to tell the air crew was a strategy which succeeded to a very considerable degree. The chief inspector discovered these facts after he had returned from Antarctica on or about 11 December 1979. In his report, which was published in June 1980, the chief inspector referred to what he termed the 'error' in the McMurdo destination point, and the fact that it had been corrected a matter of hours before the flight left Auckland."
It is difficult to understand why the Commissioner considered "this silence over the changing of the co-ordinates and the failure to tell the air crew" had been "a strategy which succeeded to a very considerable degree". The information had been given to the chief inspector immediately on his return from Antarctica. That much is acknowledged in the two sentences that follow. It becomes apparent, however, that this was criticized not because the information had been kept away from those to whom it most certainly had to be given, those charged with the important responsibility of inquiring into the causes of the disaster. Mr. Davis was criticized for nothing more than his failure to release the material to the outside world. That is made plain by a subsequent statement towards the end of the Report which leads on to the very severe pronouncement in paragraph 377 that the Commissioner had been obliged to listen to "a predetermined plan of deception ... an orchestrated litany of lies". The relevant passage is in paragraph 374:
"The fact that the navigation course of the aircraft had been altered in the computer had been disclosed by the chief inspector in his report dated 31 May 1980, 6 months after the disaster. But it was not until the Commission of Inquiry began sitting that the airline publicly admitted that this had occurred."
The effect of the absence of general publicity that the information was given rather than its ready provision by the airline to Mr. Chippindale on the day after his return from the crash site is described in the remaining portion of paragraph 48 which continues in the following way:
"Then the chief inspector went on to say in his report (paragraph 2.5):
'The error had been discovered two flights earlier but neither crew of the previous flight or that of the accident flight were advised of the error by the flight despatcher prior to their departure.'
The chief inspector did not make it clear, however, that the computer flight path of TE 901 had been altered before the flight, and that the alteration had not been notified to the air crew. Had that fact been disclosed in the chief inspector's report then the publicity attending the report would undoubtedly have been differently aligned ... the news blackout imposed by the chief executive was very successful. It was not until the hearings of this Commission that the real magnitude of the mistake by Flight Operations was publicly revealed."
Concerning that last part of paragraph 48 it seems that the Commissioner's remark immediately following the extract from paragraph 2.5 is inaccurate. It appears to suggest either that the chief inspector was unaware of the fact that the alteration to the co-ordinates "had not been notified to the air crew"; or that if he had been made aware of that fact then he had failed to bring it to public attention in his report as the next sentence suggests. But Mr. Chippindale was both aware of all this and he said so. In paragraph 1.17.1 he explicitly stated:
"This error was not corrected in the computer until the day before
the flight. Although it was intended that it be drawn to the attention of the previous crew, immediately prior to their departure this was not done, nor was it mentioned during the pre-flight dispatch planning for the crew of the accident flight". (Emphasis added.)