'An orchestrated litany of lies’

Press, 28 April 1981, Page 1

' An orchestrated litany of lies’

“An orchestrated litany of lies” was how-Mr Justice Mahon described some of the evidence he had heard from the executive pilots and members of the navigation section of Air New Zealand.

“In this case, the palpably false sections of evidence which I heard could not have been the result of mistake or faulty recollection,” he said. “They originated, I am compelled to say, in a predetermined plan of deception. “They were clearly part of an attempt to conceal a series of administrative blunders and so, in regard to the particular items of evidence to which I have referred, I am forced reluctantly to say that I had to listen to an orchestrated ditany of lies.”

There was no doubt that the chief executive (Mr M. R. Davis), shortly after the disaster, had adopted the fixed opinion that the flight crew alone was to blame, and that the administrative and operational systems of the airline were nowhere at fault.-

“Such an attitude, emanating from this very able but evidently very autocratic chief executive, controlled the ultimate course adopted by witnesses called on behalf of the airline,” said his Honour.

He referred specifically to the evidence given by the executive pilots and by members of the navigation section.

That the navigational course of the aircraft had been altered by the computer had been disclosed by the Chief Inspector of Air Accidents (Mr R. Chippindale) in his May 31, 1980, report, six months after the disaster, but it was not until the Commission of Inquiry had begun sitting that the airline publicly admitted that this had occurred. "Hence the tactics adopted by the executive

pilots and by the navigation section witnesses which were designed to prove, if they could, that the computer mistake and its consequences could and should have been avoided by the crew, and that Captain Collins and his co-pilot had committed a very long catalogue of aviation blunders and malpractices,” said his Honour.

“I can visualise without difficulty not only the extent but also the nature of the managerial pressure exerted on these witnesses,” he said. The witnesses had all declined to admit that there had been any mistake or omission on their part which could have been a material cause of the disaster. In the end, the tactics of attributing everything bad to pilot error had come to nothing. “But I cannot let pass the nature of the evidence which airline witnesses tried to persuade me to accept,” his Honour said. “There were aspects of that evidence which I have been obliged totally to reject.”