Air New Zealand Flight 901, a sightseeing tour over Antarctica, tragically crashed into Mount Erebus due to a series of navigational errors, miscommunications, and adverse weather conditions, resulting in the loss of all 257 lives aboard.
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in 1979 a plane would approach the edge
of the world an area that planes usually
stay away from after arriving to the
Antarctic landscape this commercial
flight with 257 people would seemingly
vanish Into Thin Air disappearing into
the untouched mountains of Antarctica
completely far away from the original
course this disappearance would almost
instantly spark a Widespread Panic
becoming one of the most confusing and
deadly Aviation disasters in history
history Air New Zealand flight 901 was a
sightseing flight for tourists that
wanted to view the beautiful Antarctic
Landscapes it was a successful and
popular attraction among curious people
the flight would cross the ocean loop
around what's known as McMurdo sound to
take pictures of the landscape in Mount
arabis and then head back home safely
without Landing however there were more
than a few problems with this flight
since the flight was over Antarctica if
the plane malfunctioned or needed to
emergency land anywhere there would be
zero available stops in addition McMurdo
sound is absolutely freezing if the
plane flew through it normally the flaps
would entirely freeze up due to the cold
winds so to prevent this the plane has
to fly at a much faster speed through
the area to top it all off this would
also be the first time that the Captain
Jim Collins and the first flight officer
Gregory Mark cassine had ever flown this
route their only training in this area
was a 45-minute dc10 flight simulator
session to review simple navigation and
flight instruments however this does not
change the fact that Jim and Gregory
were still extremely skilled Pilots both
men had a respectable amount of flight
hours in their time as Pilots regardless
though the most threatening issue in
this situation was actually not any of
these things instead it was with the
plane itself more specifically the
plane's route you see the original route
for the Antarctic sightseeing flights
wasn't actually McMurdo sound instead it
actually used to be directly above the
top of Mount arabus a 12,000 ft High
active volcano there weren't really any
problems with the mount arabus route but
regardless in 1978 a year before the
disaster everything would change because
the plane received a new computer for
navigation so as the mount arabis flying
route was being transcribed onto the new
computer a tiny seemingly insignificant
coordinate change was entered
incorrectly into the new computer it was
incorrectly entered as 164° instead of
166° this small change in coordinates
would simply put the flight path over MC
muro's sound now this wouldn't be a
problem yet because all the pilots that
realized this change simply assumed this
was because flying over some water is
ultimately safer than flying over an
active volcano they also assumed that
flying this route would allow them to
drop to a much lower altitude for a
better sightseeing experience on par
with the height of the
volcano so they started flying the
McMurdo rout almost every time at a much
lower altitude ude for better sight
scene at this point everything seemed to
be going well and tourist flights were
booming in popularity people from all
over the world would come to experience
a flight to a place that most people had
never even seen
before however just 2 weeks before the
disaster on November 14th 1979 a captain
finally realized this discrepancy in the
coordinates after doing checks before
his flight he realized that the original
route was actually over Mount arabus so
naturally the captain simply reported
his findings to an officer on the 14th
and went about his flight after almost 2
weeks of no change finally on the 27th a
day before Jim Collins and Gregory's
flight the navigation officers
misunderstood the other Captain's report
and ended up moving the route back over Mount
Mount
arabus now this normally wouldn't be
that much of a big deal in a normal case
everyone would improvise and figure out
a new route accordingly but the real
issue here again is that Jim and Gregory
had never flown this route before for
their only understanding of the route is
that they have to fly through McMurdo
sound at a lower altitude for
sightseeing but now that the route was
switched back to Mount arabus if they
were to fly at a low altitude here well
that would unfortunately put them on a
collision course with Mount
arabus now there's a simple solution to
all of this all that needs to happen is
that those that know about the flight
path change just simply have to tell Jim
and Gregory that the flight was changed
and tell them to fly at a much higher
altitude over mount arabus well the
problem with this is that the officers
that received the report originally
received it at 1:00 in the morning only
roughly 7 hours before Jim's flight
would depart so at this point when Jim
and the rest of the flight crew woke up
for their early morning flight they were
not told a single piece of information
about the route change they woke up that
morning ready to fly through McMurdo
sound so finally when Air New Zealand
flight 901 set off for Antarctica on
November 28th nobody on the plane knew
that they were actually on a flight path
arabus as the plane flew towards
Antarctica everything seemed to be going
smoothly the plane itself was performing
fine and everybody aboard was excited to
see this Frozen mystery continent the
forecast of weather for the McMurdo area
given to the flight crew was a light
wind with snowfall and an overcast layer
of clouds at around 3,500 ft an overcast
layer of clouds is described as a sky
that is 100% completely covered in
clouds however the weather would prove
to be much more problematic later on now
as the plane would get closer to the
area they would connect and talk to the
air traffic control station located in
McMurdo the officers there would guide
the flight around the Antarctic weather
accordingly the traffic control station
would describe that the weather for the
area was actually a low overcast at
around 2,000 ft with some snow covering
the area but luckily below 2,000 ft
visibility would still be fine for
sightseeing however the pilots for the
flight would go on records saying that
this didn't sound very promising
regardless though as the flight got
closer to Big Muro again the guys at the
air traffic control station offered to
guide the flight even lower lower to a
height of 1,500 ft once they get within
40 Mi of the station so they waited and
flew closer and closer to the Mount
arabus area and finally as the flight
reached the mount Arbus area the plane
began to descend from 18,000 ft into the
clouds since low overcast was at such a
low height of 2,000 ft Jim decided to
descend under the clouds so the
passengers can see the Landscapes and so
he can see where they are however this
decision was actually against the
minimum flight height set for the route
the minimum and lowest they were
technically allowed to fly was 6,000 ft
but it also wasn't uncommon for Pilots
to safely descend under the minimum set
height for a better sightseeing
experience and for situational needs
that said they started to descend the
pilots began orbiting down in a
circle-like shape to 6,000 ft but things
would become very tricky from here as
now they were in the thick of the clouds
and the thick of the snow after circling
the pilots then took an oval-like shape
descent to get a new approach on the
area they continued to descend even
further to the desired height of 2,000
ft so they can get a grasp of where they
were still in the clouds however they
would now be in a very dangerous
situation because what what they didn't
know is that there was no hope of
getting any visibility of the area from
this point on they kept descending
through so many clouds until they
reached a very dangerous area and at
about 1,500 ft they hit a sector white
out a sector white out is a weather
phenomena in Antarctica where a flat
snow covered surface blends with an
overcast Sky making it nearly impossible
to distinguish features of the landscape
this makes for a landscape of no Shadows
no features and pretty much zero
visibility due to the snow this would
make it impossible for the pilots to
determine where they were and whether or
not they were in McMurdo sound as this
was happening however for some reason
the pilots were also losing signal to
the McMurdo area the officers there
would come in and out of signal
sometimes until the signal was
completely lost at this point they were
now headed directly towards Mount arabus
and the flight engineer was starting to
become concerned as to where they were
the clouds were thick and it was hard to
see what was going on and they couldn't
see anything that would remotely
resemble the mcmo Sound
area at this point the crew fully
believed that they were over the ice
covered ocean of mcmo sound so they
continued to fly straight head on but
finally the flight engineer would ask
nervously where Mount arabus was in
relation to the plane the sightseeing
guide Peter assumed it was 25 M to the
left but they were all ultimately unsure
of where they were Jim said that the
conditions were not looking good at all
and they were all entirely confused as
to what was happening as they flew
closer and closer towards Mount arabus
they would become very uncertain the
engineer stated quote that he did not
like this but finally they figured that
they would climb out of this as they
were unsure as to what was happening
Gregory told Jim that he could turn
right that there would be nothing there
if he wanted to do a 180° turn away from
the area and Jim said negative and to
everyone's surprise the emergency ground
proximity warning system beeped loudly a
warning to the crew that they were only
500 ft above the mountain but
unfortunately this would be far too
little time to pull the plane up as they
only had 6 seconds before the plane
mountain at 12:50 p.m. 5 minutes after
the last radio contact with mcmo station
Air New Zealand flight 901 crashed into
the side of Mount arabus at 44 kmph
killing all 257 passengers upon impact
this was the footage of the inside of
the cabin 5 minutes before the plane
entered the thick layer of clouds as
soon as they entered the clouds nobody
on board had any idea of what was
happening after the crash however MC
Muro station continued to try contacting
the fight as they hadn't been in contact
contact for a good while but they
wouldn't receive a single response even
after they were scheduled to arrive back
in Auckland New Zealand there was not a
single radio transmission of the flight
after it lost contact with mcmo station
and finally when the flight was
scheduled to run out of fuel there was
not a single sign of it the flight was
now considered lost finally the next
morning the US Navy dispatched a rescue
effort to locate the whereabouts of the
flight and found the remains of it on
the site of Mount arabus with all 200
157 people aboard
dead the wreckage impact covered a total
area of roughly 570 by 120 M and after
deep inspection of the potential
survivability of such a crash
professionals deemed it as entirely
unsurvivable regardless there would
still be one big problem how were they
going to recover This Plane it was
sitting in the middle of an Antarctic
volcano in harsh conditions recovery in
and of itself would be a very difficult
task let alone the harsh weather and
ident ification of the people regardless
however the morning after the plane
crashed a search effort called operation
overdue was set in place for the
recovery of all 257 people aboard
however this would not be easy as they
were on Mount arabis the weather was
harsh and extensive and heavy work like
this would be much more difficult
nonetheless a large group of police
dentists Pathologists and more set out
for the mountain to hopefully recover
and identify all 257 passengers lost
upon impact Jim Morgan the lead inpector
ector of the mortuary team noted that
they spent weeks in polar tents amidst
the wreckage in dead bodies struggling
through the harsh environment he noted
that the skua goals there would try to
consume the remains of the wreckage and
the dead bodies right in front of the
team and that shooing the goals was
impossible and made it significantly
harder to recover the remains before the
birds got to them but eventually
throughout the weeks they would push
through the harsh environments and do
everything they could fortunately the
rescue effort was astonishingly
successful and ended up with 83% of the
remains being f found the teams that led
the search effort for this wreckage were
undoubtedly Heroes that risked their
lives to the very highest degree upon
respect for the families of the victims
those that were involved were awarded a
medal of special service by the queen of
New Zealand however for most there was
still a massive problem with this crash
throughout New Zealand most would wonder
exactly what went wrong questions about
why it crashed circled the media and
Confused many for a while the crash
itself was Infamous in New Zealand
because of the fact that it seemed like
everyone in the country knew a person or
two that died in plane crash so finally
after the crash and all the search
efforts a controversial official
accident report was given to the public
it was compiled by the New Zealand's
Chief Inspector of air accidents Ron
Chippendale now originally Chippendale
agreed with the idea that the plane
crashed due to the white out and thick
clouds however upon seeing this image
from one of the passengers cameras 5
minutes before the flight crashed he
would reject this Theory Chippendale
subsequently attributed that the actual
real reason of the crash into Mount
arabis was actually due to Pilot error
his arguments of pilot error was based
on three main points one that the change
over Mount arabis did not actually
mislead the crew two that the crash was
caused by descending below the minimum
flight height which was 6,000 ft and
three that the crew was not certain of
their position and kept moving forward
regardless of not knowing where they
were in response to the nature of this
official statement the public would be
more interested so due to this
widespread public interest of the event
the government would appoint a high
court judge named Peter Mahone to
further investigate the causes of the
crash Mahone would essentially entirely
dissect chippendale's report judge
Mahone would further try to prove that
the reason for the crash wasn't the
pilots but instead the reason was the
mistake that the airline officials who
programmed the plane made mahon's
argument of Airline error was based on
three main points one the airline
officer's mistake of setting it back
over Mount arabus two the lack of
communication in telling the crew of the
change and three the fact that the
flight Crews were never warned of the
dangerous effects of the white out and
the fact that the flight briefing before
contained a number of mistakes
ultimately judge Mahone would
controversially accuse the airline for
attempting to cover up the disaster and
for disposal of evidence he would
famously say quote I am forced to
reluctantly say that I had to listen to
an orchestrated Litany of Lies
ultimately the airline took judge Mahone
to court where the high court would not
disagree with Mahone's main points of
Airline a but instead found that Mahone
acted in excess of his
jurisdiction disappointed at after this
entire situation Mahone resigned at this
point with everything said and done no
amount of Court hearings and blame
puding would prevent the crash from
happening in 1979 oi would go on record
saying quote that no one knows what the
future in Antarctica holds but aircraft
and Aviation will be intertwined with
that future tempered and balanced by the
hearty Souls of pilots and crewmen who
challenge Antarctica constantly this
quote was 1 month before the disaster
happened New Zealand itself holds a
close relationship ship with Antarctica
it is described by some as quote our
backyard and undoubtedly the amount of
deaths would mean that no new zealanders
would escape this tragedy when the
original Antarctic sightseing flights
began as a cool way to explore the one
area on Earth that humans shouldn't be
in it was undoubtedly a risk a risk that
was quote glazed over with a glass of
champagne in breathtaking views
Antarctica itself is a place that
demands extensive knowledge experience
and respect for the continent the
passengers of flight 901 sight seeing
flight unfortunately lost their lives in
the face of Adventure but they also
attributed a massive change in Airline
safety a change that will undoubtedly be
the reason that millions of others today
will be safe on planes and for that they
can rest peacefully [Music]
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