THE PRESS TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 1981. The Erebus crash report

Press, 28 April 1981, Page 16

THE PRESS TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 1981. The Erebus crash report

The Mount Erebus air disaster caused much anguish to hundreds of people who were close to those who perished in the crash in November, 1979. Since then, an added anxiety for some has been the unresolved onus of fault. Yesterday’s issuing of the report of the Royal Commission, which inquired for many months into the nature and causes of the crash, removed some of the anxiety for many people; equally, it has directed attention to the faults of others.

In a decisive statement, the Commission cleared the crew of the airliner of blame. Mr Justice Mahon has set out the evidence that led him to this conclusion, which is different from that of the Chief Inspector of Air Accidents. The inspector found that the captain of the aircraft had made the decision to descend below the minimum specified safety height and to continue the flight at low level. These actions, as the Chief Inspector saw them, were the initiating factor and the probable cause of the crash. The commission heard further evidence which led it to a different conclusion, exonerating the crew. This alone justifies the fullness of the inquiry into the crash. The management of Air New Zealand comes out of the inquiry badly and it is likely that much more will be heard by way of protest at the findings. Most serious of the findings against some people in the airline are the charges that they told lies or destroyed evidence that would have been helpful to the inquiry. Mr Justice Mahon is clear in his report about the dominant cause of the crash: this was a change in the computerised course of the aircraft without the knowledge of the aircrew. Prosecutions may follow the findings.

To the credit of the airline, the DcrO aircraft has been found to have been completely safe and all concerned with maintaining and flying the aircraft were

fully competent and discharged their duties properly. Criticism, however, does not stop at the doors of the airline's management: the Civil Aviation Division of the Ministry of Transport has been found wanting for its failure to supervise the arrangement of the flights to Antarctica in that the pilots did not have suitable maps and that the division dropped its requirement that a pilot with Antarctic experience should be in command of the aircraft.

Air New Zealand' is never likely to revive the scenic flights to Antarctica and it may seem that any findings, recommendations, or recriminations today can have little consequence. This is not so. Apart from the general recommendations on the administration of civil aviation and on the investigation of air accidents, which may have a bearing on flying in general, the commission must be allowed to have served a painful but useful purpose in sorting out, from a huge mass of sometimes conflicting evidence and opinions, lines of responsibility that all people in the aviation world must bear in the interests of safety. In the ordinary course of events, under the present aviation accident regulations, the possibility of a judicial review of an inspector’s findings no longer exists. Only the intervention of the Government enabled the subsequent inquiry in this instance. In view of the wider scope of the commission's investigation, and in view of the different approach of a judicial officer and the entirely new findings that he has produced, some thought should be given to reviewing the regulations. 'Mr Justice Mahon has made a number of recommendations on the regulations and on the role of the inspectors of air accidents. While nothing can.be done to take away the pain of the disaster, much has been done to repair the reputations of the crew; more may now be done to revise the regulations under which accidents are inspected and assessed.