Crash-site visit consultation

Press, 5 December 1979, Page 12

Crash-site visit consultation

Parliamentary reporter Decisions as to who goes to the Antarctic to the site of the crashed Air New Zealand DCIO have all been made after consultation with the .special co-ordinating committee in Wellington, a spokesman in the office of the Minister of Transport (Mr McLachlan) has said. This was in response to questions about the need to send a second representative of the New Zealand Airline Pilots’ Association to the crash site. Mr P. Rhodes, a DC 10 captain, has been at Scott

Base since November 29, and he has been joined by Mr T. Foley, a domestic Air New Zealand pilot from Wellington. The decision to send Mr Foley was opposed by the director of the D.S.I.R.’s Antarctic Division (Mr R. B. Thomson) on the grounds that accommodation and services at Scott Base are already overtaxed, and that vyith one Airline Pilots’ Association representative already in Antarctica little could be achieved by sending a second. Suggestions had been

made that the sending of two representatives was a means of defusing tension between the international and domestic sections of the association — the DC 10 being an aircraft normally used on international flights, but the Antarctic trip being classed a domestic flight. A report from Scott Base had said Mr Thomson’s recommendation that Mr Foley not go to Scott Base had apparently been over-ruled by Mr McLachlan. “There is no question of the Minister’s' over-ruling

anybody,” the spokesman said. “The Minister has always acted in consultation with the co-ordi-nating committee. He was approached by the Airline Pilots’ Association, who requested from the start that two be sent. Only one could be sent at first, and the association has been told that there is no guarantee that either representative will actually get to the crash site,” the spokesman said. “All of these decisions have been made through the committee.”