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Updated: May 7, 2025
Instead of a true heading from Cape Hallett to the NDB of 188.9° and a distance of 337 nautical miles, there would have been required, in respect of the changed McMurdo waypoint, a true heading of 191° and 343 nautical miles. Similar alterations would have had to be made in respect of a return journey to the true north." That is the matter already outlined.
Chippindale had reached the same conclusion as the Commissioner but for general reasons of logic whereas the latter was influenced by his finding that Captain Collins had made use of the New Zealand Atlas or a chart in order to plot the position of the waypoint and the route to be taken by the aircraft.
On balance, it seems likely that this transposition of the McMurdo waypoint was deliberate." There is reference at that point to a track and distance diagram indicating a track down McMurdo Sound, and the sub-paragraph then continues
If the altered waypoint had been adopted as a better position why was it then thought that it had to be discarded? Correction of co-ordinates It was not until 14th November 1979 that any question arose about the McMurdo waypoint.
Any such print-out would have been made before the alteration and consequently would have shown the longitude of the southernmost waypoint as 164° 48' E. The Commissioner accordingly concluded that Captain Collins had plotted a route down the Sound. No doubt this tended to reinforce his view that the Captain, flying on nav track, had never doubted that he was in fact over the Sound.
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.
Moreover from 1978 the flight plan, recording the various waypoints, stored in the Air New Zealand ground computer at Auckland actually showed the longitude of the southernmost waypoint as 164° 48' east, a point in the Sound approximately 25 miles to the west of McMurdo Station.
During 1977 the co-ordinates for each waypoint which comprised the Antarctic routes had not been stored on magnetic tape for automatic retrieval and insertion into the navigation computer units of the aircraft. Instead the flight plan was dealt with manually and upon issue to the aircrew at the time of departure was manually typed by the pilot concerned into the aircraft computer units.
He said in evidence before the Royal Commission that when he went on to take from his written worksheet the longitude co-ordinates of the McMurdo waypoint he mistakenly transcribed the correct figures of 166° 48' as 164° 48' by inadvertently typing the figure "4" twice.
This had the effect of moving the McMurdo waypoint 25 nautical miles to the west and once in the aircraft's system the navigation track which then it would follow from Cape Hallett when under automatic control would be over the Sound rather than directly to Williams Field.
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