This Site is dedicated to all those families of the people that have tragically disappeared on flights in and around New Zealand. I only hope that from all the effort in building this site and from all the effort of those taking part in this venture, that it will bear fruit in bringing ‘closure’ to their memories!
Gavin Grimmer
The debate would be whether Ryan would have had Glenthorne Station already programmed
into his GPS (a Garmin 55AVD, an antique by today’s standards - non moving map),
or due to the restraints on him with bad weather bearing down on him and the knowledge
of the fuel getting low, whether he would spend the time working out the GPS co-ordinates
and then try to program them into his GPS (while possibly being bounced all over
the place in turbulence), or he simply pushed “Go To” Browning Pass, which he would
have had previously programmed in as he had flown through there as an alternative
route, I ‘m told, several times. This way, by going over the top, if the low lying
cloud in the Styx and Arahura Valleys was localised, he may have been able to get
down on the other side of the Browning Pass into the Wilberforce River Valley.
You’ll note on the following image, that this course fits into Jackie Gurdan’s observation
even better. The red line is the direct track to Glenthorne, and the pink line is
the course to Browning Pass.
Obviously, we don’t know for sure what happened that day, and what Ryan may, or may
not have done, so all of this is what I would call “pure circumstantial speculation,”
- trying to build a picture from the observations of what may have happened. If we
can find one that fits, and leaves very few questions left unanswered, then we may
be on the right track.
Let’s continue and see where these tracks lead:
Direct Route to Glenthorne Station and lower lying ground
