Erebus book 'to right a wrong'

Maria Collins, the wife of Jim Collins, captain of the DC-10 that crashed on Mt Erebus in 1979, with their daughters (from left) Adrienne Collins, Elizabeth Collins, Kathryn Carter and Pip Collins. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

Broadcaster Paul Holmes is calling on politicians to clear the names of the Air New Zealand pilots involved in the 1979 Mt Erebus disaster.

In a new book, Daughters of Erebus - which tells the story through the eyes of pilot Jim Collins' family - Holmes says the airline's managers "lied and perjured in the biggest cover-up ever conducted in New Zealand corporate life".

He says Air NZ knew from the night of the disaster that a head office navigation error that morning had sent Captain Collins and co-pilot Greg Cassin on a collision course with Mt Erebus, killing all 257 on board.

Yet it concealed the truth from the accident investigation and a royal commission of inquiry headed by Justice Peter Mahon, who famously denounced the airline's evidence as "an orchestrated litany of lies".

Captain Collins' wife, Maria, says in the book she had no idea the airline would sacrifice her husband's reputation to save itself.

"So I was an idiot, a naive one, the one that's thinking, well, everyone will do as I do, tell the judge the truth."

Holmes told the Weekend Herald he believed the cover-up - which involved Air NZ shredding boxes of "surplus" documents connected with the crash on the orders of chief executive Morrie Davis - was "as crooked as anything I can think of in our history".

He hoped that 32 years on, most New Zealanders already realised the pilots were blameless.

But he suspected there was still lingering doubt, which was why he had put an open letter in the book calling on MPs for a parliamentary motion of exoneration for Captain Collins and First Officer Cassin.

"A lot of people might say - Holmes, why are you bringing all this pain up, removing the scab from the cyst again? Well the thing is, I've done it simply to right an old wrong.

"Part of the sadness and the awfulness of what happened was that it was family members cast out. Effectively what management did then was ditch two fine pilots, two loyal servants of the company ... because they could not reply."

Holmes said his book totally supported Justice Mahon's findings that Air NZ changed the navigation co-ordinates without telling Captain Collins, who had been briefed to fly the usual sightseeing route over McMurdo Sound, 40km to the west.

The crew never saw the mountain in front of them because - despite otherwise perfect visibility - it was hidden by polar whiteout, an optical illusion which the airline did not tell its Antarctic flight crews about.

Although the Privy Council "reluctantly" agreed with the Court of Appeal that Justice Mahon should not have accused the airline of a conspiracy, it strongly upheld his findings that the airline's mistakes - not pilot error - caused the tragedy.

In the book, published on September 5, Holmes describes the chief accident inspector, Ron Chippindale, who died in 2008, as a liar and "dishonest, cowardly and corrupt".

He told the Weekend Herald that Mr Chippindale, who wrote his report in secret, knew about the changed co-ordinates and whiteout conditions but chose instead to portray the pilots as lost and flying too low in thick cloud.

To reinforce this impression, Mr Chippindale rewrote the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder to include new and damning phrases - such as, "Bit thick here, eh Bert?" - that no one else could hear.