Davison: My goal was to find truth
Blaming the pilot was an early but wrong conclusion about crash, says lawyer
Paul Davison — now a High Court judge — had no aviation experience when, as a young lawyer, he was called upon to assist the estate of Captain Jim Collins in relation to the pending report by the chief inspector of air accidents, Ron Chippindale, into the crash of Flight TE 901.
It would prove to be a pivotal point in Davison’s legal career.
“Naively I thought that if the correct information was put forward in a logical way, supported by good material, that the answer was selfevident and Mr Chippindale would act on that. I was surprised that he didn’t.
“It became evident that Mr Chippindale was being told things which were inconsistent with what we were being told. That became more evident and more telling as time went on. I prepared the submissions and they were sent off in the expectation that they’d be acted upon.
“From a very early stage, I realised that the suggestion of pilot error was a total misconception of this accident, and it required much more than that.
“To talk about pilot error without talking about the systemic event which had led them to that was a onedimensional view of the accident.”
Chippindale’s report, apportioning blame to Collins, was released before the Commission of Inquiry into the crash was held.
“That was disappointing, because it was going to reinforce in the public’s mind that an aerial expert accident inspector such as Mr Chippindale had concluded it was pilot error. That tended to cement a view which already had a lot of momentum in the media and in the public view. So turning that around became just a further and steeper mountain to climb.”
Davison was receiving a lot of technical support from members of the Air Lines Pilots’ Association, on behalf of the Collins family. They all agreed Chippindale’s report was superficial.
“This wasn’t a matter of putting up a case to defend their fellow pilot, their friend, colleague. This was people saying: ‘ look, this could have been us, and Jim Collins was a very conscientious pilot. There’s much more to this than simply some sort of lack of responsibility or irresponsibility of proceeding with, when he didn’t know where he was. When you look, here’s the answer.’”
The pilots were as “bemused and concerned” about it as he was, says Davison.
“My role was to get to the truth of this for the Collins’ estate. There was no other purpose.”