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.
Advice of the Change
A different matter was considered by the Commissioner in relation to the change made in November 1979 to move the waypoint back to the TACAN at Williams Field. As usual a signal was sent to the United States base at McMurdo with advice that the aircraft was to fly to the Antarctic on 28th November and the flight plan for the journey. And in the list of waypoints appears the word "McMurdo" in lieu of the geographical co-ordinates which had appeared in the equivalent signal for the flight three weeks earlier. The message had been prepared by Mr Brown, one of the four officers in the navigation section.