I just finished watching Calling Out Mayday's detailed description of the flight. Collins did decide to ascend out of the situation (prior to the GPS warning): unfortunately, due to his belief that he was in the Sound, it was too late.

Because of lack of training, they didn’t realize they were in whiteout conditions. They thought they were flying above flat ice.

But not necessarily the primary cause.

​@@cchris874as a pilot, pilot error was the primary reason for this crash, but AirNZ was culpable, just not as much as the Captain, and im a kiwi Captain

@@pirate3599 It's a question who made the biggest errors. In my book, the failure to train pilots about the dangers of polar flying is the leading cause. The captain did fail to strictly adhere to VFR, yes, but the deck was stacked him. It was a series of extraordinary coincidences that lead him astray. The same could hardly be said of the airline's decision to deliberately cut the pilots out of the loop regarding polar flying; just as Boeing did with the MAX. One was.a much more basic breach of safety, IMO.

That's only because we choose to look at it that way. There is no law that states this is the best way to look at the main causes of aviation accidents. The pilot was partly at fault, but the primary cause may well be the lack of pilot training in polar conditions.

His implecable playing ordained by God.!

Carlo met and became great friends with my brother, Neil shaw, Burlington Ontario who created the electronic shaw new concept, opus 28 organ, I am 88 now, Neil, 6years on!

I go to Cilne wvery September. Dis not know there was a Carlo Curley fan there.

It’s one of the lasting controversies of the crash. Air NZ insists the official flight plan always flew over Erebus, which is curious considering they’d be overflying an active volcano by only 3-ish thousand feet, and potentially out of VHF communications with McMurdo. Mahon thought this “Erebus track” was only intended for planning flights; and the McMurdo Sound flight path was actually the official one, and was changed only 5 hrs before departure on Nov 28 1979 because the area maps were due for review, and Air NZ didn’t want regulators to see they had published an unauthorized flight path down there

@@mattthrun-nowicki8641 I’ll still probably never understand. But what it boils down to, I’m guessing, is that the planner accidentally put in the wrong coordinates, and that got fed in wrong, he realised he made the mistake so he fixes it but he didn’t realise that he essentially sent them straight into the mountain because the flight plan was flawed to begin with. What I still don’t get is that, if the pilot was mapping out everything, surely he would have realised that the coordinates were flawed? Also now you’re telling me that Mahon thought the flight plan published by Air New Zealand was used to plot out the “official” air plan?

@@anthonybrunotheodd What follows is very long and detailed, because to truly understand this Waypoint topic, you sorta need the full picture. I’ve tried my best to make it flow in a manner that’s easy for a non-expert to read and understand. During the late 1977 flights (the first year of Air NZ’s Antarctica flights), the destination waypoint for McMurdo Station, Antarctica was situated near the NDB at Williams Field, which led to the navigation (NAV) track overflying Mount Erebus. However, before the 1978 flights, Air NZ’s flight plans were computerized, which allowed them to be stored and easily summoned on command. In the process of computerization, a different coordinate was entered for the McMurdo waypoint that led to the Nav track being shifted west by 27 miles. Rather than flying over Erebus, this new Nav track went west of Ross Island (where Erebus is located), down a 40-mile wide aquatic body named McMurdo Sound, and terminated near the Dailey Islands (which colloquially became the name of this second set of coordinates- the Dailey Island coordinates). All flight crews for subsequent flights (ie- pilots for all flights in 1978 and 1979) were briefed to fly this NAV track. Incidentally or not, this NAV Track was nearly identical with the US Military’s NAV track. At the Royal Commission, Air NZ’s Navigation and Flight Operations staff tried to argue that Dailey Islands waypoint represented an error, one that their staff was completely unaware of until the days leading up to the doomed flight. In essence, they were arguing that, to the best of their knowledge, the NAV track had always overflown Erebus. In my opinion, this assertion is ludicrous when you consider: 1) All the line pilots from 1978 and 1979 were given the Dailey Islands waypoint in their flight plan during their preflight briefings 2) Promotional maps (which the flight crews also received copies of) clearly showed a flight plan going to the west of Erebus and down McMurdo Sound to the Dailey Islands 3) The Dailey Islands was also the final waypoint on the flight plan that was transmitted to McMurdo controllers, who all claimed this was the only Nav track they had ever seen from Air NZ 4) During the Royal Commission, another navigation document (Exhibit 164) was produced that demonstrated a flight plan terminating at the Dailey Islands. Air NZ’s Navigation department were shocked that Exhibit 164 had been discovered, and could never satisfactorily answer how a second document with the Dailey Islands waypoint could exist if that waypoint was a one-time mistake that no one knew about. Think about it- Air NZ is claiming the Dailey Islands waypoint was a mistake that no one in the company knew about, yet every single pictorial representation of the Antarctic flights in 1978 and 1979 (which were produced by multiple different departments, at that!) showed a NAV track that flew to this exact point! Not a single piece of briefing data given to the 1978 and 1979 pilots depicted the NAV track as flying over Erebus. Nada. Zero. But there’s one big problem- despite the pilots getting promotional maps that depicted their NAV Track in pictorial form, these technically don’t constitute a navigational chart that pilots could use in flight…meaning, a map that contains the NAV Track superimposed on a proper topographical map (which Air NZ was obligated to provide for their flight crews for flights but never did for flights to Antarctica). Knowing this, Capt Collins copied down the coordinates of all the waypoints during his pre-flight briefing (which occurred 3-ish weeks before his doomed flight) and, on the night before his flight, formally plotted them on a proper topographical map and atlas. The NAV Track he plotted terminated at the Dailey Islands waypoint, and depicted a flight that flew down McMurdo Sound, 27 miles west of Erebus. Unbeknownst to Collins, sitting on his living room floor plotting his NAV Track the night before his doomed flight, a chain of events had been set in motion which would ultimately lead to his death. According to Air NZ’s account, this chain of events began with an Antarctic flight that occurred 2 weeks prior to his, when another Air NZ flight, piloted by Capt. Leslie Simpson, was heading down to Antarctica. Though Capt. Simpson did not plot the waypoint coordinates on a map (not a single pilot aside from Collins did, as this was thought to be superfluous since Air NZ was required to provide a topographical map with the NAV Track superimposed on top…which they never did, as explained above!), he eyeballed the coordinates in his flight plan and mentally related them to a map in his head. His expectation was that, once over the Dailey Islands waypoint, he would roughly be a few miles west of the McMurdo TACAN (a military navigational aide). Once his flight got to Antarctica, he tested his prediction out and found that the actual distance was many miles more (likely due to difficulties mapping the extreme curvature of the Earth near the South Pole). Once he landed, he phoned up Capt Ross Johnson (one of Air NZ’s executive pilots serving as a flight manager, and one of the two pilots who had briefed his crew and Collins’s crew at their pre-flight briefing), advising him to consider warning the pilots of upcoming Antarctic flights of this larger-than-expected distance from the navigational aide (aka- “cross-track distance”). His intention was to make any pilot who, like him, had done a similar mental “plotting” of coordinates aware that, should they find a similarly larger-than-expected cross track distance, not to waste time trying to recalibrate their navigational systems thinking they might be malfunctioning. This was important, since these Antarctic flights pushed the DC-10 to it’s max range on full fuel tanks. Wasting time recalibrating navigation equipment = less time for sightseeing. However, what somehow ended up happening is that the Nav Track got changed again only a few hours before Capt. Collins’s departure. This time, the final waypoint was moved from the Dailey Islands to the TACAN referenced above. Neither Ross Johnson nor Air NZ could satisfactorily explain how and why this happened. Ross Johnson contradicted himself multiple times in explaining his actions after getting off the phone with Capt. Simpson. He first explanation was captured in an affidavit he dictated mere days after the crash in which admitted Simpson’s account was true and that he was aware that the distance between the Dailey Islands waypoint and the TACAN was 27 miles. He later changed his story while testifying at the Royal Commission, insisting Simpson instructed him to change that final waypoint to the TACAN…though it’s crazy to think about a line pilot ordering an executive pilot around!). The Navigation department staff (specifically, the same guy who “mistakenly” programmed the Dailey Islands waypoint in the first place!) testified Johnson instructed him to move the waypoint from the Dailey Islands to the TACAN, telling him it was only a 2 mile difference from the NDB (where they claimed they still thought the final waypoint was)…a distance so negligible, they wouldn’t have to even mention it to the pilots. Stop and think about this, though. Johnson first says he was aware that Simpson told him the distance between the final waypoints (the Dailey Islands) and the TACAN was 27 miles (which is NOT a negligible distance), but then somehow told the navigation staff they didn’t have to tell the pilots because the change in distance was only 2 miles (claiming that he thought the final waypoint was at the NDB)? This makes absolutely no sense. 2 miles does not equal 27 miles. If they knew the final waypoint was 27 miles away from the TACAN (ie- where the navigation department claimed Johnson told them to move the final waypoint), then not informing the pilots is completely negligent. On the morning of the fateful flight, Capt Collins and his crew arrive at Auckland airport, and proceed to Flight Dispatch where they get their flight packet, which includes their flight plan which, unbeknownst to them, now has the final waypoint 27 miles east from where they were briefed, which would lead to them flying over Erebus. Importantly, when there are flight plan modifications, a “Ops Flash” advisory appears at the top left of the revised flight plan to make the pilots aware of the change…this DID NOT HAPPEN on the day of flight- there was no Ops Flash. (Air NZ’s explanation for this was basically to say a second parallel mistake was made that had nothing to do with the changing of the coordinate, but I suspect most people at the Royal Commission didn’t buy it). There was no requirement at that time for Air NZ pilots to manually plot their flight plan coordinates on the day of the flight- again, the presumption was that this would be taken care of by the airline providing them with a copy of a topographic map with their NAV Track superimposed…which the airline never did. Instead, the requirement was for the the co-pilots to enter the flight plan coordinates into the flight management computer (FMC) onboard the airplane, and verify that the programmed numbers matched the coordinates on their paper flight plan (ie- that no mistakes were made inputting the numbers into their FMC). Presumably, they did this, and verified the numbers matched. They would have no reason to suspect any discrepancies between the numbers they just punched into their FMC and the flight plan they had been shown at the pre-flight briefing, since no one at flight dispatch that day alluded to any changes, and there was no Ops Flash on the flight plan printed out that day which they punched into their FMC.

Both routes were "deliberate" and the changes were deliberate, but only the fightpath over Erebus was approved by the regulator.

It wasn’t just an article. It was the information shared with the pilots, the vast majority of which knew nothing about an MSA at 16,000 or 6,000 feet