Flight plan co-ordinates ‘engraved on my heart’

Press, 11 July 1983, Page 4

Flight plan co-ordinates ‘engraved on my heart’

Privy C@isb©H Erelms feesrasßg

NZPA staff correspondent London The five Law Lords hearing the Privy Council appeal of former New Zealand High Court Judge, Mr P. T. Mahon, have all done their homework, Lord Diplock, the Senior Lord, has assured counsel in the case. “Patrick, it may help you and all counsel to know how much homework we have done before we came into the room,” he told Sir Patrick Neill, Q.C., senior counsel for Mr Mahon, when the hearing started last week. He said they had all read Mr Mahon’s 167-page report of the Mount Erebus Royal Commission and the report of the Chief Inspector of Air Accidents, Mr Ron Chippindale, who investigated the 1979 disaster. They had also read the judgment of the New Zealand Court of Appeal, against which Mr Mahon is appealing, and the printed “case” for each of the parties submitted in advance to the Privy Council. This sets out the arguments counsel will be putting forward on behalf of their clients. Lord Diplock said some of the judicial committee had also read portions of the evidence to the Royal Commission. The lords have the transcripts of evidence and counsels’ submissions to the Royal Commission stacked in front of them on the table

at which they sit. Lord Diplock said at one point during the hearing he had read Mr Mahon’s report twice to see how he came to order Air New Zealand to pay 8150,000 toward the cost of the inquiry. This order was quashed by the Court of Appeal and Mr Mahon is asking the Privy Council to restore it. Lord Diplock and his fellow Law Lords. Lord Scarman, Lord Templeman, Lord Keith and Lord Bridge, have taken some of the mass of documents home with them to read over the week-end. The members of the judicial committee are normally seated before counsel and members of the public enter the lofty chamber at No. 9 Downing Street, where the appeals are heard, although they are not doing this in the Mahon case because there are so manycounsel. The practice in most courts is for the judges to enter after everyone else is seated. Lord Diplock and his colleagues normally leave the chamber before counsel and members of the public. However, he told counsel on Thursday he was asking them to “clear out” first while the lords sorted through the papers they were taking home. They showed by their questions and comments to Sir Patrick during the first three days of the hearing that they were already

familiar with the material in the Mahon report. When Sir Patrick spoke about flight plan co-ordi-nates, Lord Diplock commented: “Most of those are already engraved on my heart.” Lord Diplock, aged 75, is a tiny man who at times seems to almost appear behind the papers piled in front of him. He is invariable courtious. He apologised to the members of the bar for not inviting them to take their wigs off, as London sweltered on the hottest day of the year. “As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t make any difference,” he said with a smile. The lords, unlike counsel, do not wear wigs and gowns. Lord Diplock apologised on another occasion for forgetting to bow to counsel. And he recalled that the dozen counsel appearing in the Mahon case was the most he had seen there since he appeared as junior counsel in the long-running 1949 Australian banks nationalisation case when 19 barristers crammed on to the red-leathered seats. At 48, Lord Diplock became one of the youngest High Court judges to be appointed. A keen horseman, he used to take his favourite hunter in a horsebox behind his car when he went on circuit. “I must get in a bit of riding before going to court,” he once said. “It puts

me in a good humour.”’ Now he rides in a limousine with his other “noble friends,” as the lord refer to each other. The limousine deposits them at Downing Street about 10 a.m. and whisks them off to the House of Lords for lunch. Most of the counsel eat out of picnic hampers brought in by their clerks. Mr Mahon is not attending the hearing but his wife has been there most of the time. Also attending is Air New Zealand’s former chief executive, Mr M. R. Davis, who once said he hoped Mr Mahon’s “irresponsible rhetoric will haunt him for the rest of his life ...” Mr Davis several times shook his head in disagreement as Sir Patrick Neill made submissions. Air New Zealand’s former chairman, Sir Geoffrey Roberts, has a reserved seat at the hearing.

Captain lan Gemmell, who was chief pilot at the time of the Mount Erebus disaster, and is named with

Mr Davis as one of the respondents in the appeal, sits with Mr Davis and their wives, sometimes jotting down notes. Visiting New Zealand solicitors and tourists in summer clothes have dropped in from time to time to see the Commonwealth’s highest court — although now used by only a handful of countries — in session. At Friday’s session, Sir Patrick said it would be hard to find an issue which was “more squarely out on the table” at the Mount Erebus Royal Commission than the question of whether there had been low flying in the Antarctic by Air New Zealand and whether airline witnesses were telling lies about it or not. However, he said, this had not been discussed in the New Zealand Court of Appeal judgment.

Sir Patrick said the only reference he could find in the appeal judgment was a passage that said: “It is possible that some individual witnesses did give

some false evidence during the inquiry." However, he said, to the best of his knowledge the appeal judges had not gone into the conspiracy which Mr Mahon said he had found in evidence about low flying. The Privy Council judicial committee was told 10 Air

? New Zealand pilots had flown below 6000 ft in the e Antarctic before the 1979 s Mount Erebus crash. , However, eight other Air 1 New Zealand witnesses, in- . eluding former chief executive, Mr Davis, had said they were unaware of ' flights below 6000 ft. ' “R may be that one or

two of the Air New Zealand team said ‘we had heard a rumour but took no action’.” Sir Patrick said. He spent a good part of his address to the judicial committee on Friday going over evidence given to the Royal Commission about flights below 6000 ft. The hearing will resume today. ______