New Zealand News

Air New Zealand also believes that the example of Ansett in obtaining a half share in the Newmans-Brierley-Ansett domestic airline consortium at home should be of sufficient weight to demand some form of reciprocal accommodation by the Australian Government.

The airline’s director of public affairs, Mr Bob Wallace, told Australian Aviation that the company planned to move very soon. “We have a combination of factors in our favour and we think it’s worth a shot. ” He said the airline would prefer not to mount a challenge through the courts.

Canberra’s rejection came as no surprise to a seemingly unsympathetic Minister of Civil Aviation, Richard Prebble, who said he would have been astonished if the airline’s proposal had been approved. Nevertheless, said Prebble, he was hopeful the Australian policy would change in time.

The Government announced its approval for the consortium’s plans to fly main trunk services in New Zealand, in late November. It added the proviso that the Newmans-BrierleyAnsett consortium build a heavy engineering base in New Zealand within two years.

The Minister said he hoped the arrival of the second major domestic would result in Air New Zealand becoming as efficient at home as with its international operations.

Meanwhile, Air New Zealand was due to announce an operating profit of $NZ105 million for 1985/86, down about a quarter from the previous year’s profit of $NZ133. 6 million. (After-tax profit was $NZ186. 5m though some $NZ81m of this was derived from the sale of 737 aircraft). The reduction was predicted a year ago by managing director Norman Geary and a further reduction is expected this financial year.

But intensive lobbying by the airline within the Labour Government appears to have had limited success. While the Government has shown no inclination to shield the airline from growing competitive forces (the arrival of Ansett at home and United internationally, among others), a restructuring of the airline’s financial arrangements was to feature heavily in the report. For several years the airline has complained bitterly about its low capitalisation; $140 million against total assets of more than $700 million. Sources said the capital would be increased substantially with dividend money which would otherwise have gone to the Government.

But the same Government sources made it clear that there was to be no partial privatisation of the airline – a continued desire by the company which has argued that a 25% sale of shares to the public would overcome its capital problems.

Bilaterals Advance

Government-to-government talks with three Southeast Asian countries are expected to result in a bilateral being written for only one. The airlines seeking rights in Auckland are Garuda, Thai International and MAS.

The talks, all within the space of two months, ended inconclusively, but the nod is expected to go to Thai International. Air New Zealand says that regardless of who the agreement is written with, it will not immediately mount reciprocal services.

The most pressing case was brought by the Indonesian Government which publicly accused the New Zealand Government of ‘dragging the chain’ and not practising what it preached in maintaining links. It offered landing rights for Air New Zealand in Bali.

Air New Zealand’s response was that the flow of passengers to and from Indonesia only amounted to 2000 a year and even the most vigorous marketing was unlikely to make a service economical.

Justice Mahon Dies

Peter Mahon, the Royal Commissioner for the stormy inquiry into the Air New Zealand DC-10 crash on Mt. Erebus died suddenly in August, at the age of 62.

His death came with a resurgence of the bitter debate that followed his 1981 report on the accident. The report resulting from the eight-month-long inquiry rejected the finding of pilot error advanced by the chief inspector of air accidents, Mr Ron Chippindale, and put the blame squarely on the airline. The principal cause said the then Mr Justice Mahon, was the alteration of the destination waypoint without the crew being told.

In addition, he charged the airline with a cover-up, using the now-celebrated phrase “an orchestrated litany of lies”. The cover-up finding was rejected by the Appeal Court and later by the Privy Council, but Mahon’s findings on the technical cause of the crash still stands. Following the Appeal Court rejection, Mahon resigned as a High Court judge.

By any standards, Mahon was a courageous and remarkable man. Outside the law, his main interest lay in classical literature, but veteran pilots were astonished at the facility with which he grasped the subtleties of navigation, airmanship and instrument flying and the way in which he followed up his inquiries with investigative sorties to Antarctica, America, Canada and Britain.

Rather than accept the previous finding that the pilot, Captain Jim Collins, had recklessly continued flying into an area of poor visibility, Mahon made an exhaustive study of the white-out phenomena and the airline’s less-than-adequate understanding of the problem, probing deeply into computer errors which had lain and been compounded within the company’s area navigation system for four years.

He was aided in this work by the independent research of another senior Air New Zealand pilot, Captain Gordon Vette.

One culmination was a remarkable flight to McMurdo by an RNZAF Hercules, exactly a year after the crash. By uncanny good fortune, the crew and legal party witnessed an exact duplication of the visual phenomena which misled the crew while flying well within the bounds of VFR.

Predictably, his report later became politicised and attempts were made within the former government to discredit him. But with a change in Government, his status was enhanced by a formidable list of judicial and quasi-judicial duties. Unfortunately, according to his family, his health was already wrecked by the bitterness of the Erebus affair.

The present onslaught against the Mahon finding is being made by a senior British airline pilot, Captain Derek Ellis, who has written at length in the BALPA journal ‘Log’ and who has recently had three long articles published in ‘New Zealand Wings’.

Ellis maintains that under the circumstances – lack of VHF and radar contact with McMurdo – Collins and crew had no right to make an orbiting descent into an unfamiliar area, even if visual conditions were suitable.

In essence, much of his case appears to be based on his toric concept of ‘command responsibility’ which surfaced early in the Mahon inquiry and was then prudently dropped. This concept ascribes to the person in command the need for a degree of omniscience, rooted as much in intuition as experience.

Ellis argues that Mahon and Vette began with a preconception of the crash cause and selected the facts to fit. To the reader, there’s irony in the impression that Captain Ellis’ finding seems flawed by the same fault.

Whatever the technical arguments, the Mahon finding set a precedent. It discredited the use of the command responsibility principle as a convenient ploy for placing the blame on crews, working under the constraints of time and high technology, while gross flaws can exist in ground planning and operational procedures.

If Captain Ellis’ claim that increasing numbers of pilots are questioning the Mahon-Vette conclusions is valid, there was no sign of this when Mr . Mahon’s death was announced. Among the first messages received were two long and panegyrical telegrams, one from the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations and the other from the Australian Airline Pilots’ Association.

At the funeral, the president of the New Zealand Airline Pilots Association, Captain Jerry Reece-Webbe, said a lesser jurist would have accepted the technical findings presented to the commission.

Instead, Mr Mahon sacrificed a judicial career, was spurned by the government and was magnificent in adversity.

The book subsequently written by Mahon, ‘Verdict on Erebus’, would have done credit to a lifelong aviation expert, said ReeceWebbe.

New General Aviation Record Set

A slim margin of ten minutes gave a crew of five the new record for a single-engine circumnavigation of New Zealand. The ’round the rocks’ flight was flown in early August by a standard Cessna 21O Super Centurion fitted with wing tip tanks.

The aircraft’s time for the (roughly 4,200km) flight from and to Auckland Airport was 13 hours, 2 minutes. The previous record of 13 hours, 12 minutes, was set a year before by the Manawatu Aero Club. The calm, cloudless day the team hoped for turned out to be wet and blustery, with final landfall being made in poor visibility on a water-laden runway. By careful juggling of weight and speed relative to wind conditions, they were able to maintain an average ground speed of more than 300kph.

The attempt was timed to coincide with the publication of a book written by Ewing and Macpherson: The History of New Zealand Aviation.

New Zealand Dakota Fleet Increases

A New Zealand penchant for putting veterans back into service has taken the ultimate step with two DC-3s forming the mainstay for a new freight charter airline, Speedlink.

Christchurch-based Speedlink plans to later offer passenger services. It began its first services to Wellington in mid-September with a freight contract to the railways. The airline is the brainchild of Captain Alan McGreevy, formerly an Air New Zealand 747 pilot and a former Safe Air pilot, Peter Vincent.

The DC-3s came from Rebel Air in Australia (ex VH-PWM) and Fieldair of Palmerston North. Fieldair was responsible for the reconfiguration of the aircraft – the machine it provided was formerly used for aerial agricultural work.

The establishment of the new service comes as Safe Air phases out its more modern Bristol Freighter fleet. According to Vincent, the scope for freight charter is “wide open”.

“The DC-3 is too famous an aircraft for New Zealand to do without,” McGreevy (rather cryptically) told journalists.

Rnzaf Strike Masters Grounded Again

The RNZAF has awarded Hamilton-based Pacific Aerospace the servicing contract for its 15 BAe Strikemasters – coincidentally as the crack-prone aircraft enter another period of grounding.

A year before, in August 1985, the Strikemasters, the RNZAF’s basic jet trainer, were grounded when cracks were detected near the mainplane roots. Four were cleared but eleven underwent repairs. Again, last March, three were temporarily withdrawn from service when the manufacturer advised that wing fatigue life had been reduced to 70% of the previously authorised figure.

The latest grounding came in August when the Service announced the discovery of yet another ‘major crack problem’.

The trouble has prompted the reconsideration of a 1983 Defence Review suggestion for an all-through turboprop trainer in the manner of the Tucano or PC-9 to replace the CT-4B Airtrainer and release the Strikemaster from the advanced training role.

Pacific Aerospace was due to begin accepting Strikemasters in October following the transfer of spares to Hamilton and the training of personnel in RNZAF procedures.

Briefs

• A first flight early next year is scheduled for the Hawker Fury purchased by a New Zealand syndicate led by John Greenstreet and Rob Booth. The aircraft, purchased in the US with a large package of spares, was formerly in the Iraqi Air Force.

The machine is being stripped down and rebuilt. First engine firing of the huge 18-cylinder Bristol Centaurus was expected this December. Meanwhile, Greenstreet and Booth have completed conversion onto type at Chino, California, under veteran US pilot Frank Sanders.

• A de Havilland Tiger Moth is to be the prize for the winner of the Singapore to Christchurch air race. The race is being organised by Christchurch Airport’s Golden Jubilee Air Show committee and is timed to finish in two waves as part of the 50th anniversary airshow next March 28/29. A handicap formula will make it possible for single-engined piston aircraft to race on equal terms with executive and commercial jets. The Tiger is valued at around $NZ45,000.

• Nearly ten years after the mysterious disappearance of a Cessna 404 Titan on a night courier flight from Wellington to Christchurch, wreckage identified as parts of the aircraft have been dredged up by a trawler off the north Canterbury coast. The pilot lost with the aircraft was Mr Vic Donnelly, of Auckland.