Somewhere in all the smoke and fire, myths developed that remain to this day. The Government and the airline's supporters hailed the Chippindale report as the only true account of the disaster. Justice Mahon, increasingly isolated, appealed to the Privy Council, which, in a damning decision in October 1983, said he had "failed to observe the rules of natural justice" _ about the harshest thing that could be said about a judge.Īir New Zealand declared itself vindicated. The court stridently criticised the judge, ruling he should not have accused the airline of a cover-up without putting the allegation to its witnesses at the royal commission. Pilots and aviation experts took entrenched sides, some supporting the Chippindale report and blaming the pilots, others supporting the Mahon report and blaming the airline.Īir New Zealand went to the Court of Appeal in an attempt to have the Mahon findings overturned. Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon, a friend of Mr Davis, savaged Justice Mahon and his report. Morrie Davis, the airline's high-profile chief executive, felt forced to resign. Political and public pandemonium followed. "I am forced, reluctantly, to say that I had to listen to an orchestrated litany of lies," he wrote in one of the most thundering denunciations penned in the report. In phrases that rang around New Zealand and around the world, Justice Mahon, an eminent judge of the High Court, said Air New Zealand had presented his royal commission with "palpably false evidence" that originated "in a predetermined plan of deception" that could not have been the result of mistakes or faulty memories. And they were fooled by the optical illusion known as "whiteout", caused by the sun shining from behind on to snow and ice below and clouds above, making it look as if they were flying over endless flat ice when, in fact, the ground was rising quickly.
They believed they were over McMurdo Sound, the route of the previous sightseeing flights, the route Captain Collins was told he was going on at the flight briefing a few days before. Justice Mahon said this failure had two causes. Royal commissioner Justice Peter Mahon, whose report was published almost a year after Mr Chippindale's, stunned the nation by accusing Air New Zealand of a massive cover-up of a computer blunder he said caused the crash.Įxonerating the pilots of all blame, Justice Mahon said the computer navigation track of TE901 had been altered just before the flight, shifting the flightpath from the safe, flat expanse of McMurdo Sound to a collision course with Mt Erebus, without the pilots being told of the change.Ĭaptain Jim Collins, First Officer Greg Cassin and everyone else on the flight deck, including seasoned Antarctic explorer Peter Mulgrew, completely failed to see the looming disaster ahead of them. The controversy that followed the answers has barely died all these years later.Ĭhief air accident inspector Ron Chippindale's June 1980 report on the crash blamed the pilots, accusing them of flying too low in flagrant breach of airline orders, while not knowing where they were.Ī diagram published with his report, showing the plane apparently flying in aimless circles, helped fuel the perception that TE901 smashed into the mountain while it was hopelessly lost in clouds.
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