In the following paragraph 53 he observed--"If the explanation of the
chief executive is to be accepted, then in the opinion of someone the
briefing documents of First Officer Cassin, the co-pilot, were thought
to be irrelevant to the disaster"; and in paragraph 54--"it follows that
this direction on the part of the chief executive for the destruction of
'irrelevant documents' was one of the most remarkable executive
decisions ever to have been made in the corporation affairs of a large
New Zealand company".

Those remarks require some brief comment. It must be explained that the
"employee of the airline" mentioned at the end of paragraph 52 was
Captain Crosbie. It is true that he was "an employee of the airline" but
he did not go to the home of First Officer Cassin in that capacity. He
had been asked by the Airline Pilots Association, the group which
throughout the inquiry had very properly been concerned to protect the
interests of the two deceased pilots, to act on their behalf for the
purpose of bringing immediate aid and comfort to the two widows. His
evidence was to the effect that he had gone to each of the homes for
that purpose; that sometime later a member of Mrs Cassin's family had
invited him to take away a box containing such items as flight manuals;
and he said he had done no more than that. He flatly denied taking any
flight documents. But even if he had, the alleged conspiracy has always
been limited in the Royal Commission Report to the executive pilots and
other officers in the management area. It has never been suggested that
it had extended as well to the airline pilots. As may be expected,
throughout both investigations they have done their conscientious best
to protect the valued reputations of their deceased colleagues.

There was documentary evidence before the Inquiry to the effect that on