Minister backs clearing Erebus pilots' names

Maurice Williamson. Photo / APN

Government Minister Maurice Williamson has supported calls to clear the names of the Air New Zealand pilots involved in the 1979 Mt Erebus disaster.

Broadcaster Paul Holmes asked MPs for a parliamentary motion of exoneration for Captain Jim Collins and co-pilot Greg Cassin in his book Daughters of Erebus.

Airline Pilots Association president Glen Kenny agreed, saying the findings of Justice Peter Mahon's royal commission of inquiry should replace the original report by chief accident inspector Ron Chippindale as the official cause of the disaster, which killed all 257 on board.

Mr Chippindale blamed pilot error but Justice Mahon found Air New Zealand was to blame for changing the navigation co-ordinates without telling the pilots.

Asked this week whether he would take any action, Prime Minister John Key said it was difficult to revisit historic cases, particularly as the Government had to be careful that in righting one wrong, it didn't create another.

He compared the long-running controversy with the 1970 murder of Harvey and Jeannette Crewe, whose daughter Rochelle still wants to know who killed her parents.

Mr Williamson, who worked for Air NZ at the time of the accident and went on to be Minister of Transport, said he originally believed he had corrected the official record by tabling the Mahon Report in Parliament in 1999.

He later learned both reports held equal status with the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which was unsatisfactory but beyond his power to fix as he was no longer in charge of transport.

However, he did not believe a parliamentary motion of exoneration, as suggested by Holmes, would achieve much.

The minister said Justice Mahon's finding on the systemic causes of crashes was years ahead of its time.