It was not until 14th November 1979 that any question arose about the
McMurdo waypoint. On that day Captain Simpson had taken the second
November 1979 sightseeing flight to the Antarctic and something
persuaded him to raise the matter of the southern waypoint with Captain
Johnson, the Flight Manager Line Operations. There is a difference of
opinion as to precisely what was said by Captain Simpson to Captain
Johnson but according to the evidence of those in the navigation section
they thought that when they checked up-to-date records of the
co-ordinates at McMurdo Station against the original NV90 flight plan
what had been brought forward for notice was the small difference of 10
minutes of longitude to which reference has been made. They said this
represented the recent relocation of the tactical air navigation system
(the TACAN) at Williams Field. Accordingly Mr Brown of the navigation
section wrote into his worksheet a corrected position of 77° 52.7' S and
166° 58' E and entered those figures into the system on 16th November.
But the amendment was not made in the live flight planning system until
the early hours of 28th November. According to the members of the
navigation section all this was done without knowledge that the effect
of introducing the amended figures would be to override "164° 48'" and
so alter the co-ordinate by 2° 10' rather than 10'.
The Commissioner rejected the explanations he had heard to the effect
that Captain Simpson's information seemed to point to quite a minor
movement to the up-dated position of the TACAN. He stated that there
appeared to have been clear advice by Captain Simpson that the "false"
waypoint was 27 miles west of it. In addition he rejected the possible
explanation that the advice had been misinterpreted by Captain Johnson
to whom it had been given, and he adopted instead what in paragraph 245
he described as "the second explanation":
"(b) The second explanation is that both Captain Johnston and the
Navigation Section knew quite well that the McMurdo waypoint lay 27
miles to the west of the TACAN and that since his track had not
officially been approved by the Civil Aviation Division it should
therefore be realigned with the TACAN and then someone forgot to
ensure that Captain Collins was told of the change. Such an
interpretation means that the evidence as to the alleged belief of
a displacement of only 2.1 miles is untrue."
Then in paragraph 255 (d) he said this:
"If, as I have held, the Navigation Section knew the actual
position of the McMurdo waypoint as being 27 miles to the west of
the TACAN, then why did they not submit to Captain Johnson, or to
flight Operations Division, that the waypoint should remain where
it was? One view is that the Flight Operations Division expected,
in terms of Captain Johnson's letter to the Director of Civil
Aviation dated 17 October 1979, that the next edition of the Ross
Sea chart NZ-RNC4 would contain the official Air New Zealand flight
path to McMurdo, and that the safest course would be to put the
destination point back to the approximate location at which Civil
Aviation Division had thought it had always been."
That last suggestion was not put to any of the navigation witnesses at
the Inquiry. It implies that although those in the navigation section
believed the airline had been using a computer track to the west of Ross
Island for the past year because it was the better route they
nevertheless suddenly became uneasy lest knowledge of the matter would
now reach the Civil Aviation Division which had not given its official
blessing to the change. The idea apparently is that because the airline
might receive an official rebuke the officers in the section made their
own independent decision that the route must once again be directed back
over Mt. Erebus.
There was no evidence at all before the Royal Commission that the
approval of the Civil Aviation Division was needed for a change from the
direct Cape Hallett/McMurdo route. An affidavit in support of the
present application for review indicates that if the matter had been
raised at the Inquiry members of the navigation section would have
wished to present evidence from the Civil Aviation Division that "a
change of route from the direct route to the McMurdo Sound route would
not have required CAD approval and therefore could have been lawfully
accomplished by the airline without reference to CAD". That situation
may have been anticipated by the Commissioner himself for by reference
to the false waypoint and the earlier consequential movement of the
computer flight track down McMurdo Sound to the west he said that
although approval of the route by the Civil Aviation Division should
have been obtained it "would have been automatic" (paragraph 150).
In paragraph 255 (f) of the Report the explanation from all four members
of the navigation section is described in the following way:
"In my opinion this explanation that the change in the waypoint was
thought to be minimal in terms of distance is a concocted story
designed to explain away the fundamental mistake, made by someone,
in failing to ensure that Captain Collins was notified that his
aircraft was now programmed to fly on a collision course with Mt.
Erebus."
That finding is one of those directly challenged in the present
proceedings.