Paul Holmes and Erebus

[hoggsnortrupert]

Framer:

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]

My goodness Framer:

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, 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]

Then I guess!

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!

[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]

Traffic accident:

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.

[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]

By Golly Dingo:

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

[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

[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]

Theory only:

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.

[flatfootsam]

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

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”