Air New Zealand Flight 901

Air New Zealand Flight 901
Wreckage of Air New Zealand 901 on Mount Erebus in 2004 (25 years after the crash)
Accident summary
Accident type	Controlled flight into terrain
place	Mount Erebus , Ross Island , Antarctica 77 ° 25 ′ 29 ″  S , 167 ° 28 ′ 30 ″  E Coordinates: 77 ° 25 ′ 29 ″  S , 167 ° 28 ′ 30 ″  E
date	November 28, 1979
Fatalities	257
Survivors	0
Aircraft
Aircraft type	McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30
operator	Air New Zealand
Mark	ZK-NZP
Passengers	237
crew	20th
Lists of aviation accidents

Air New Zealand flight 901 was a scenic flight over Antarctica that ended in a serious aircraft accident on November 28, 1979 due to navigation problems . All 237 passengers and the 20 crew members were killed in the " Controlled flight into terrain ".

From February 1977 the airline Air New Zealand carried out sightseeing flights over Antarctica with aircraft of the type McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 from Auckland Airport in New Zealand . On the 14th of these flights, the plane hit Mount Erebus , a volcano on the Antarctic Ross Island .

The original official investigation assigned sole responsibility for the accident to the captain . He had decided to below the prescribed minimum height to fly, although the crew , the position of the aircraft not exactly been able to determine.

A commission of inquiry set up by the New Zealand government, however, saw the main fault with the airline, which had failed to notify the pilots of a decisive change in the flight route stored in the navigation computer - the new course led directly to Mount Erebus - and which had also failed to do so To adequately prepare the flight crew for flights in Antarctic conditions.

background

The ZK-NZP aircraft crashing over Heathrow Airport in 1977

The flight was advertised as a unique sightseeing opportunity, during which an experienced Antarctic traveler would use the aircraft's loudspeaker system to point out the landscape and recognizable landmarks overflown . The flight was at a relatively low altitude over McMurdo Sound and was supposed to return to New Zealand on the same day. Mount Erebus, where the plane crashed, is located east of the Transantarctic Mountains , around 3000 km south of the Auckland Islands .

People like Edmund Hillary , one of the first ascent of Mount Everest had, acting on previous flights as a leader. Hillary was also scheduled for the crashed flight, but had to cancel because of other obligations. His then 52-year-old longtime friend and climbing companion Peter Mulgrew stepped in for him and died in the crash.

On these flights, the aircraft was usually only 85% fully booked because the inside seats were not occupied. On the day of the accident, the flight was carried out with a DC-10-30 with the aircraft registration ZK-NZP. The aircraft was delivered to Air New Zealand in December 1974. The logbook of the machine, which was otherwise used on long-haul flights, was without any complaints up until then.

Aviation accident

Circumstances before departure

Captain Jim Collins and First Officer Greg Cassin had not previously flown in Antarctica. They were skilled pilots, however, and the flight was not considered difficult. On November 9, 1979, 19 days before departure, both pilots took part in a briefing at which they received a copy of the flight plans of previous flights on this route.

However, at the time of the briefing, Captain Collins was unaware that the flight coordinates entered into Air New Zealand's central computer deviated from the route approved in 1977 by the Civil Aviation Department of the New Zealand Department of Transportation. The approved route ran from Cape Hallett to the non-directional radio beacon (NDB) McMurdo. Unfortunately, this route ran almost exactly over the 12,448  foot (3797 m) high Mount Erebus.

However, the printout of the flight coordinates stored in the computer system at the briefing on November 9th revealed a flight route further south, roughly in the middle of the broad McMurdo Sound, where Mount Erebus would have been about 27 nautical miles further east. In the majority of the flights previously carried out, precisely these flight coordinates were entered into the aircraft's navigation computer ( inertial navigation system ) and the flight to McMurdo Sound was carried out on the basis of this data, without it being noticed that this route did not coincide with the route approved by the ministry.

A pilot on one of the earlier flights on November 14 found that the coordinates of the McMurdo TACAN radio beacon (about five kilometers east of the McMurdo NDB) and the waypoint that the crew had entered into the on-board computer were surprisingly far apart. After the flight, the pilot reported the deviation of the positions to the airline's navigation department and advised a correction. For reasons that are controversial, the airline's navigators then changed the navigation data in the central computer, although these coordinates also did not match the approved flight route.

The change in the coordinates in the central computer took place around 1:40 a.m. local time on the day on which the unfortunate flight took off. It was crucial for the disaster that the crew of Flight 901 were not informed of the change. The flight plan printout that the crew received before take-off and used to enter the entries into the on-board computer did not match the flight plan data received by the crew during the November 9th briefing and did not match the markings made by Captain Collins on a card the evening before departure. The most important difference was that the flight coordinates of the briefing gave Mount Erebus a position much further east and the course that the crew entered into the on-board computer led directly over the mountain. It would have to lead to a collision if you were to fly at an altitude of less than 13,000 feet on this part of the flight.

During the approach to McMurdo Sound, the aircraft sank in a figure-eight flight maneuver through a gap in the cloud cover, on the one hand to fly by sight and on the other hand to give the passengers a better view. The cloud cover was later estimated to be 2000-3000 feet (about 600-900 m). The investigation found that the pilots, the safety altitude either did not know (MSA) or ignored. Pictures and press reports from previous flights showed that many of these flights had flown below the MSA. In addition, in the briefings on previous flights, a descent to a lower altitude was authorized, if it was cleared by air traffic control at McMurdo Station . Since the US air traffic controllers assumed that Flight 901 would follow the same course as previous flights over McMurdo Sound, the air traffic controllers approved a descent to 1500 feet , taking into account the flight route previously submitted by Air New Zealand .

The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) recordings of the last few minutes before the impact on Mount Erebus indicated that the cockpit crew believed they were flying well west of Mount Erebus over McMurdo Sound and that the Ross Ice Shelf was on Horizon to be seen. In fact, the pilots were flying straight for the mountain. Although the crew was busy identifying visible landmarks at the time, at no point did they notice that the mountain was directly in front of them. About six minutes after completing a descent in good visibility with a visibility of at least 37 km, Flight 901 collided with Mount Erebus at an altitude of approximately 1,500 feet (460 m).

Changes to coordinates and departure

Collins and Cassin entered the travel coordinates into the aircraft's on-board computer before they took off from Auckland Airport at 8:21 am local time in New Zealand (7:21 pm UTC ) on November 27. The calculated arrival time for the return was 6:09 p.m. local time. Since the coordinates had been changed a few hours before departure without the knowledge of the pilots in order to correct the error that had crept in a few years earlier, the flight was about 45 km further east than the pilots actually wanted to fly.

About four hours after take-off, the aircraft was about 70 km from McMurdo Station. The radio center there approved the pilots to descend to 10,000 feet (3050 m) and continue the flight according to visual flight rules. The flight safety regulations did not also did not allow passenger flights, at an altitude of less than 6000 feet (1830 m) to fly, under good weather conditions.

Collision with Mount Erebus

Collins told McMurdo Station that he would sink to 2,000 feet (610 m) where he switched from manual control to automatic control. At the time, there was a layer of cloud on McMurdo Sound, the color of which merged with the white of the snow-capped volcano, creating a so-called sector whiteout - there was no contrast between the clouds and the mountain that could have warned the pilots. The effect misled the crew; she believed that the white of the mountain flank was the distant Ross Ice Shelf, which is off the coast of Antarctica in this area. This effect was hardly known even among experienced polar pilots at the time. Air New Zealand had not conducted any pilot training dealing with this phenomenon. As a result, the crew believed they were flying over McMurdo Sound, even though they were actually heading straight for Mount Erebus over Lewis Bay .

At 12:49 p.m. the Ground Proximity Warning System sounded an alarm because the aircraft was dangerously close to the ground. Captain Collins responded immediately, but was unable to steer the plane around the mountain, so six seconds later it crashed against the mountain's flank , killing everyone on board instantly. The pilot did not pull the control horn extremely in an emergency to pull the machine up, but only lifted the aircraft's nose by 15 °, as he had practiced in training. This suggests that even immediately before the impact, the crew did not recognize the white of the mountain as an obstacle. Most of the aircraft was torn into many small pieces, with the exception of the tail unit . The debris field burned out by the kerosene igniting was 600 meters long. Pieces of the wreck sank in the melting ice, which later froze again.

An attempt was made to contact the aircraft from McMurdo Station after the crash and Air New Zealand headquarters in Auckland were informed that communication with the aircraft had been lost. Search and rescue teams were put on standby.

Search and discovery of the wreck

At 1 p.m., the United States Navy released a situation report that found:

“Air New Zealand Flight 901 did not confirm radio transmissions. ... An LC-130 aircraft and two UH-1N helicopters are preparing to take off for SAR efforts. "

- US Situation Report

At 3:43 p.m., weather data was added to the situation report. Accordingly, the visibility was around 65 km. Six planes had now taken off to look for the missing plane.

At 10 p.m. - about half an hour after Flight 901 ran out of fuel - Air New Zealand told the press that the plane was likely to have crashed. Rescue teams searched along the assumed flight route. At 12:55 a.m., the crew of a United States Navy aircraft initially sighted unidentified debris on the flank of Mount Erebus. Survivors were not identified. Twenty hours after the impact, helicopters with rescue teams managed to land on the side of the mountain. It was confirmed that none of the 257 people on board Flight 901 had survived. The place where the aircraft was found was about 445  m above sea level.

Nationalities of passengers
and crew

New Zealand : 200

Japan : 24

United States : 22

United Kingdom : 6

Canada : 2

Australia : 1

France : 1

Switzerland : 1

Extensive efforts were made to recover the bodies, which was partly due to Japanese pressure, as 24 passengers were Japanese citizens. The recovery lasted until December 9, 1979. In some cases, up to 60 people were deployed at the scene of the accident. The vertical stabilizer remained largely intact after the impact. The bodies and parts of the plane were brought to Auckland by air. The remains of 44 victims could not be identified; a communal funeral took place for them on February 22, 1980.

Operation Overdue 1979

A team of New Zealand police officers and a team of mountain rescue services were flown to Scott Base in McMurdo Sound in a No 40 Squadron C-130 Hercules .

The identification of the remains of the passengers took several weeks and was carried out by 60 coroners, dentists and police officers. The body recovery team was led by Jim Morgan, who collected the data and later wrote a report on the recovery operation. 213 bodies (around 83 percent) could be identified, sometimes only with a fingerprint or with a key ring in their clothing.

“The fact that we all camped in polar tents for about a week, surrounded by wreckage and corpses, and worked around the clock, says it all. We divided the men into two shifts (12 hours on duty, 12 hours off) and with great effort we recovered all human remains from the crash site. Some of the corpses were wedged under heavy parts of the trunk and wings. It took a lot of strength to dig them up and pull them out.

(...) All corpses and body parts were photographed on site by US Navy photographers who worked with us. US Navy personnel also helped us collect the bodies and put them in body bags, which was very exhausting.

Later ate skuas the bodies before our eyes. It was difficult to take, and it ruined the chances of identification. We tried to scare them away, we shot with flare pistols, also without result. Finally we piled all the corpses in their body bags in eleven large piles (...) and covered them with snow to keep the birds away. To do this, we had to break up the top layer of snow at the crash site. (...) As soon as the weather cleared up and the helicopters could return to the crash site, we would dig them up again. This work took us to our limits.

When we were almost finished, bad weather cut us off. At that point, NZPO2 and I allowed to dispense the booze that survived the crash, and we had a party (macabre, but we just had to blow off steam).

We ran out of cigarettes. We collected all private supplies, from civilians and police officers, so that we could distribute the cigarettes fairly. When the weather cleared, the helicopters were able to return. We were able to pack the heaps of corpses into cargo nets that took the helicopters to McMurdo. The number of emergency services fell with every helicopter flight and the remaining men had to work all the harder. It was exhausting to dig up and load the bodies and also dangerous because the rotors of the helicopters whirled up debris from the crash site. Everyone involved in this mission took risks. The civilians from McDonnell Douglas , MOT and US Navy personnel were the first to leave the site and followed the police with the DSIR . I am proud of my service and that of my colleagues on Mount Erebus. "

- Jim Morgan

The members of the rescue team suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder . This was recognized as early as 1979; some of the officers had collapsed under pressure from the service. It took a few more years, however, for psychological support to become standard in the New Zealand police force.

The police's efforts to recover the bodies were not officially recognized, but RS Mitchell and J. Morgan were awarded the Order of the British Empire for their service in connection with the disaster .

In 2006, New Zealand awarded a medal to those participating in the rescue operation from the United States, New Zealand and other states.

Investigations into the aircraft accident

Official report

New Zealand chief aviation investigator Ron Chippindale's accident report was published on June 12, 1980. He named a pilot's error as the main cause of the controlled flight into the ground and blamed Collins, who had decided to drop below the usual minimum altitude and to continue the flight at that altitude without knowing the exact position of the aircraft. The flight regulations forbade a passenger flight below an altitude of 6000  feet (around 1830 m) even under good visual flight conditions , but the interaction of various factors led the captain to assume that the aircraft was over the sea in the middle of McMurdo Sound, where only few flat islands are located. In addition, earlier Flight 901 pilots regularly flew at low altitudes to give passengers a good view. This was confirmed by photos in Air New Zealand's own flight magazine and by testimony from staff at the base in New Zealand.

Mahon investigation

In response to public pressure, the New Zealand government launched a further investigation. It was carried out by Judge Peter Mahon, who was later honored for his services.

Mahon's report was published on April 27, 1981. Mahon absolved the crew of guilt, stating that the only and primary reason for the disaster was the change in flight plan coordinates in the ground navigation computer, which Air New Zealand had not notified the pilots of. The new flight plan steered the aircraft straight into the mountain instead of running it along its flank. Due to the whiteout conditions, "a malicious polar light trick", the crew could not see the mountain even though they were flying straight towards it. In addition, the pilots may have been caught up in a rare meteorological phenomenon called sector whiteout , which creates the illusion of a flat, distant horizon, in this specific case apparently the view through a gap in the clouds of the distant Ross Ice Shelf and the area beyond. Mahon found that the flight crew, with their many thousands of hours of flight experience, were sufficiently familiar with the accuracy of the aircraft's inertial navigation system . Mahon also noted that the radio center at McMurdo Station had given Captain Collins permission to descend to an altitude of 1,500 feet, below the safety limit.

In section 377 of his report, Mahon argues that the airline's management and the chief pilots were trying together to belittle their guilt, accusing them of "an orchestrated litany of lies" by withholding evidence and the investigators had been lied to. Mahon noted that Chippindales' original report showed little sympathy for aviation with large passenger planes, as he and New Zealand's aviation safety authorities normally only investigate aircraft accidents involving small aircraft. Chippindale's investigative techniques were criticized as not being thorough enough, as he had accepted errors and excludable investigative gaps in the reports. Mahon pointed out that Chippindale had consistently ignored the importance of the flight plan change and the special meteorological conditions in Antarctica. According to Mahon, if the pilots had known about the flight plan change, the accident would have been avoided.

Legal proceedings

Air New Zealand sued Mahon’s findings before the Court of Appeal , which overturned the airline’s cost assessment. Mahon, in turn, appealed to the Privy Council in London. His findings on the cause of the accident, especially with regard to the nightly reprogramming of the flight plan, of which the crew had not been informed, were not the subject of the lawsuit before the New Zealand Court of Appeal and were therefore not heard in the Court of Appeal in London. His finding that the crash was the result of the pilots being misled and not a pilot's error therefore persisted. However, the airline's directors believed that Mahon had exceeded his powers when he stated in his report that there was a conspiracy Air New Zealand was using to cover up the mistakes of the ground crew. The judges in London on October 20, 1982 rejected Mahon's appeal and upheld the Court of Appeal's decision. The non-fiction writer John King wrote in his New Zealand Tragedies, Aviation :

"They destroyed his case point by point, including Exhibit 164, which they said could 'not be understood by any experienced pilot as being intended for navigational purposes," and went further by saying that there was no clear evidence of what one could support results according to which there was ever a plan of cover-up by management. "

"Exhibit 164" was a photocopied diagram of McMurdo Sound, on which a southbound flight route passed Ross Island to the west and the northbound path to the east. The diagram didn't go far enough south to show where, if at all, the two routes met. However, it has been proven that the diagram was part of the documentation the crew had received at the November 9th briefing.

Mahon's report was finally presented to the New Zealand Parliament in 1999 by then Minister of Transport, Maurice Williamson .

Legacy of Disaster

The Flight 901 crash is one of the two most casualty disasters in New Zealand history (the other being the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake ). A wooden cross was erected above Scott Base to commemorate the victims. It was replaced by an aluminum cross in 1986 because the wooden cross rotted away from the cold, wind and moisture.

The wreck of the aircraft is still almost entirely at the scene of the accident on the flank of Mount Erebus and is usually covered by snow and ice. When the snow sometimes thaws in the Antarctic summer, it can be seen from the air. The aircraft registration number of the aircraft involved in the accident, ZK-NZP, was not issued again.

A television series titled Erebus: The Aftermath , which dealt with the accident investigation and the Royal Commission of Inquiry, was broadcast in New Zealand and Australia in 1988 .

The phrase orchestrated litany of lies has found its way into popular New Zealand culture.

On the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II's birthday in June 2007, Gordon Vette was appointed Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit , honoring his service in assisting Judge Mahon during the investigation into the Mount Erebus disaster. Vette's book Impact Erebus comments on the course of the flight, the crash and the subsequent investigation.

On December 1, 2019, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (on behalf of the New Zealand government) and Air New Zealand formally apologized for the first time to the relatives of the disaster victims.

See also

• Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System

literature

• NZAVA Operation Deep Freeze - The New Zealand Story, 2002.
• Operation Overdue - NZAVA Archives 2002.
• CHN L'Estrange, The Erebus inquiry: a tragic miscarriage of justice, Auckland, Air Safety League of New Zealand, 1995
• Stuart Macfarlane, The Erebus papers: edited extracts from the Erebus proceedings with commentary, Auckland, Avon Press, 1991
• Report of the Royal Commission to Inquire into the Crash on Mount Erebus, Antarctica of a DC10 Aircraft Operated by Air New Zealand Limited ( Memento of February 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), Wellington, Government Printer, 1981 (PDF file)
• R Chippendale, Air New Zealand McDonnell-Douglas DC10-30 ZK-NZP, Ross Island, Antarctica 28 November 1979 ( memento from January 5, 2003 in the Internet Archive ), Office of Air Accidents Investigation, Ministry of Transport , Wellington, 1980 (only partially)

Web links

Commons : Air New Zealand Flight 901  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Aviation Safety Network: Transcript of flight 901
• US Navy Situation Report
• Pre-crash photos of DC-10 from Airliners.net
• The original brochure advertising Air New Zealand flights to Antarctica
• (audio file) ABC Radio National program "Ockham's Razor": "Arthur Marcell takes us through some of the events leading up to the crash and has a few questions for modern navigators." transcript
• NZ Special Service Medal (Erebus) 2006
• Erebus disaster (NZHistory.net.nz)
• Erebus Aircraft Accident - Christchurch City Libraries
• Mount Erebus disaster haunts, 25 years on The Age
• Mt Erebus disaster remembered ( Memento from December 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• A brief history of Air New Zealand, focusing on highlights and major events. . Air New Zealand,accessed January 19, 2016. 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Christchurch City Libraries: New Zealand Disasters: Aircraft Accident: DC. 10 ZK-NZP Flight 901 ( English ) Retrieved July 11, 2006.
2. ↑ US Navy SITREP [SITuation REPort] from November 28, 1979 (page 5) ( en ) In: Archives New Zealand . Retrieved October 8, 2010.
3. ↑ CVR transcript Air New Zealand Flight 901 - 28 NOV 1979 ( en ) In: Aviation Safety Network . Retrieved November 10, 2010.
4. ↑ US Navy SITREP [SITuation REPort] from November 28, 1979 (page 1) ( English ) In: Archives New Zealand . Retrieved May 17, 2009: “ Air New Zealand Flight 901 has failed to acknowledge radio transmissions. … One LC-130 fixed wing aircraft and two UH-1N rotary wing aircraft are preparing to launch for SAR effort. "
5. ↑ US Navy SITREP [SITuation REPort] from November 28, 1979 (page 2) ( English ) In: Archives New Zealand . Retrieved May 17, 2009.
6. ↑ US Navy SITREP [SITuation REPort] from November 28, 1979 (page 4) ( English ) In: Archives New Zealand . Retrieved May 17, 2009.
7. ↑ NZ History: Tail of Air New Zealand plane at Mt Erebus
8. ^ Bill Spindler: Air New Zealand DC-10 crash into Mt. Erebus . Retrieved May 17, 2009.
9. ↑ NZPO1 NZAVA, see bibliography.
10. ↑ Mahon posthumously awarded on stuff.co.nz, accessed November 1, 2010
11. ↑ "They demolished his case item by item, including Exhibit 164 which they said could not" be understood by any experienced pilot to be intended for the purposes of navigation "and went even further, saying there was no clear proof on which to base a finding that a plan of deception, led by the company's chief executive, had ever existed. "
12. ↑ Stefan Eiselin: Air New Zealand apologizes for the Antarctic tragedy. aerotelegraph.com from December 1, 2019