Navigation gear almost too good?

Press, 12 August 1980, Page 3

Navigation gear almost too good?

PA. Auckland, Navigational equipment in j modern jet aircraft worked! so well that it was a prob-i Jem to motivate pilots toI keep safety procedures ini mind, the Commission of In- 1 quiry into the Air New Zea-1 land DCIO crash in Antarc-.! tica was told yesterday. ! The Director of Civil: Aviafon (Captain E. T. Kip-1 penberger) said that motiva-j tion was difficult because al pilot might work for ICE years without experiencing! an equipment malfunction in' the air. Captain Kippenberger had. earlier said that the navigation equipment in the had been certified to a certain standard of perform- j ance. On a flight to Antarc-j tica it was possible for an>;

(equipment error of 11 miles jin any direction. : “Any pilot who trusts _it more than the certification I standards are for, is putting ihis life on the line,” said 1 Captain Kippenberger. I Counsel assisting the comI mission, Mr W. D. BaragwaInath: This change of pace ifrom scheduled opeations to lone requiring special safeguards, could they form part iof the explanation? Captain Kippenberger: (Yes, they may do. But I still ■have great difficulty seeing the reason for the initial decision to go on to iMcMurdo in adverse weather 'for sightseeing. He (the • pilot, Captain T. J. Collins) i needed a 7000 ft cloud base ; i for letdown yet he was given 2000 ft.

Captain Kippenberger had criticised Captain Collins’s conduct in the final stages of the flight in his evidence to the commission on August 1. The inquiry resumed yesterday after an adjournment of a week and counsel representing the Airline Pilots’ Association, the estate of the first officer, Mr G. M. Cassin, and Air New Zealand cross-examined Cap|tain Kippenberger on that evidence. Captain Kippenberger said that if Captain Collins had flown safely around Ross Island under visual flight conditions at 2000 ft his conduct would have still been criticised because it had been outside of the agreed conditions of the flight. I

Captain Collins had acted completely out of character: there was no- logical line of reasoning that would have put him in the position where he had finished up in low-level flying. But he did not think it followed that the whole crew had acted out of character. “The flight engineers were well aware of and concerned about the safety of the aircraft,” said Captain Kippenberger. “The first officer was being kept so busy that he had little time to consider the situation.” Captain Kippenberger said he had studied human factors leading to accidents and Idid not think the airline industry was as aware of the problem as it said it was.

Asked if flight documents on the DCIO had been sufficient to inform the pilot of the intended route, Captain Kippenberger said there 1 should have been at least a topographical map on board. But, he said,’ he was reluctant to criticise the extent of the crew’s briefing on thearea as this might have been on without his! I knowledge. ■ Of the alleged erroneous! . flight plan given to Captain Collins 19 days before the flight, Captain Kippenberger said he would not necessarily have expected Captain Collins to have raised a question about it. . But if Captain Collins had plotted the incorrect co-ordinates on a chart he would have queried it.

Asked if it was an inescapable conclusion that Captain Collins had had insufficient knowledge of his i track in relation to the teri rain. Captain Kippenberger Isaid this was correct up to a i point. i “But the whole of this latter part of the flight was so 'alien to good aviation practice that it is very difficult to know what the pilot was | thinking,” he said. Another first officer on the flight, Mr G. Lucas, should have been brought up to the flight deck to help with the work-load. The flight commentator should have been sent from the flight deck and it had also not been necessary for the second flight engineer to have been there.