Originally Posted by Samson
 Prime culprit perhaps but not entirely responsible. Partly to blame were 1. The person(s) who changed the INS track without telling the pilots 2. The person(s) who inadvertently programmed even the new track incorrectly The result of these two errors put ZK-NZP on a track 43 km east of where they should have been, so rather than flying straight along the approved track to McMurdo Sound, they were flying straight at Mount Erebus. 3. Whoever scheduled two pilots, neither of whom had ever been to Antarctica, to fly together on their first ever flight there. The Air National Guard (and before them US Navy Squadron VXE-6 would NEVER have sent an aircraft to Antarctica with a pilot on board who had not flown there at least three times before. Flying near the poles is like no other type of flying you are ever likely to do. Furthermore, unlike the ANG and the USN, ANZ did not give their pilots any training whatsoever regarding flying in sector whiteout conditions. This is just madness. The aircrew had no idea what to expect, and so when they were flying along straight at the base of Mr Erebus looking at the white of its snowy slopes rising away, what they thought they saw out of the forward cockpit windows was exactly what they were told they would see; what they expected to see, the white expanse of the Ross Ice Shelf stretching away in front of them. When they arrived at Lake Lewis, right in front of Erebus, they though it was McMurdo Sound. A few minutes later, it was all over. As is usual with any air accident, it is the result of a series of errors, mistakes or oversights, each of which might not have had any consequences, but when they occurred together in the order they did on that day, it resulted in a "perfect storm" of cock-ups and the loss of the aircraft with over 250 lives. ► If the non-notified changes to the track are not made, the accident never happens. ► If the programming error is not made, the accident never happens. ► If Collins and Cassin are properly trained in flying during sector whiteout conditions, or of they have a pilot on board who has experience there, they might have understood what they were looking at, and the accident might never have happened. ► If Collins had not descended to 2,000 feet without authorisation, the accident might have been avoided. however, Flight 901 WAS authorised to 6,000 feet, and Mt Erebus is over 12,000 feet, so they still might have crashed anyway. Justice Mahon coined his famous phrase "an orchestrated littany of lies" because executives in Air New Zealand tried to cover up their mistakes, particularly the first two. The bastards lied through their teeth to the Royal Commission of Inquiry |
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► OCCAMS Razor - 9/11 was a terrorist attack by Islamic extremists organised by Osama Bin Laden; the Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon; JFK was assassinated by a single gunmen, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone. ► "Conspiracism is a shortcut to the illusion of erudition." - JayUtah ► Heisenberg's Law - The weirdness of the Universe is inversely proportional to the scale at which you observe it, or not. |
On first reading I thought the post by a New Zealand man who calls himself smartcooky was simple and enlightening essay on how to understand fully the complex Erebus disaster. The piece was taken from a Lundy thread which had wandered from topic. I liked the straight forward detail and the brevity of words. After 1 or 2 more reads, I saw, that whether smarkcooky had intended to do so or not (I suspect he did), that the piece had struck a note which could contribute a lot of thought to a revelation that the Erebus disaster, although in an entirely different context, was very similar to the Lundy case and others - false moves followed by deceit.
It's easy to associate the non notified changes to the flight path, and the mistake of entering a programming error into the computer flight path as the complete mishandling of the critical shirt evidence in the Lundy case. The programming glitch for the flight path is mirrored by the Lundy shirt being sent for sampling in the wrong laboratory, one not specific to, or approved, for forensic testing. Earlier in New Zealandf Dr Teoh had already said that the Lundy shirt was not suitable for testing, that the spots were too down graded to be relied upon. Regardless the shirt was sent off to an American Lab for testing with an instruction that it had brain matter present on the breast and sleeve - something no accredited New Zealand scientist could confirm. That was an instruction that came from the officer in charge of the case, Grantham. Ultimately it would be similar to a programing error, one that would send the whole Lundy case off course, deliberately. Grantham had already been turned down in NZ and overseas by approved forensic facilities, so he took a different flight path, programmed the computer with an instruction that would give a desired result for Grantham and a miscarriage of Justice for Lundy.
So the changing of the flight path and not telling the pilots in Erebus, was a blueprint of sorts for a change to Forensic Science in the NZ Lundy case where the Courts were unable to conceive, that Lundy, had evidence against him that had been improperly handled in NZ and illegally tested in the States according to FDA protocols.. Telling the unqualified American Dr Miller, to look for brain matter because Christine and Amber Lundy had been attacked to the head with such ferocity that brain matter had splattered from their skulls indicated to Miller exactly what to look for, or interpreted another way what to find. He did so, using a novel and unapproved in his own country method which still doesn't have approval 15 years later. Why, because no approved authority in the USA, as in New Zealand considered that the results of the testing could be relied upon. Ironically, a test over a decade later found that a single shirt spot was to hold faint traces of animal central nervous tissue devoid of blood and neurons - in other words modified in someway, most likely simply by the cooking or eating of household food.
Miller had no objections to testing a sample that had incubated in a plastic bag for 54 days and which had already been declared unsuitable for testing by Dr Teoh back in Grantham's home town, Palmerston North. Miller had no concerns that the samples had never been controlled in a forensic pathway to his laboratory, didn't care. His unaccredited and unrecognised forensic skills were omniscient, he could look into the past and see that nothing had gone wrong with the samples he was testing, they hadn't been planted there, they were unaffected by deterioration although allegedly similar samples within the house were deteriorated within hours as is the norm for central nervous system material out of the body, he knew all of this. He knew his laboratory and testing wouldn't produce contaminated results, and he didn't need any certification to tell him so. If he was getting paid everything was fine. He had no objections to being told what to look for, it never occurred to him apparently that was exactly opposite to approved forensic testing in the States and the United Kingdom, or that verification testing was not undertaken by himself to prove himself right. He set the co-ordinates the way he wanted to and the New Zealand Courts accepted it like meek lambs. They had nothing to lose either. Afterall, it wasn't their rights under NZ Bill of Rights Act for citizens not to be experimented upon with novel science or procedures, indeed it was not them sent off to fly into Erebus in the perfect whiteness of unexpected death.
So to move to point 3 in smartcooky's list of 3 things that went wrong in the Erebus disaster where he points out:
3. Whoever scheduled two pilots, neither of whom had ever been to Antarctica, to fly together on their first ever flight there. The Air National Guard (and before them US Navy Squadron VXE-6 would NEVER have sent an aircraft to Antarctica with a pilot on board who had not flown there at least three times before. Flying near the poles is like no other type of flying you are ever likely to do.
Furthermore, unlike the ANG and the USN, ANZ did not give their pilots any training whatsoever regarding flying in sector whiteout conditions. This is just madness. The aircrew had no idea what to expect, and so when they were flying along straight at the base of Mr Erebus looking at the white of its snowy slopes rising away, what they thought they saw out of the forward cockpit windows was exactly what they were told they would see; what they expected to see, the white expanse of the Ross Ice Shelf stretching away in front of them. When they arrived at Lake Lewis, right in front of Erebus, they though it was McMurdo Sound. A few minutes later, it was all over.
Of course Grantham and Miller had never 'flown' in the world of Forensics, they had no licence to do so. Sadly the Erebus pilots had never flown to Antarctica but they were still sent there. All the protocols of ANG and USN that smartcooky refers, regarding training and participating in flights to Antarctica, were never afforded the NZ pilots - they had no experience in sector whiteout conditions, it was madness according to smartcooky and who could disagree. In context to Lundy, did Miller or Grantham have experience to overlook the advice of the Pathologist Dr Teoh in NZ, overlook textbook handling of quickly deteriorating brain matter by chucking it in a plastic bag and leaving it to incubate more than it already had before entering the bag. It wasn't their lives on the line. Just as it wasn't the Air New Zealand person who changed the flight co-ordinates but didn't tell the pilots, nor the person that inputted the wrong flight path that was inconsistent with the change that sent nearly 300 people to an unforgiving risk. Neither Grantham nor Miller had put themselves at risk when they launched the flight of unapproved testing to exclusively find what they had already decided was on Lundy's shirt.
To use more from smartcooky on Erebus. He says if the non notified changes to the flight plan were never made no accident happens, In Lundy, if the refusal by verified for forensic purposes laboratories is not manipulated by visiting a not verified facility no accident happens, no contamination takes place, imminent scientists do not say that the testing is unreliable, as are the results. Further, if Grantham is trained in safely handling fragile forensic samples, he does not put them in a plastic bag and lock them in a safe away from the exhibits officer for surrender to a authorised laboratory as quickly as possible knowing the short time available to preserve them for testing, would know by what Teoh said that the safe time had already passed. If Miller is trained and certified as a forensic tester, he does what other such personnel from approved facilities do - refuses to test because the passage to him has not been forensically safe or approved. He also contacts the FDA to report the matter because he recognises the danger of the treatment of the samples being tested anywhere in the USA, sends Grantham back to NZ to try and hold the charge against Lundy together with real evidence, or simply do the right thing and withdraw charges against him as advised by Dr Teoh.
In Erebus there was a cover up, there were also mistakes. In Lundy there was the coverup as to what Dr Teoh had said. In the Courts there was the fatal mistake to accept evidence that was not, and is not, acceptable in an American Court. Remember the Americans trained their Antarctica pilots as smartcooky points out. They also train their forensic scientists and won't let them test or give evidence on forensic matters unless they are approved and use an approved test facility. Are NZ Courts somehow wiser than the American Courts of FDA? As wise as Air New Zealand was to send untrained pilots in an hazardous area where they had never flown before and with passengers aboard?
The year Erebus crashed was the year Arthur Thomas was released from prison, pardoned for crimes he didn't commit. But it was also the time when another cover up began by Air New Zealand, one tragedy replacing another with the Crown at the helm. It would follow that a foremost mind of New Zealand history would pick apart the Erebus tragedy and immortalise the words 'an orchestrated litany of lies.' The release of Thomas and those famous words of the late Peter Mahon were not, as history has unfortunately shown, appreciated for their full value because both innocent men and women still go to New Zealand prisons accompanied by a litany of lies and courts can still act without the Judicial insight that Peter Mahon contributed against the tide of turning away from or covering over false flight paths.
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