Appeal background

Press, 21 October 1983, Page 4

Appeal background

PA Wellington Mr Mahon, then a judge of the High Court at Auckland, was appointed in the second week of June, 1980, by the Government to head the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Air New Zealand DCIO crash in Antarctica in November, 1979.

He was originally required to report his findings by the end of October, 1980, but that was eventually extended to the end of April, 1981.

Among his terms of reference, the Royal Commissioner was required to establish:

© The cause or causes of the crash and the circumstances in which it happened. ® Whether, in the course of flight TE9OI, the aircraft was operated, flown, navigated, or manoeuvred in a manner that was unsafe or in circumstances that were unsafe. • Whether the crash... or the death of the passengers and crew was caused or contributed to by any person ... by an act or omission..

® Whether the practice

and actions of the Civil Aviation Division of the Ministry of Transport were such as might reasonably be regarded as necessary to ensure the safe operation of aircraft.

The commission heard evidence over 75 days both in New Zealand and visits to Britain, Canada, the United States, and also three days in Antarctica in November, 1980.

Mr Justice Mahon presented his 167-page report to the Governor-General on April 16, 1981. He cleared the crew, and particularly Captain Thomas James Collins, of blame. He said that the single dominant and effective cause of the crash was the mistake made by those airline officials who programmed the aircraft to fly direct at Mount Erebus and omitted to tell the aircrew. He was also critical of some Air New Zealand and Civil Aviation Division functions.

He criticised some of the evidence presented by the" airline. “Palpably false sections of evidence,” he said, “... originated... in

predetermined plan of deception... I am forced reluctantly to say that I had to listen to an orchestrated litany of lies.” The report led to the premature retirement of the airline’s chief executive, Mr M. R. Davis, and to a separate Public Service inquiry into the role of the Civil Aviation Division, which found that the division had committed no culpable act.

Air New Zealand applied to the Court of Appeal to have some of Mr Mahon’s comments overturned. In written judgments handed down on December 22, 1981, the Court found that the Royal Commission acted in excess of jurisdiction and contrapf to natural justice in finding there had been an “orchestrated litany of lies” by the airline. The Court also quashed a penal order by the commission for 6150,000 costs against the airline.

Mr Justice Mahon subsequently resigned from the Bench. The Government said it would pay his costs of appeal to the Privy Council.