silence over the changing of the co-ordinates and the failure to tell
the air crew" had been "a strategy which succeeded to a very
considerable degree". The information had been given to the chief
inspector immediately on his return from Antarctica. That much is
acknowledged in the two sentences that follow. It becomes apparent,
however, that this was criticized not because the information had been
kept away from those to whom it most certainly had to be given, those
charged with the important responsibility of inquiring into the causes
of the disaster. Mr. Davis was criticized for nothing more than his
failure to release the material to the outside world. That is made plain
by a subsequent statement towards the end of the Report which leads on
to the very severe pronouncement in paragraph 377 that the Commissioner
had been obliged to listen to "a predetermined plan of deception ... an
orchestrated litany of lies". The relevant passage is in paragraph 374:

"The fact that the navigation course of the aircraft had been
altered in the computer had been disclosed by the chief inspector
in his report dated 31 May 1980, 6 months after the disaster. But
it was not until the Commission of Inquiry began sitting that the
airline publicly admitted that this had occurred."

The effect of the absence of general publicity that the information was
given rather than its ready provision by the airline to Mr. Chippindale
on the day after his return from the crash site is described in the
remaining portion of paragraph 48 which continues in the following way:

"Then the chief inspector went on to say in his report (paragraph
2.5):

'The error had been discovered two flights earlier but neither crew