by counsel for Air New Zealand and as such cannot be expected to tell the entire story, knowing what we know about shredders, missing ringbinder pages and break-ins.

DD covered this on a thread a couple of years ago, but Captain Wilson, who performed the briefing for the Simpson and Collins crews, testified to making a verbal addendum to the script that it was standard practice to go lower than 6,000ft if invited to do so by ATC. Some of the management pilots who swore that they had never busted the 6,000ft limit were confronted by press articles and write-ups proving that they had in fact done just that. A McDonnell-Douglas executive penned one of the articles, so he knew. Every home with a mailing address in NZ received a copy of a promotional article, so everyone who read that article knew - and yet the only conclusion we can draw from the NZCA's assertions is that they did not read those articles, or if they read them did not immediately get ANZ on the blower and ask what the hell was going on? I don't buy it.

We know Wilson diverged from the script there by his own testimony, so who's to say that he didn't mention in passing to disregard the old 1977 tracks and refer to the co-ordinates on the printouts supplied at the briefing?

NZALPA's deposition stated that as well as the promotional materials, there was a photocopied chart showing the McMurdo Sound INS track in the briefing materials.

I don't think Collins would have "eeny-meenyed" with documents of that nature. I believe he plotted the co-ordinates the night before to establish what the *actual* track - i.e. the one that he believed would be programmed into the computer the next day - looked like, and it didn't look like a track direct to McMurdo.

[ampan]

Agree re Collins. He would not have sat silent at the briefing receiving contradictory information. Given that no-one queried the track, Collins must have left that afternoon on the assumption that his track was from Cape Hallett direct to Mac Station, which would take him down the Sound with Erebus to the left. He also left the briefing with a copy of an old flightplan, which he used to plot the track. This time, he had the whole chart, not just the inset. He would have seen that a track from Hallett to Mac Station went over Ross Island, but when he plotted the final waypoint, he found it to be 20nm west of Mac Station, which probably made some sense, because it would have taken him down the Sound. (Against that, it would be an unusual place for such a waypoint to be.)
But the point is that there was an issue with that particular waypoint and he had to resolve it.

[DozyWannabe]

You see, I can't agree with that either. The details he had in the printout in his hands the night before, and from which all his notes came, showed a waypoint just west of the Dailey Islands. For whatever reason, the mnemonic code for this waypoint was "MCMURDO". If Wilson said "direct Cape Hallett to McMurdo", without directly referencing the station it would have been perfectly logical to suppose that it was this waypoint (the one that was changed without notifying Collins or his crew) that he was in fact referring to. The McMurdo NDB was no longer there - officially at least - and the TACAN was useless until they were south of Ross Island.

Now - Capt. Simpson goes down a few weeks before, and one of the things I noted in an earlier thread was a suggestion made by someone - it may even have been yourself - that the waypoint was not where he expected it to be. This isn't the case - the waypoint was exactly where he expected it to be, but McMurdo Station itself was not. Simpson reports this anomaly to Thompson and hears nothing else about it until after the accident. We don't know what exactly was said - but the gist was that the waypoint called "MCMURDO" was 27 miles from the base itself. We don't know exactly what Simpson was expecting either - given that the de facto track went down McMurdo Sound to the Dailey Islands, they could just as easily have renamed the waypoint "DAILEY" and left it there - but the nav section discovers a mistake, elects to quickly and quietly deal with it themselves and the rest is history.

The Dailey Islands track was in the computer for 14 months before the crash - 14 months! - and we're expected to believe that every single crew that went to the briefings heard Capt. Wilson say the track went over McMurdo Station (and hence Erebus), plotted the track to the Dailey Islands, followed the track to the Dailey Islands and never said "Why is the 'MCMURDO' waypoint nowhere near the Station and why were we flying into the Sound rather than Lewis Bay"? I don't buy it - I just can't. I think when they heard him say "via McMurdo" that he meant the Sound and the waypoint.

[ampan]

Believe it. There were only 12 previous trips. One encountered bad weather and took the alternate route. The others had 'gin clear' conditions, so the nav track had no relevance. They went where they pleased, and if someone did a fake strafing run at Scott Base and went down to 1000 feet, so what? That doesn't mean that you could do that in a heavy overcast.

[DozyWannabe]

One encountered bad weather and took the alternate route.

Was that before or after they switched to INS rather than ground-based navigation? It's an important distinction to make because the flights were planned, briefed and handled very differently in the first (pre-INS) year compared to the second.

I don't believe every other flight had "gin clear" conditions either - CAVOK possibly, but you can still have CAVOK with significant cloud cover.

[ampan]

The one that diverted was in the same season (ie, Oct / Nov 1979). I don't think any flight that got to Mac Station had CAVOK, but stand to be corrected.

There wasn't any "switch" to INS, because all the flights were on DC10s, where INS was standard. The waypoint for the initial flights was one of nav aids at Mac Station, deliberately selected for that reason. This didn't mean, obviously, that the flights were "programmed to fly over an active volcanoe", because a human being decided where the aircraft went, not a computer. The only reason for staying on the nav track all the way to Mac Station was if it was covered in cloud. In that situation, the idea was to stay on the track until past the summit and then do an out-and-back cloud-break using the NDB. The pilots at the briefing actually practised this manouvre in the simulator later in the day, even though the NDB wasn't working. The exercise began with the simulator positioned overhead Mac Station - not 20nm to west. Given that, I can't see how any of them could have thought that the waypoint was anywhere other than Mac Station.

[DozyWannabe]

Sorry - I should have been more accurate. I meant "pre-computerised flight plan". Prior to this computerisation which took place in 1978, the flight plans were manually entered, waypoints printed from a computer and weather/fuel details manually added. Change of waypoints, such as the move from Williams Field to the McMurdo NDB which happened in 1977 would therefore have been relatively easy to pick up on. At the time of computerisation, Chief Navigator Hewitt's first error was to enter the Williams Field co-ordinates rather than those of the NDB. His second error was to mis-key those co-ordinates, which had the effect of subsitituting a 4 for a 6 and situating the waypoint 25 miles away over the Dailey Islands.

In that situation, the idea was to stay on the track until past the summit and then do an out-and-back cloud-break using the NDB.

That may have been the idea in 1977 and early 1978, but in practice this is not what happened after then. If the pilots handed the post-computerisation flight plan at the briefing followed that track, then they'd know it never went anywhere near the NDB, and I firmly believe that they either thought the NDB required them to go off-track in bad conditions, if indeed this procedure was described and trained as you say (I've certainly never read anything about Collins and Simpson flying the NDB on a simulator post-briefing), or that the NDB was simply a holdover from before the computerised flight plans.

What I get a sense of when revisiting this stuff is a kind of organisational entropy that I didn't really experience first-hand until I went into industry myself. New projects start with the best intentions and everyone sticks to the script initially, but as things become more commonplace mistakes start to slip in, changes are made but not communicated between different departments and what started as a co-ordinated and coherent execution plan slowly falls apart. You've got two changes of waypoint - one intentional, the other not - within two years. You've got some briefing materials that are relevant to the flight concerned as well as some that are out of date. You have a briefing itself that is gradually - in your own words - becoming less and less relevant to the actual conduct of the flight being briefed. As a result, you have crews mostly believing that the INS track they are following does not reference the NDB at all and instead goes down McMurdo Sound.

I believe that Collins and his crew thought the same. If, as you suggest, he left the briefing thinking that the NDB might play a part in his flight and that the NDB was the waypoint, then why did he not flag the discrepancy after he had plotted the waypoints the previous night (logically the most trustworthy document he was given) and found a track that went well west of the NDB? The track from Hallett to the NDB does not involve McMurdo Sound by the way, but skims the eastern edge of the Sound, passing direct over Cape Bird and the western slopes of Erebus. If that was the nav track he thought he was following, then 1,500ft was too low for an approach from the north and there's no way he'd have re-engaged NAV mode at that altitude.

There's just too much discrepancy between what Capt. Wilson claimed he was saying at the briefings regarding the track and the NDB, and what a majority of pilots left the briefing thinking that they had been told - enough to suggest that Wilson didn't make McMurdo *Station* clear in his description of the track, or if he did then he certainly did not communicate his intent effectively.

I note in an earlier thread that you considered yourself "anti-Mahon", and I've been racking my brains trying to think why that could be. I know there's a resistance from some in the piloting fraternity to allowing non-pilots to make judgements on the operation of flights, but that attitude seems a little "knee-jerk" from someone who has thought about it to the extent you clearly have. I could understand it if he had simply taken the submissions of NZALPA and the dead crew's family counsel as read before writing his report and dismissing out of hand the ANZ/NZCA submissions due to their evasive and occasionally truculent behaviour at the inquiry - but he did not. He went to extraordinary lengths to put himself in the mindset of a line pilot facing a situation like that faced by the ill-fated crew in terms of technical understanding, and the "grey areas" that crop up when the black-and-white diktats of regulations are contradicted by the realities on the ground, and indeed in the sky. What he found was that the crew was given at best conflicting - if not misleading - information to start with due to the organisational entropy I referred to earlier regarding the briefing, that a protocol-breaching unannounced co-ordinate change altered the flight path from the one the crew were expecting to that of a collision course with a mountain, that the crew were dispatched without proper training on the whiteout conditions which they could experience and that given this state of affairs the crew did everything they reasonably could with the information they were given to conduct the flight safely. This is before we get on to the more controversial actions of ANZ in the wake of the accident.

[RadioSaigon]

Gawd, hasn't this topic been done-to-death by now, some 30+ years down the track??? Many contributors to this and other threads on Erebus are well known for their contentious and entrenched views... there's nothing new to add!!!

As for Paul Holmes, starve the idiot of oxygen, he'll go away.

[FGD135]

DozyWannabe, a well written post that was a pleasure to read - and containing a few hints that we are getting near the end of your contributions! (for the moment).

I sense this thread is getting near its end, but I'm sure there will be more threads on this accident in the future. I would like to thank DozyWannabe, prospector, Ampan, framer and all the others for a civilised and thoughtful discussion. For students of air safety, such as myself, these discussions are invaluable.

Hopefully, all of you will still be with us when this topic comes up again in 2019!

Dozy, you touched on a point that I was about to bring up. You described it - very articulately - as "organisational entropy", and described how this effect would have made for a briefing that was far less useful than could have been.

I was about to direct a post at Ampan about the "quality" of that briefing.

Ampan, I believe your views re the effectiveness of that briefing are seriously misplaced.

From what I have read, that briefing was full of little inaccuracies and contradictions.

We have all attended briefings like that. At first, you are tempted to ask questions to resolve the confusions, but after a short while, you realise there is almost no value in questioning. Instead, you just sit back and take *everything* with a pinch of salt.

Could this have been the reason Collins felt compelled to plot the route for himself?

Everybody says he did it because he was "meticulous". If it had been me, I would have been plotting it purely because the briefing was a dogs breakfast - but probably would not have if I felt the briefing was respectable.

I have been saying for a week now that there was nothing the pilots could reasonably have been expected to do differently.

The same could not be said for Air New Zealand or the CAA.

[grusome]

Prospector,
I shouldn't have to spell it out to such a knowledgeable chap as you, surely, should I?. See #103
The DME is paired with the TACAN and uses VHF frequencies,

Now, I suspect that you meant to say that you dial in a VOR frequency to get a paired TACAN in a VORTAC arrangement, but that's not what you actually said.

If you want to present as an expert, please give correct information! And please don't lower yourself to learned lectures, particularly about VHF DME. Do you recall where DME was invented?

[chris lz]

FGD,

Thank you for the summary.

Do you have any general thoughts why, after so many years, the two "sides" can't seem to agree?

One sticking point for me: is that AINS really to be trusted to the same degree as either A) one's eyes; B) ground based instruments? Neither of these alone could be relied on at the time the let-down commenced. I find the argument they had justification in treating AINS as a substitute for an instrument let-down (effectively the case) contradicted by precisely the type of confusion that led to the accident. Isn't that enough to declare reliance on AINS dangerous in any analogous situation? What would you suppose most commercial pilots would say?

Finally, isn't there something intuitive that before descending below clouds, and in VMC, that you positively identify the location of the mountain first? Isn't that just basic, even while acknowledging the validity of the many cruel coincidences working against the crew?

I, for one, will be here again in 2019 as long as the answers to these basic questions are not explained to my full satisfaction.

[ampan]

The two sides can't agree because one says the crew was blameless.

Captain Collins would say that he was using his eyes (Visual Meteorological Conditions), with the AINS to assist, rather than the other way around. Putting the rules to one side, and assuming it was night, could you use the AINS to fly a DC10 down McMurdo Sound below MSA? It was about 40 miles wide, so maybe you could (although the last update was at Christchurch). But if you were going to do that, the location of the waypoint at the end of the Sound would be a matter of critical importance, because that is the only thing that will keep the aircraft between the high ground on either side. This is why I don't buy FGD135's argument re the briefing. Of course it was a bad briefing, but there would have been plenty of those. The captain would have left the briefing thinking that the track would be down the Sound to Mac Station. When, the night before the flight, the captain plotted the track using an old flightplan he got at the briefing, there would have been an issue raised in his mind re the final waypoint, which was not at Mac Station. He obviously assumed that the flightplan he would be given the next morning would be the same as the one he plotted, but he had to check that one particular waypoint - or else stay above 16000 feet.

[Dream Land]

I never once needed an AINS, VOR or anything else to fly tours in the Grand Canyon on the way to the South rim, that's because it was a VMC mission, if I couldn't see the canyon, I didn't do the tour.

[framer]

Do you have any general thoughts why, after so many years, the two "sides" can't seem to agree?


I agree with ampan on this,
The two sides can't agree because one says the crew was blameless.

-Everyone agrees that the flight planning department made errors.
-I think most people would agree that a cultural precedent had been set of going below 6000ft.
-I think most would agree there was ambiguity regarding the flight path.
-Everyone agrees that Air NZ behaved badly after the event.

Where we can't agree is whether or not the crew could have/should have performed the flight differently and thus avoided the crash.

I sense this thread is getting near its end, but I'm sure there will be more threads on this accident in the future. I would like to thank DozyWannabe, prospector, Ampan, framer and all the others for a civilised and thoughtful discussion. For students of air safety, such as myself, these discussions are invaluable.


I'l second that. You are right, the conversations are worth having. I'd like to know the lessons you guys think are most important from Erebus so I can consider them.

As I've looked more and more into this over the years, for me, one lesson keeps appearing as obvious. I would be interested in hearing the No. 1 lesson you folk have dragged from Erebus.

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

When I say Minimum Safe Altitudes I am not just talking about those on a chart, I am also talking about recommended heights. Anytime someone sees fit to suggest a minimum safe height, it is to keep you from hitting the ground. There are other accidents since Erebus where these heights were not respected, and like Erebus, they ended in disaster because of errors ground personnel had made.

See you in 2019, Framer....... out.

[DozyWannabe]

The captain would have left the briefing thinking that the track would be down the Sound to Mac Station.

I respectfully disagree - you're assuming that what what the pilots briefed by Wilson came away with was what he thought he was saying to them, and yet we have that list in the Mahon report that had the majority of the surviving pilots coming out of the briefing thinking they were going down McMurdo Sound (which means that the NDB as a fix was out, because the track from Hallett to the NDB went straight over Cape Bird), with the remainder unsure.

[EDIT - A more visual description of the three tracks (TACAN, NDB, Dailey Islands) can be seen here : ]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nGwP9luK08

At least Wilson was honest about verbally overriding the MSAs at the inquiry - though I don't think Morrie Davis would have thanked him for it.*

At the end of the day there are always going to be differences of opinion, especially where pilots are concerned - because generally being conscientious, professional types - the tendency is to hope that they would pick up on the kind of insidious lowering of safety margins that occurred in this case and would find the right combination of actions to get around it - unfortunately history shows that's not always the case.

Framer makes a good point about MSAs, but in this case they had been specifically briefed that the MSAs didn't apply if a certain set of conditions were met, and in this case - even though the weather wasn't the best it had been in the past - those conditions were met. One could argue that the memo regarding the NDB withdrawal should have immediately caused that verbal dispensation to be struck from the briefing, but it was not.

My opinion that the flight crew should not hold any blame for what happened is formed not because I exclusively agree with Mahon or Vette over everything, nor do I think that Chippindale's technical investigative work was particularly flawed (other than the CVR/FDR transcription methodology - but to be fair he'd never done it before and should be given the benefit of the doubt) - it's simply based on the idea of how much could reasonably be expected of line pilots in an organisation which had such severe communications problems bubbling under the surface. As far as they were aware, the nav section had prepared a flight plan which, while not strictly adhering to the briefing materials, had nevertheless worked flawlessly for 14 months. Collins (and possibly Cassin too) had gone a step further and manually cross-checked and re-checked that flight plan, stuck to what they were told in the briefing in terms of MSA and trusted that it would keep them out of trouble. Did they do everything they were physically or mentally capable of? Possibly not. Did they do everything that could reasonably be expected of them? I think so.



[* -There's an interview with Vette where he describes being summoned to Davis's office following his testimony - he asked if Davis had brought his sword because he presumed he was goingto cut his stripes off, Davis's response being "I'm going to cut your f*****g b******s off!".]

[chris lz]

Before signing off, would anyone care to explain in the most basic terms why using AINS in the manner the crew of 901 did was unsafe?

[FGD135]

Gidday Chris!

Several times you have asked the following question. Apologies that I have not answered it sooner.


... is that AINS really to be trusted to the same degree as either ...

and

... why using AINS in the manner the crew of 901 did was unsafe?

There was nothing unsafe about how they used the AINS. They used it exactly the same way as I or anybody else would have. In fact, it could be said that to have NOT used it that way would have been poor piloting (in the sense that the humans on the flight deck would have then had to work a little harder).

INS was not then, and has never been, considered a navigational aid upon whose sole use the aircraft may be navigated below the MSA/LSALT. It has only ever been approved for enroute navigation (where the aircraft is safely above minimum altitudes).

It may appear that they were using it for sole means navigation below the minimum altitudes in this case, but in reality it was the pilots that had assumed navigation responsibility visually. In other words, the pilots were navigating the aircraft - not the INS. The INS was just "helping out", so as to speak.

This is a like your car GPS telling you were to turn. You are the one who is taking responsibility for where the car is actually going. If you don't like where the GPS wants to take you, you choose something different. The GPS is just helping out and is not responsible for where the car goes.

[DozyWannabe]

Before signing off, would anyone care to explain in the most basic terms why using AINS in the manner the crew of 901 did was unsafe?

Well, the shortest answer is that they programmed it to fly over an active volcano!

However that answer is inadequate, not to mention facetious. Aside from the co-ordinates programmed, I don't think there was actually anything "unsafe" about the crew's use of AINS. The mitigating factors are:


That they didn't know they were programming a course over Erebus
That the ground aids in the area were spartan to start with, and became even more so
That we don't know exactly what the radar situation was in the four minutes or so immediately prior to impact


We've covered these points several times over in the last week or two, so I'm not going to revisit them here.

The deal with AINS is that while it looks like stone-age technology by modern standards, it was completely state-of-the-art at the time and was orders of magnitude more accurate than any previous auto-navigation tool. At worst, it clocked about 2 miles of deviation at the point they were at - in an area notoriously difficult to navigate, but there's nothing to say it was even off by that much (as proven by the impact point and wreckage being almost bang-on the programmed track). The reason it took so long to find initially was because the searches were being carried out on the expected Dailey Islands track - in itself because Mac Central never received the updated co-ordinates, although early press reports stated (incorrectly) that the aircraft was found significantly off-track in the rush to get the morning headlines (and thus the first myth about the crash gained traction).

The crew would have checked and cross-checked the data as they entered it at the gate, there was no mis-keying on their part, and on the system's part it followed the entered nav track extremely faithfully.

Now, if you were to ask how the *company* used AINS in an unsafe manner, my answer would be different. Even if we take Hewitt's late-night and unannounced correction to be an aberration, the switch to computerised flight plans required more care to be taken when communicating additions or changes to the flight plans to the rest of the company. This is one of the earliest occasions where the danger of increased automation breeding complacency reared it's head (and whatever else you may think about them, without Vette and Mahon it would not have been understood as early as it was without them). With a manual calculation step before leaving ops, an implicit redundant check was created as a side-effect.

If a change was made and the waypoints handed over before notification reached ops, then the manual calculations would serve as an extra level of redundancy - i.e. if the maths didn't make sense compared to the crew's expectations, then this would have to be investigated. By computerising the flight plans completely, those calculations became opaque to the crew, and so the only way to notice a discrepancy would be to manually compare the briefing co-ordinates they were given with those on the flight plan - which I understand was not normal practice at the time.

By computerising the flight plans, and with the knowledge that the AINS was a technological marvel which rarely got things wrong, it became possible for a mistake or change made by nav section to make it all the way into the aircraft's computers without the knowledge of the crew - as demonstrated by the supposedly "false" Dailey Islands track being flown for 14 months with no-one picking up on it. To be fair to ANZ, the need for absolute adherence to communication protocols between different departments when a process is automated was not well-understood at the time - but on the other hand, given their willingness to point the finger at the crew for breaking a protocol that they were in fact instructed they could break at the briefing, Hewitt's non-communication of the flight plan change to either ops or the crew hoists ANZ by their own petard.

Secondary to this was the practice regarding Antarctic flights whereby the next two crews to make the journey were briefed together. This led to a situation where a period of 3 to 4 weeks would elapse between the second crew being briefed on the flight and the flight itself. With the manual system this was fine, as I described above - but with the computerised flight plans communication between nav section and ops becomes a single point of failure, which anyone involved in systems analysis and design will tell you is a Very Bad Thing. Mitigating this, again, is the fact that systems analysis as a science was in it's infancy in the late '70s and these problems were not common knowledge - but to my mind a company that was as proud of it's safety record as ANZ was should have known better.

[EDIT : In addition to the excellent post above from FGD135, I'd like to add that the switch from INS navigation to visual navigation began at the start of the let-down, with the intent that visual be the primary navigation method, with INS and radar as a back-stop. What you hear in the last couple of minutes of the CVR is the crew confirming (i.e. re-checking) their position visually, in the belief that the INS will keep the aircraft pegged in the middle of McMurdo Sound should they lose visual contact with their fixes. As the level of whiteout increases, they make a sensible decision to err on the side of caution and climb - not because they are unsure of their position but because the whiteout has made it impossible to confirm if they were to proceed any further. Unfortunately by then it is too late. ]

[chris lz]

It may appear that they were using it for sole means navigation below the minimum altitudes in this case, but in reality it was the pilots that had assumed navigation responsibility visually.


FDG, thank you for your reply. I'm aware the crew of 901 elected a visual let-down. That means to me that they needed certainty of position before they started down. But clearly they did not have this certainty yet. So if for argument's sake there was no AINS available, would the crew really have had the confidence they did? If the answer is no, then doesn't that suggest (since they crashed) that they did effectively use the AINS in an unsafe manner?

(PS I know I've been re-iterating these questions in various wordings repeatedly, but I'm doing this because I still don't feel I have the argument down definitively just yet.)

[framer]

I'd like to know the lessons you guys think are most important from Erebus so I can consider them.


Hey FGD and Dozy, would you guys be able to give me your thoughts on the above because I'm genuinely interested in your opinions, sort of as a summing up of the weeks conversation.
Short and sharp, one sentence type answers is what I'm after if thats possible, cheers folks.

[chris lz]

Thanks again Dozy for your detailed thoughts. Yes, we have gone over this before. But. . . .


That they didn't know they were programming a course over Erebus


Let's forget Erebus for a moment and speak in general terms. Could we agree that because AINS (in 1979) relies on humans typing in numbers into a program, and requires coordinates to be re-entered continuosly to match the route being flown, that this introduces a specific "error mode" that presumably does not apply to a stationary ground instrument?

[DozyWannabe]

But clearly they did not have this certainty yet.

What makes you say that? The let-down was performed in the patchy cloud north of Ross Island, where it was possible to make out visual landmarks. The overcast affected only Ross Island itself. Regarding your post #196 - the manual keying in of the data was covered by a redundancy check. One pilot read the values, the other keyed them in and read them back for cross-check purposes. This was enough to ensure that mis-keying at the gate should not be a problem. AFAIK the only accident relating to mis-keying a nav computer (AA965) was in part caused because this protocol was not followed.

@framer - The myriad circumstances and lessons to learn surrounding this landmark accident in aviation unfortunately don't lend themselves to quick or easy summary. The best I can do is:

"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".

[prospector]

What makes you say that? The let-down was performed in the patchy cloud north of Ross Island, where it was possible to make out visual landmarks
.That means to me that they needed certainty of position before they started down. But clearly they did not have this certainty yet.


And there you have it, the landmarks were interpreted wrongly, and there was no certainty, the crew made these mistakes, therefor how can they be held blameless??
.

[DozyWannabe]

Because it was proven scientifically that any crew in the same situation would probably have mistaken one for the other due to the visual illusions in that location in those conditions at that time - it was rotten luck, not something they should be blamed for. Changing the co-ordinates, overruling the MSA, letting the briefing deteriorate, not communicating effectively - these were all things ANZ could and should have done something about.

No matter how you try to argue it, this isn't the same as a military flight or a Piper Cub, because in a professional line operation this crew had a right to expect that their colleagues would do right by them - instead they let them down, and continued to do so even after they were dead.

[ampan]

If you're 26 miles north on a track to a waypoint 20nm west of Mac Station, you don't have to climb out of anything.

If you're 26 miles north on a track to Mac Station, then you have Erebus dead ahead and definitely do have to climb out.

[prospector]

.
.
That we don't know exactly what the radar situation was in the four minutes or so immediately prior to impact

The radar situation is perfectly obvious, there is no way the flight was showing on radar, there is no terrain piercing radar yet invented.

[27/09]

"We're 26 miles north. We'll have to climb out of here."

If you're 26 miles north on a track to a waypoint 20nm west of Mac Station, you don't have to climb out of anything.

If you're 26 miles north on a track to Mac Station, then you have Erebus dead ahead and definitely do have to climb out.

Ampan

I can see how you might come to the conclusion you have regarding this statement however I don't have the same take on this as you do, and see this as a generic statement. Just another example of differences in interpretations of whats on the CVR, or whats actually meant by what was said.

Also I see the choice to climb as being perfectly reasonable (in fact almost instinctive) in almost any situation when a crew becomes unhappy with the situation they are in, no matter what the terrain is around them.

[27/09]

DreamlandI never once needed an AINS, VOR or anything else to fly tours in the Grand Canyon on the way to the South rim, that's because it was a VMC mission, if I couldn't see the canyon, I didn't do the tour.

We're not talking about a short VFR trip to the Grand Canyon here, we are talking about a trip to one of the most remote, inhospitable parts of the world, and in conditions that many people know nothing about.

I would suggest that some of your comments don't apply on this thread.

[27/09]

Prospector,

You seem to always find blame with the crew, yet never make comment as to whether or not there are other parties and or factors to blame. In your opinion in what others areas could blame lie in this accident?

Also I'd be interested to see your reply to the following question.

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?

[prospector]

27/09

See post 86 this thread.

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?

I do believe many could. To take a DC10 below 1,500ft, at a minimum speed of 250kts+ in an area well known for visual trickery, without absolute certainty of your position,on your very first flight to that area is not something I believe many would have done.

[ampan]

27/09 #202

"We're 26 miles north. We'll have to climb out of here."

F/O: "It's clear to the right and (well) ahead"

What about the second option? Stay on the track and just pull back the stick. Why turn?

[ampan]

I agree with Prospector. Some others might have done what he did, but plenty would not. He also changed the plan twice: About 100 miles out, McMurdo was no good and he was going to go somewhere else. Then they offered a radar letdown, so he accepted. Then he spotted the ground, and decided to go VMC.

0018:05 (GMT) – Mac Centre via HF radio: “Yes sir If you have copied our latest weather we have a low overcast in the area (at) about 2000 feet and right now we’re having some snow but our visibility is still about 40 miles and if you like I can give you an update on where the clear areas are around the local area”

0018:11 – Captain: “Clouds come down a bit * * * may not be able to * * McMurdo. Very hard to tell the difference between the cloud and the ice * *”

0018:52 – Mac Centre via HF:”901 this is the forecaster again it looks like the clear areas around McMurdo are at approximately 75 to 100 miles to the northwest of us (but) right over McMurdo we have a pretty extensive low overcast over”

0019:39 – Captain: “Doesn’t look very promising does it?”

F/O: “No”


0019:56(GMT) – Mac Centre via HF radio: “Roger within a range of 40 miles of McMurdo we have a radar that will, if you desire, we can let you down to one thousand five hundred feet on radar vectors”

0020:17 – Captain: “that’s what we want”

0020:30 – Captain over PA: “Gents we’re going initially to eighteen thousand and the cloud cover in the McMurdo area has increased although the visibility is forty kilometres so ground visibility is good and we --- will be taking advantage of the radar facilities at MvMurdo for letdown which should take us below the cloud and give us a view of the McMurdo area, that is always likely to change of course depending on any variations in the weather but we’re hopeful we’ll be able to give you a look at McMurdo today. Thank you.”


[Various attempts at VHF communications by Mac Centre and crew]

0031:08 – Captain: “Well actually its its clear out here if we can get down --- and

0031:20 – Captain: “If you can get HF contact tell him that, we’d like a further descent – we have contact with the ground and we could if necessary descend doing an orbit”

0032:07 – F/O via HF radio: “We’d like further descent or we could orbit in our present position which is approximately forty three miles north – descending VMC

0032:08 – Mac Centre: “Roger Kiwi New Zealand nine zero one, VMC descent is approved and keep Mac Centre advised of your altitude

0032:10 – F/O: “Roger New Zealand none zero one we’re vacating one eight zero we’ll advise level

[DozyWannabe]

The radar situation is perfectly obvious, there is no way the flight was showing on radar, there is no terrain piercing radar yet invented.

If that's the case then why erase the tapes? Why erase the one thing that could prove pilot error and exonerate the controllers?

I do believe many could. To take a DC10 below 1,500ft, at a minimum speed of 250kts+ in an area well known for visual trickery, without absolute certainty of your position,on your very first flight to that area is not something I believe many would have done.

Very easy to say with 20/20 hindsight, but in this case the crew did as they were instructed by the airline *to the letter*. You're doing as Chippindale did which was to look at it purely as a piloting problem rather than an organisational one. Your argument that they broke NZCA regulations and are therefore at fault despite the fact that they were *instructed* to disregard them is intellectually dishonest. As is your claim that the area was "well known for visual trickery", when that was not the case outside of those who regularly flew polar operations.

What about the second option? Stay on the track and just pull back the stick. Why turn?

Because he was navigating visually and could no longer see directly ahead, but could still make out the cliffs below and to his left. You head for the area you can *see* to be safe - isn't that the whole point of visual navigation?

Remember that the left turn was commanded through the autopilot. Correct me if I'm wrong but if the maneouvre is supposed to be evasive - as you seem to be suggesting - how many pilots do you know that would use the autopilot rather than cramming on the power and turning the yoke as far as they can safely manage?

Regarding your CVR trace, there wasn't really anywhere else he *could* go laterally, other than doing a few circuits where he was and go home - again, correct me if I'm wrong, but that would require improvising a new nav plan that may or may not be as safe as the one which he thinks is already programmed (which avoids all high ground until the left turn around Ross Island). Mac Central came back over the radio and gave him the conditions that he needed to go down, which meant he could use the INS as a backup, would have all eyes outside for visual referencing and as far as he knew would be a lot safer.

[ampan]

Far better to have 250 annoyed passengers than 250 dead ones. AirNZ were going to can the flights in any event, because they were losing money.

The captain didn't say "I can't see where I'm going. We'll have to climb out of this." The climb out comment was linked to the aircraft being 26 miles north of somewhere. There's no evidence of what the captain could see, but the F/0 believed it was clear ahead. Assuming that they both had approximately the same level of vision, then the question remains as to why he turned, if he believed he was in the middle of the Sound.

The last twenty seconds of the flight are not consistent with Mahon's theory. To me, it looks far more like someone who is becoming increasingly uncertain of his position. It looked clear ahead but he knew that it was "very hard to tell the difference between the cloud and the ice". He knew about the conflicting information he had been given about the final waypoint -and he knew he hadn't checked it, so the possibility of the waypoint being at Mac Station would have occurred to him. To give the captain some credit, he rapidly worked out the correct thing to do, which was to turn left. If he was in the middle of the Sound, he had enough room to avoid Ross Island. If he was in Lewis Bay, then he had Erebus ahead and other high ground to his right, so the only way out was left.
Perhaps he should have firewalled the engines and shoved the stick over, but he was probably still thinking about things.

[caneworm]

Is there a good book available that gives an objective account of what happened before, during and after the event?

[ampan]

The one with the most information is "The Erebus Papers" by S.McFarlane. It's quite good, as long as you ignore the author's mad ravings.

For the dedicated researcher, all the evidence given to the Royal Commission is at the Auckland Public Library, while the exhibits are at Archives NZ.

[prospector]

f that's the case then why erase the tapes? Why erase the one thing that could prove pilot error and exonerate the controllers?

I have no idea how you come to that conclusion, the radar is not relevant after the Captain requests a VMC descent. Do you think the radar operator should have said something along the lines that I do not believe you are VMC and I do not believe you can see where you are going????

The only argument I would have with radar is that previous crews reported that Ross Island was discernable with the aircraft radar in mapping mode. Mahon went to great lengths, and taxpayer expense, by managing to get a trip to America and quizzing the manufacturers of the radar, they told him there was not enough water content in the cloud and ice covered slopes of Ross Island and Erebus to get a decent return.. What then about a radar return from the black rock cliffs that you spend so much time explaining they could see, and THOUGHT were not the cliffs of Ross Island?

[chris lz]

Dozy,

I concede we can't know for sure exactly what the crew saw, since only they were there at the time. But everyone seems to agree that most of the land area was cloud covered, including all of Ross Island and its high peaks. Going by Vette's own cloud maps (Impact Erebus, p48, top map), prior to the aircraft descending, one can see that the only visible terrain was to their right. Vette speculates, apparently, that the crew might just have been able to make out terrain to their left:


Just beneath the edge of this cloud, indistinct but promising, they noted a faint tracery of darkness. It was where they expected to see the western coast of Ross island.


How many pilots would interpret a faint trace of darkness as a positive visual fix?

About the “scientific proof” regarding what most crews would "probably" have mistaken the terrain for, the claim only begins to look plausible once below the clouds, where much more of the terrain was visible. Though this is open to debate, it doesn’t affect my point here, because above MSA, there was to their left only a faint glimmer of terrain. I’m curious why you would interpret the inability to see virtually all of the terrain to one side of your cockpit as “certainty” of position. Is there at least some room for debate here?

[ampan]

Yet another bizarre thing about this accident: It's the leading 'sector white out' case, yet it involved an airline that operated in the South Pacific. North American pilots have always known about snow and ice and cloud, yet AirNZ's foolhardy adventures to Antarctica are now a reference work on the subject.

According to Vette's theory, if you have two points of reference either side of your field of vision, your brain generates a false horizon. Once those points go, then you feel like you're flying in milk. So I would have to agree with him when he said that this was why F/E Brooks was the first to raise the alarm. F/E Brooks would have been leaning forward between the two front seats, with his head lower than the captain's and the F/O's.

[27/09]

Prospector,

Thanks for answering the second question, perhaps you would like to have a go at the first question. Here it is again.

You seem to always find blame with the crew, yet never make comment as to whether or not there are other parties and or factors to blame. In your opinion in what others areas could blame lie in this accident?

[27/09]

ampanWhat about the second option? Stay on the track and just pull back the stick. Why turn?

I was only commenting on your questioning the decision to climb we weren't debating the decision to turn.

Since you raised it, why not stay on track? My answer to that is a bit like the decision to climb, it's partly instinctive, you know what's behind you as you've just come from there. The crew were already asking questions about their situation, some things weren't adding up so to me at least, a climb and a turn to head back to where you've just come from is entirely a reasonable option.

[prospector]

27/09,

Here is my reply, same as last time, refer to post 86, and here is post 86.

27/09

See post 86 this thread.

.

All been stated in a previous thread but my estimation would be,


CAA: 5% for lack of proper oversight, although I do believe there
was an airline inspector scheduled to travel on the flight but had to pull
out due to family circumstance. I very much doubt the flight would
have been conducted the way it was if it was known a CAA inspector
was onboard.

Company: 10% for sloppy operating procedures, and not following up on
reports of low flying. An invitation from a McMurdo Radar operator to
perform a low level run surely does not overide CAA regs or Co SOPs.

Crew: 85% for not complying with either CAA requirements for these flights
or company SOP's, and for not confirming their position before
commencing descent. If even just one of the mandatory requirements
for descent were compled with the accident would have been avoided.
The tools for getting a precise position were available to them prior to
descent, and as this was their first flight to the ice one would have
thought a high degreee of caution would have been the order of the day.

[Brian Abraham]

For those who wish to assign blame.
The tenacious retention of ‘pilot error’ as an accident ‘cause factor’ by governmental agencies, equipment manufacturers and airline management, and even by pilot unions indirectly, is a subtle manifestation of the apparently natural human inclination to narrow the responsibility for tragic events that receive wide public attention. If the responsibility can be isolated to the momentary defection of a single individual, the captain in command, then other members of the aviation community remain untarnished. The unions briefly acknowledge the inescapable conclusion that pilots can make errors and thereby gain a few bargaining points with management for the future.

Everyone else, including other crew members, remains clean. The airline accepts the inevitable financial liability for losses but escapes blame for inadequate training programmes or procedural indoctrination. Equipment manufacturers avoid product liability for faulty design,. Regulatory agencies are not criticised for approving an unsafe operation, failing to invoke obviously needed precautionary restrictions, or, worse yet, contributing directly by injudicious control or unsafe clearance authorisations. Only the pilot who made the ‘error’ and his family suffer, and their suffering may be assuaged by a liberal pension in exchange for his quiet early retirement – in the event that he was fortunate enough to survive the accident. Stanley Roscoe, 1980Accidents do not occur in isolation, they are made up of many slices of Swiss cheese, and holding each of those slices is an individual, department or organisation. Any one of those slices is able to break the chain and prevent an accident occurring. Had the "Ops Flash" been used as intended, for example, may have gone a long way to doing just that.

Seeking blame is for ambulance chasers and lawyers, not for anyone who seeks the reasons why and how to prevent a recurrence.

Know what EGPWS stands for and why it was invented? – Even Good People Will make an error Someday

The operating crew are the last line of defence for every ones mistakes.

[ampan]

Every person involved was an employee of AirNZ.

What was AirNZ to gain by pinning it on the crew?

[Brian Abraham]

What was AirNZ to gain by pinning it on the crew?
Absolution.

[Givelda]

Allowing for the intensity of personal opinions and also that this maybe a little of the trend of this topic, I venture one of my own. Some years ago as a FO I got to wondering what I would have done if I was in Greg Cassins's place on board TE 901. After reading or viewing the available material, and considering what my actions or flight deck input would have been, even with the benefit of hindsight, I came to the chilling conclusion that the only difference I could have made to the operation would have meant that my life would have ended slightly higher up the slopes of Mount Erebus. Even revisiting the subject as a captain when the issue was raised here on PPrune, didn't change that conclusion. That doesn't mean to say that what was done was 100% in accordance with written procedures or policy - we always try, but I doubt that any flight ever has or will be. The nature of airline operations and in particular the intent of the mission that day so long ago was so unlike a normal airline flight, with the unique linking of a multitude of seemingly non-related events, made it inevitable that the tragedy would occur - and it did.
As part of my revisiting the flight, I made up the chart below (which may be difficult to read in this format) to highlight some of the different tracking scenarios that were part of the process that ended at S77 25.5 E 167 27.5. Seen in this form, it all was somewhat confusing, notwithstanding the issues of letdown altitudes and the conduct of the very few previous flights.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7028/6504358171_937e63a835_z.jpg

[ampan]

The difference between the actual track and the nav track was, presumably, caused by the drift in the AINS.

If you move the actual track over to the previous nav track (ie, the yellow line), with the same amount of AINS drift, then the aircraft gets very close to Mt Bird, which is 1766 meters or 5790 feet. That's fine when he's at 10000 feet heading back to the north, but when he turns back towards the south and descends to 1500 feet, Mt Bird, which he thinks is to his left, would become important. Yet even after the F/O says it's clear to the right, he decides to go left, at an altitude of 1500 feet towards a 5790 foot mountain.

I think it was a case of "I think I'm here, but I might be there."

[DozyWannabe]

What was AirNZ to gain by pinning it on the crew?

Absolution.

Maybe, but just as importantly, if it ever became common public knowledge that the co-ordinates were changed without the crew's knowledge (it was in Chippindale's report, but as more of a footnote than anything else - the press certainly didn't report it as a contributory cause), then it would only be a matter of time before the lid was lifted on their lackadaisical organisational and communications habits - not only something that Morrie Davis could not survive politically, but would also leave Rob Muldoon with egg on his face.

Which, as it turns out, was precisely what happened at the Mahon inquiry and became the reason for the political backbiting and desperation on the part of Muldoon and his old boys' network to try to get it overturned.

This is why I'm inclined to be more favourable to the NZALPA/Mahon version of events - ANZ did everything they could to prevent any deviation from their side of the story from seeing the light of day because the management knew it would be their careers on the line. The NZALPA delegation (and Vette in particular) were willing to risk their careers and decades-long friendships in order for the truth about the accident to come out - the aviation industry is rarely forgiving of whistleblowers, even if they turn out to be right. Indeed - after the Mahon report was published Vette himself was reinstated as an ANZ Captain, but he never regained his seniority. In my opinion it says a lot for the man that he considered it a price worth paying.

If you move the actual track over to the previous nav track (ie, the yellow line), with the same amount of AINS drift, then the aircraft gets very close to Mt Bird, which is 1766 meters or 5790 feet. That's fine when he's at 10000 feet heading back to the north, but when he turns back towards the south and descends to 1500 feet, Mt Bird, which he thinks is to his left, would become important. Yet even after the F/O says it's clear to the right, he decides to go left, at an altitude of 1500 feet towards a 5790 foot mountain.

I'm eyeballing with an image editor here, and the resolution is not high enough to tell for certain, but even with an equivalent eastward drift, it looks like they'd have made it if they'd turned left (Mt. Bird is only 5790ft at the peak and they'd have been over the lower western slopes - remember that he was about to command a *climbing* left turn with TOGA power). Not shown on that graphic are the Cape Bernacchi cliffs to the crew's right, which would have also been problematic if the drift had been westward rather than eastward. I'm convinced that Collins' left turn was because he could see the cliffs on his side but not Cassin's, and if what we're told about him as a pilot is correct then he felt he should take the responsibility wherever the chips should fall.

[ampan]

Go around power was only ordered after the GPWS sounded.

PS - Vette wasn't reinstated, because he was never suspended in the first place - and he didn't lose any seniority. He simply quit.

[prospector]

Dozywannabe,

" That we don't know exactly what the radar situation was in the four minutes or so immediately prior to impact "


Whilst you are studying that illustration of tracks and relative positions, would you please advise how you believe any radar return was possible???

[DozyWannabe]

@ampan - See the interview with Vette in Impact Erebus Part 7 - he did come back to ANZ, but not to the same position he vacated.

@prospector - right where it says "VHF contact" for starters. If the controllers saw it there they should have warned them. Your whole attitude to this case is like one of those teachers who say things like "I suppose if Wilson told you to jump off a cliff and Simpson said it was safe you'd do it yourself? You broke the rules so it's your fault."

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*.

[prospector]

Doztwannabe,

Come now, does that answer my question??, VHF contact was well before 4 minutres prior to impact.



@prospector - right where it says "VHF contact" for starters. If the controllers saw it there they should have warned them

That return was only for a very short time span, the controller may not have even been looking at the screen, after all that was the only inbound flight and the Captain had requested, and been given a VMC descent. It would not be incumbent on the controller to say anything, let alone question a Captain whether he knew he was VMC or not.

Your whole attitude to this case is like one of those teachers who say things like "I suppose if Wilson told you to jump off a cliff and Simpson said it was safe you'd do it yourself? You broke the rules so it's your fault."

No not really, more like forty years flying and now, still alive, enjoying retirement. And your strong opinions backing Mahon are based on what aviation experience??

There are many reasons why I believe Mahon was wrong, but just an example or two. It has been stated that many pilots used the weather radar installed in the DC10 in mapping mode down at the ice and they all got a good return from Ross Island. This did not fit Mahons theories so he ruled it out.
No where can I find any reference as to whether Flt 901 was even using the weather radar in mapping mode to get a confirmation of their position.

He believed CAA could alter the MSA because these were sight seeing flights, obviously no appreciation of why MSA's are imposed.

[henry crun]

DozyWannabe: You say "right where it says "VHF contact" for starters. If the controllers saw it there they should have warned them."
Just because there was VHF contact does not mean there was radar contact; there are a number of reasons for that.

Can you give me one good reason why the radar controller, IF he had observed a brief paint, would not have advised the pilot of what he had seen ?

On a separate subject, I note you never replied to the questions I asked in post #131.

[ampan]

Capt Simpson: "And then on the day of the flight after inserting all the waypoints for our flight into the navigation computers, I then selected pertinent ones, and related them to the charts namely the Auckland Islands, Ballenys, Hallett, and my McMurdo position, Cape Campbell, just to make sure that the latitudes and longitudes on my flight plan were in fact going to take us to those points." (The Erebus Papers p682)

If Capt Collins had done the same thing for just one of those waypoints, the accident would not have happened.

[DozyWannabe]

Come now, does that answer my question??, VHF contact was well before 4 minutres prior to impact.

I've been thinking about that - do we know that the erased 4 minutes were the 4 minutes right before impact? I'd have to look it up.

That return was only for a very short time span, the controller may not have even been looking at the seceen, after all that was the only inbound flight and the Captain had requested, and been given a VMC descent. It would not be incumbent on the controller to say anything, let alone question a Captain whether he knew he was VMC or not.

Maybe, but given that the call for VMC was incumbent upon a radar ID before the controller cleared it the sensible thing to do would be to keep tabs on them for as long as possible. I'm pretty sure there was at least one other flight in the vicinity at some point though because the pilot was interviewed by the news team that went down there IIRC.

Still - it wasn't that busy. What else did the radar guys have to do but keep an eye on things?


No not really, more like forty years flying and now, still alive, enjoying retirement. And your strong opinions backing Mahon are based on what aviation experience??

Consider yourself fortunate then - there are plenty of good pilots no longer with us through either a momentary slip-up or even through no fault of their own, just bad luck. Was your experience purely military/GA/training or did you fly the line at some point?

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.

My opinions, which tend towards Mahon's side of the argument - but do not discount anything out of hand as a rule - come less from the aviation side of things, and more from the systems analysis theory I learned as a Software Engineering undergraduate. From my own learning I cottoned on to the fact that accident analysis lines up very closely with the things I learned, and that what applies in systems failure analysis as regards technology can also apply to human-dependent systems, like the one used in ANZ's nav/ops/flight crew communications. I went into some very long and dull detail about "organisational entropy" a few posts back, and if you didn't read it I'd be very pleased if you would and let me know what you think.

As I've said, Chippindale's technical investigation was for the most part pretty good if you judge by the standards of accident investigation in the '70s. However, if his report became the one defining document of the event then a lot of things we now know because of the Mahon report would in all likelihood have been learned the hard way later, probably with greater loss of life. The reason for this is because it was artificially constrained to the piloting aspect, leaving the organisational problems as a footnote. My personal opinion is that this was because he was prevented from digging too much deeper because the conclusions he set out to prove were exactly what his employer and the national flag carrier wanted. As an undoubtedly competent engineering pilot in his military days, it's only natural that his investigation would take that path, but his lack of experience in line operations meant that some of his conclusions were based on incomplete information.

In short, Chippindale came very close to nailing the "what" and "how", but his interpretation of "why" left something to be desired. Because Mahon had to learn the ropes of aviation accident investigation, but was already quite well-versed in picking apart tangled corporate issues thanks to his legal career, he was able to set events within a much broader context. As I've learned from nearly 10 years on this forum, commercial aviation is rarely the "tight ship" it presents to the world, and was even less so 30-odd years ago. What Mahon and his team uncovered was the result of industry-wide growing pains. The jet age and the advent of widebodies presaged an explosion in air travel, but the regulations binding it and the regulatory bodies tasked with making sure the line was toed were stretched beyond their capacity to deal effectively with it - the airlines themselves were clearly improvising to some extent and were fostering among their crews an idea that things were better taken care of than they actually were.

Chippindale's position (and yours) seems to be that the crews should have known better off their own back and that the military habit of taking ultimate responsibility for everything should have been the norm for commercial operations too, but the fact is that it wasn't, in fact it never could be simply because of the size and complexity of the operations concerned. So in line ops a pilot *has* to trust the other departments implicitly to some extent, or the whole operation would grind to a halt. In this case they performed all the necessary checks - in fact went further in some ways - and stuck to what they had been told at the briefing believing that it would keep them safe. Mahon's opinion (and mine) is that they had every right to be entitled to do so.

Can you give me one good reason why the radar controller, IF he had observed a brief paint, would not have advised the pilot of what he had seen ?

Not a good reason, but he simply might not have been paying close attention to where it was

On a separate subject, I note you never replied to the questions I asked in post #131.

I'll go back and check - if I didn't answer it usually means I didn't have one at the time.

If Capt Collins had done the same thing for just one of those waypoints, the accident would not have happened.

What if he did? What if he did just that but (again - reasonably, because he had not been notified of any change) used his notebook rather than the printout? The irony is that because of no concrete evidence either way, by misplacing or destroying the contents of the notebook ANZ made sure that even those sympathetic to their argument must accept the possibility.

[prospector]

Dozywannabe,

I can appreciate where you are coming from, and your interpretations, but
statements like Maybe, but given that the call for VMC was incumbent upon a radar ID before the controller cleared it is simply not correct. By requesting VMC descent there was no requirement to be identified, the controller would likely have advised of any other traffic in the area, but the Captain was declaring he was happy to maintain his own terrain and traffic separation

[ampan]

According to Vette, Capt Collins got his wings in 1954 and left the RNZAF in 1958, while stationed at Wigram, Christchurch. In 1956 the RNZAF organised an Antarctic flight to support Hillary's expedition, which presumably departed from Wigram. Even if Collins wasn't on that trip, the RNZAF base that he was attached to would have accumulated some institutional knowledge of sector whiteout. Further, there is no reason why the same thing can't occur in the Southern Alps, not far from Wigram.

The point is that Collins may well have known about sector whiteout, hence the comment he made at 18000 feet. This makes his spur-of-the-moment decision to go down through that hole and fly VMC, thereby putting himself between the cloud and the ice, even more careless. The letters VMC do not sit easily with "very hard to tell the difference between the cloud and the ice".

[prospector]

Even if Collins wasn't on that trip, the RNZAF base that he was attached to would have accumulated some institutional knowledge of sector whiteout


I am quite sure that could be said of whiteout in the general term, but as Judge Greene said in his summing up when Gordon Vette gave his evidence in Washington expanding on his sector whiteout theory

Since Capt Vette was apparently the first person to have presented to experts in perceptual phsycology and to the world at large the theory of sector whiteout with respect to an aircraft in level flight the phenomenom was entirely unknown prior to the crash of FLT 901.

[Flt.Lt Zed]

Collins was a navigator. Mahon proved that he was a very good navigator. But he missed many subtle clues that would have made him a very good pilot.
Blame 50:50.

[DozyWannabe]

The letters VMC do not sit easily with "very hard to tell the difference between the cloud and the ice".

The problem with that out-of-context clipping from the CVR is that it disregards the two unintelligible words immediately afterwards, as well as the unintelligible words in the previous sentence. Quoted from your post:

0018:11 – Captain: “Clouds come down a bit * * * may not be able to * * McMurdo. Very hard to tell the difference between the cloud and the ice * *”

It's true that your way of reading it is potentially valid, but equally as valid to my mind is the fact that at 16,000ft McMurdo Sound (and yes, McMurdo Station) would be obscured by the overcast below - and at 6,000ft they'd be right in the middle of the cloud and wouldn't be able to see anything (including Erebus). So at that point the only chance they had to follow their original flight plan would be to descend below the overcast, which they could only do with permission from Mac Central. Remember that sector whiteout is caused by refracted sunlight bouncing off the ice and the overcast - not the clouds themselves, which he is directly referring to.

So - on the understanding that this is a wild guess, but nevertheless a valid interpretation - it could be "Clouds come down a bit over Ross Island may not be able to visual ID McMurdo. Very hard to tell the difference between the cloud and the ice at 6,000".

@prospector - If Judge Greene had asked for testimony from the US military, RAAF and RNZAF pilots who went to McMurdo, then he'd have quickly discovered that while it was a relatively unknown thing on the line, it was a very regular occurrence down there.

[prospector]

@prospector - If Judge Greene had asked for testimony from the US military, RAAF and RNZAF pilots who went to McMurdo, then he'd have quickly discovered that while it was a relatively unknown thing on the line, it was a very regular occurrence down there.

Air New Zealand and CAA did liase with those operators, and that is why the approved let down area was as stated, and the minimum altitude was at 6,000ft. It may have been a regular occurence down there, but until Vette used it as an explanation as to why an aircraft flying VMC, with terrain obviously visible abeam and astern, could fly a perfectly serviceable aircraft into a mountain that everybody knew was there, it was called whiteout, Vette termed the phrase sector whiteout.

[DozyWannabe]

Vette may have brought it into common parlance, but the term existed in scientific circles before he began his investigation. The problem with your rigid interpretation of NZCA's rule is that it was knowingly flouted by ANZ on a regular basis and a dispensation to break it was given verbally at the very briefing attended by the crew.

To say they broke the CAA regulation in itself may arguably be technically correct, but in real-world terms the fact that they were given a dispensation to break it by a senior airline official means - to my mind - that the responsibility lies higher up the chain than the PIC on that occasion.

In the end the original finding of "pilot error" was based on certain assumptions that ranged from the dubious (that the briefed track went straight over Erebus) to the dead wrong (that they were in cloud when they crashed). Evidence that had as much potential to vindicate that conclusion as it did to scupper it was misplaced or destroyed - why?

[chris lz]

For pilots:

I still don't feel, despite the incredibly informative discussion, that I've completely graduated from Erebus 101. In previous posts I've made the assumption AINS is not as reliable as ground based navigation aids; and therefore is inadequate as a substitute for the purpose of a descent below MSA . Would all the pilots here agree with this? I believe the operative assumption of most pilots is "yes, it's not as reliable." If so, could one of you kindly spell it out in detail for us bystanders. Why specifically is it more dangerous? Is it the "drift" factor, the need to enter coordinates, or something else?

Thank You

[DozyWannabe]

@chris_lz:

I'll leave the technical discussion of procedure to the pilots, but the INS track was not used for the descent below MSA, which was offered by Mac Station under "radar vectors" and taken up under VMC rules by the crew. The INS track was re-engaged once they were at the assigned alititude, but this was probably only done to provide a guideline position as they re-checked their position visually (having checked and cross-checked on the descent to the best of their ability). Unfortunately the sector whiteout combined with their position gave them the impression that they were somewhere other than where they actually were - and the AINS track based on the changed co-ordinates meant that their backup plan (without their knowledge) had also been foiled.

[chris lz]

the INS track was not used for the descent below MSA, which was offered by Mac Station under "radar vectors" and taken up under VMC rules by the crew.



Yes, I'm quite aware of that. But what I would ask you, and others who take the "Vette position" is, in the absence of AINS, do you really think the crew would have had the confidence they did?

Hypothetical: the crew is in a simulator with no information provided by AINS, but are told they are nearing the Antarctic coastline somewhere within a 50 mile radius of the general McMurdo Sound area. They are shown the same view out of the cockpit that existed that day as they approach the area of Ross Island. Would they be able to establish a "positive fix" in this situation?


Real flight Hypothetical: the AINS malfunctions and stops working some 100 miles out from the area, before any land has become visible. If they arrive over the same location as where their actual real life descent began, would they still be entitiled to a "positive fix."?

Do you see what I'm getting at?

[prospector]

Dozeywannabe,

You have made your position adequately clear, please do not keep making statements like

. The INS track was re-engaged once they were at the assigned alititude,

It is, like a lot of your statements, completely without foundation.

You do not get an assigned altitude during a VMC descent, and you would never get assigned any altitude below MSA before you were identified by radar. And as has been proven beyond doubt, they were not on radar. Your theory of radar tapes being destroyed is farcical. It was physically impossible for the radar to get a line of sight return when they were behind Erebus and Ross Island.

But I thank you, I can now see why Mahon has so many adherents.
====================================================
Do you see what I'm getting at?

I can certainly see what you are getting at. Such a situation could develop, that is one of the reasons why the descent requirements were spelt out in such detail.

The positive fix was positively wrong.

[chris lz]

The positive fix was positively wrong.


Prospector, as a retired pilot, would you care to speculate in general terms on the shortcomings of AINS as compared with ground based radar.

Thanks

[prospector]

One should know the error rate of AINS, but it is a variable that cannot be checked until a ground based aid at a known fixed point is interrogated.

A ground based radar will have a system whereby its integrity can be ascertained with certainty, and will be regularly calibrated. The actual radar at McMurdo was normally only used for approaches. the maximum elevation was from memory only 30 degrees. If it was to be used as a surveillance radar it involved a considerable amount of adjusting.

In saying this I admit my exposure to AINS was limited to a couple of demonstrations of its capabilities whilst in the jump seat of a DC10 on a couple of long haul runs. Only the elite fleets were supplied with such state of the art equipment at that time.

It was the visual positive fix that was wrong., thus illustrating why the descent requirements were as they were.

[henry crun]

DozyWannabe: You are right, it is not a good reason, it is a very bad reason and does not stand up to even a superficial examination.
It implies the radar controller did not know the position of the high ground in the area.

[chris lz]

One should know the error rate of AINS, but it is a variable that cannot be checked until a ground based aid at a known fixed point is interrogated.



So, is this a fair translation:


1) AINS is inherently less trustworthy than ground aids

2) The primary reason is because ground aids are calibrated regularly.

3) Therefore, AINS should not be used a substitute for such ground aids.

I'm just trying to be extra careful here because it is these subtleties upon which many assumptions hinge.

[prospector]

chris lz,



1) AINS is inherently less trustworthy than ground aids

I would say so. It was developed for long range navigation, and was certainly trustworthy enough for that task. But I have never heard of an AINS approach to land procedure.

2) The primary reason is because ground aids are calibrated regularly.

That would be fair comment Normally if there is any problem with the aid it will stop transmitting its identity code and cannot then be used.


3) Therefore, AINS should not be used a substitute for such ground aids

Not for a let down below route MSA, especially not after a long time without any ground based aids to confirm its reading, and any doubt as to a visual positive fix.

[framer]

Which, as it turns out, was precisely what happened at the Mahon inquiry and became the reason for the political backbiting and desperation on the part of Muldoon and his old boys' network to try to get it overturned.

This is why I'm inclined to be more favourable to the NZALPA/Mahon version of events - ANZ did everything they could to prevent any deviation from their side of the story from seeing the light of day because the management knew it would be their careers on the line.

Dozy that is not a good reason to favour their position. That is an emotional response. Totally understandable but not necessarily objective. Good people make mistakes. Sometimes they have to assume part or all of the responsibility for those errors. In this case you argue they bear no responsibility. That is where several of us are disagreeing with you. Some of it lies with the crew.

the military habit of taking ultimate responsibility for everything should have been the norm for commercial operations too, but the fact is that it wasn't, in fact it never could be simply because of the size and complexity of the operations concerned. So in line ops a pilot *has* to trust the other departments implicitly to some extent, or the whole operation would grind to a halt.
This isn't true either. When I was in the Airforce (13 years ago now but I'm sure it's still the same) aircrew were highly dependant on other departments, in some cases more so than in the airlines.This is a totally different thing to being responsible for avoiding CFIT.
Totally.
In this case they performed all the necessary checks
necessary for what? Certainly not to keep them clear of terrain.

Here is a question that might help you understand my viewpoint;

When the aircraft requested and recieved a descent VMC, who was responsible for separating it from terrain?

[DozyWannabe]

@chris_lz:

I'll try to answer, but I think we're getting several hypotheticals away from relevant...

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. The computerised flight plans were sold as a safety measure as well as a cost-saving measure, but if you don't do it right then it means responsibility for navigation errors travels further up the chain than it did in the past (something that the regulations at the time did not recognise).

As far as your second question goes, I think they'd have turned back as soon as they positively identified an AINS fault.

@henry crun - Doesn't mean it didn't happen that way.

@framer - I phrased it badly (late night, sloppy thinking). I should have said it is *one* of the reasons. One of many others is that the crew had every right to do what they did on the basis of what they had been told by their superiors and nav section. The misidentification was partly down to rotten luck, which you can't do much about - but it was also partly down to very sloppy communication and organisation on the part of ANZ, which something could very much be done about. The pilots made a misidentification visually, but Vette's research proved that this was understandable and in my opinion (along with many others) this negates any idea that they should carry any blame. But there should have been safeguards - two of which were the radar station and the INS track. The failure to effectively communicate the change in planned track to the radar station or the crew lies squarely in ANZ's court. Had they done either or both of those things then in all probability the accident would never have happened.

That said, you may call it emotional - but it's valid in terms of verbal and conceptual reasoning as well. If ANZ had as much faith in the "pilot error" finding based on strict adherence to rules in the way that prospector, ampan and yourself seem to, then why behave in a manner that made it look like they had something to hide? It doesn't make sense.

Remember that Chippindale (and indeed Collins') RNZAF experience was more like 50-60 years ago, when military ops were a very different beast indeed (even airline crews carried full-time navigators back then!).

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. Hypothetically, if the flight was navigated DR from Auckland and they wound up in the wrong place after going VMC, then yes, some blame would be attached to the crew - but in this case the VMC starting point was supplied by a third party and it was not the starting point the crew expected, because they third party failed to inform either the crew or the radar station that approved the let-down that the starting point had changed.

[framer]

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.
They asked for, and got, the responsibility to seperate the aircraft from terrain visually. After that happens, as P in C it comes down to your own comfort levels with regard to how you identify where the ground is and where the aircraft is. I'm not actually aguing that the pilots should be blamed for this crash, just that some of the responsibility lies with them. The word some in that sentence is important. There wouldn't even be an argument if those in your camp didn't want complete absolution of responsibility for the crew who flew a servicable heavy jet at 1500ft, 250kts, below MSA, in a foreign environment, while navigating visually, into the mountain, after the met service had told them that the cloud was broken at 2000ft and there were snow showers in the area. Complete absolution is too much. It would be a very dangerous day for airline travel the day that the P in C didn't hold some responsibility for doing that.

[DozyWannabe]

They asked for, and got, the responsibility to seperate the aircraft from terrain visually.

But as far as they were aware, the only way they would have been given the opportunity to do so would be if the radar controllers had positively identified them.

There wouldn't even be an argument if those in your camp didn't want complete absolution of responsibility for the crew...

If this was an accident that happened 10, even 20 years ago then I'd be four square behind you - but in this case the accident occurred during a time of transition in commercial aviation - where the pace of progress outstripped the regulatory capabilities that could be brought to bear, and the airlines were telling their crews things that contradicted regulations, that contradicting them was OK - and that the combination of airline procedure and computer technology would keep them safe.

...who flew a servicable heavy jet at 1500ft, 250kts, below MSA, in a foreign environment, while navigating visually ... after the met service had told them that the cloud was broken at 2000ft and there were snow showers in the area.

Because they had been told it was safe to do so as there were several redundant layers of safeguards (radar, INS, computerised flight plan). All of which had been compromised on the day, but the crew didn't know that.

Complete absolution is too much. It would be a very dangerous day for airline travel the day that the P in C didn't hold some responsibility for doing that.

In this day and age you'd be right, and it's ironic that the Mahon Report in part provided the wake-up call that all was not well in commercial aviation. But the argument that the crew in this case should be apportioned no responsibility hinges on the fact that the redundant layers of safety promised to them by the company - which gave them the confidence to fly the route in the first place - had all been foiled by a chain of mistakes within the airline before the DC-10 had even left the ground and nobody told them.

[ampan]

AirNZ didn't tell him to fly down that hole. He made that decision all by himself, on a whim.

He started the day by not noticing that the 166E he punched in (or read out) was not the 164E he had plotted the night before. He didn't check the waypoint on the way down, probably assuming blue skies. When he didn't get those conditions and was going to go somewhere else, he was offered the radar letdown, and accepted. So that was the plan: Stay above MSA until the ground radar has confirmed the aircraft's position, then descend. With that plan, the position of the waypoint was not critical. If he had stuck to the plan, the aircraft would have flown over the summit of Erebus, whereupon the VMC radio would have burst into life. But then, about 40 miles out, he spots the sea ice through a hole in the cloud, and very shortly thereafter, he's orbiting down through it. So he dumped a good plan, with hardly any discussion with the rest of the crew, and replaced it with a very bad one, namely, his VMC/AINS plan. VMC below the cloud could not be assured, nor could the position of the waypoint, which was now critical. At that point, things on the flightdeck would have become very busy, hence the sounds of paper-shuffling and the references to high ground. This was probably why they did not notice that Beaufort Island was not where it was supposed to be, despite going past it three times.