“However, I propose to make no positive finding on this point.  I must pay regard to the circumstance strongly urged upon me by counsel for the airline in their closing submissions, namely, that if the alteration was intentional then it was not accompanied by the normal realignment of the aircraft’s heading so as to join up with the new waypoint.  As I say, I think this latter omission is capable of explanation but it is a material fact in favour of the Navigation Section which I cannot disregard, and it is the single reason why I refrain from making a positive finding that the alteration of the waypoint was intentional.”

It may be that in speaking of a single reason in the last sentence of the extract the Commissioner put aside his earlier unqualified conclusion that the matter set out in paragraph 230 (e) was also “a valid objection” to the suggestion that the waypoint had been moved deliberately.  In any event the eventual and significant finding concerning the matter is contained in the following sub-paragraph 255 (b): 

“I believe, however, that the error made by Mr Hewitt was ascertained long before Captain Simpson reported the cross-track distance of 27 miles between the TACAN and the McMurdo waypoint, and I am satisfied that because of the operational utility and logic of the altered waypoint it was thereafter maintained by the Navigation Section as an approved position.”

At this point it is necessary to explain the reference in that sub-paragraph to Captain Simpson; and then, if it be assumed that “the altered waypoint ... was thereafter maintained ... as an approved position”, it is necessary to understand the reasons given by the Commissioner for the change back to Williams Field.  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.  On that day Captain Simpson had taken the second November 1979 sightseeing flight to the Antarctic and something persuaded him to raise the matter of the southern waypoint with Captain Johnson, the Flight Manager Line Operations.  There is a difference of opinion as to precisely what was said by Captain Simpson to Captain Johnson but according to the evidence of those in the navigation section they thought that when they checked up-to-date records of the co-ordinates at McMurdo Station against the original NV90 flight plan what had been brought forward for notice was the small difference of 10 minutes of longitude to which reference has been made.  They said this represented the recent relocation of the tactical air navigation system (the TACAN) at Williams Field.  Accordingly Mr Brown of the navigation section wrote into his worksheet a corrected position of 77 deg. 52.7’ S and 166 deg. 58’ E and entered those figures into the system on 16th November.  But the amendment was not made in the live flight planning system until the early hours of 28th November.  According to the members of the navigation section all this was done without knowledge that the effect of introducing the amended figures would be to override “164 deg. 48’” and so alter the co-ordinate by 2 deg. 10’ rather than 10’.