the conspiracy which the Commissioner appears to postulate in his
references to 'a pre-determined plan of deception' and 'an orchestrated
litany of lies' was seen by him as so wide as to cover all those
persons. Paragraph 377 is the culmination of a series of paragraphs
beginning with paragraph 373 and separately headed by the Commissioner
'The Stance adopted by the Airline before the Commission of Inquiry'.
They include specific references to the chief executive, described as
'very able but evidently autocratic' in the context of an allusion to
what 'controlled the ultimate course adopted by the witnesses called on
behalf of the airline'. There are also specific references to the
executive pilots and members of the navigation section.

It is possible that some individual witnesses did give some false
evidence during this inquiry. The applicants accept that this was for
the Commissioner to consider and that it is not for us to interfere with
his assessment of witnesses. But the complaint goes much further than
that. It is that there is simply no evidence on which he could find a
wholesale conspiracy to commit perjury, organised by the chief
executive, which is what this part of the report appears to suggest. Our
conclusion that here the Commissioner went beyond his jurisdiction and
did not comply with natural justice--a conclusion to be explained more
fully later in this judgment--makes it unnecessary for us to decide
whether there was any evidence that could conceivably warrant such an
extreme finding. It is only right to say, however, that if forced to
decide the question we would find it at least difficult to see in the
transcript any evidence of that kind.

The language of paragraph 377 has evidently been carefully selected for
maximum colour and bite, and the Commissioner has sought to reinforce
its impact by bringing in his status and experience as a judicial