Air N.Z.’s attack may fall on report’s reasoning

Press, 30 April 1981, Page 1

Air N.Z.’s attack may fall on report’s reasoning

By

LES BLOXHAM,

travel editor

One of the main issues likely to be challenged by Air New Zealand in its appeal to the High Court is the reasoning behind the Royal Commission’s finding which exonerates the air crew and places the blame squarely on the airline’s management.

According to Mr Justice Mahon, the chief executive (Mr M. R. Davis) adopted the “fixed opinion” soon after the accident that the flight crew alone was to blame and that the administrative and. operational systems were in no way at fault.

. The Commission’s con- - elusion also conflicts directly with the finding of the Chief Inspector of Air Accidents (Mr R. Chippindale) that the “probable cause was the decision of the captain to continue the flight at low level toward an area of poor surface and horizon definition when the crew was not certain of their position and the subsequent inability to detect the rising terrain which intercepted the aircraft’s flight path.” At the risk of over-sim-plifying an exceptionally comprehensive report, “The Press” this morning reproduces on pages 4 and 5 extracts which reveal some of the reasoning behind Mr Justice Mahon’s findings in exonerating the crew.

Basically, the Commission found that the captain did not breach regulations in descending to 1500 ft. Evidence was given that crews had been

authorised from 1978 to descend to any altitude approved by the United States Navy air traffic controller at McMurdo. Furthermore, Mr Justice Mahon concluded that the flights had been descending to below 6000 ft with the full knowledge of the airline, the Civil Aviation Division, and the McMurdo authorities.

During the hearing, Mr Davis (and some other airline executives) denied all knowledge of the low-level nature of the flights. As the extracts show this was one of the points on which the chief executive’s credibility was challenged by Mr Justice Mahon.

His Honour regarded it as “significant” that before the publication of the chief inspector’s accident report, Mr Chippindale was not told that specific authority had been given, orally, during crew briefings for the flights to descend below 6000 ft. The fact that there was no written evidence available to prove such authority had been given was not regarded as conclusive by the Commission. He found that the airline had created the opportunity to get rid of documents which could have implicated airline officials as

being responsible for the disaster. He noted that counsel for the Airline Pilots’ Association had suggested it was “curious to find t’.e only flight documents recovered from tl.e ice favoured the case which the airline was attempting to advance.” A further vital area leading to the clearance of the pilots was Mr Justice Mahon’s interpretation of the cockpit voice recorder tapes. He disagreed with Mr Chippindale’s finding that they contained evidence that the crew did not know where they were.

The extracts printed today also include the reasons for his rejecting suggestions that the crew should have used landmarks to plot their position visually. Mr Justice Mahon, who visited Antarctica in November last year, was clearly impressed by his first-hand experience of the clear-air whiteout phenomenon as seen from the flight deck of a Royal Australian Air Force Hercules.

“By a coincidental similarity of weather I had been able to s' s and understand the dangerous visual deception with which experienced polar

pilots are all famih.r and which had without doubt confronted Captain Collins one year ago to that day,” he said. He concluded that the crew, shortly before the crash, saw ahead of them a pure white expanse of snow-covered ice running up to.tne 300 ft ice cliff which marked the beginning of the snow-covered slopes of Mount Erebi“The presence of the low overcast and the uniformly white . surface ahead caused the snow cliff to disappear and to become merged in a featureless white expanse. The crew may have seen a distant horizon but the snow-covered terrain most probably blended with pale overcast so as to make no horizon visible at all.

“Captain Collins decided to fly away, and the obvious lack of any urgency surrounding that decision makes it clear that he and First Officer Cassia believed that they had many miles of flat ice on either side and in front of them.

“By the time the ground proximity, system suddenly sounded, notning could save the aircraft,” said Mr Justice Mahon.

Extracts: Pages 4 and 5 also P.M.’s views P 3