The plane hit a volcano in Antarctica. 257 people died. They waited three decades to apologize

It was November 28, 1979. Just before 8:30 a.m., a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 plane took off from the airport in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. At that time, it was a quite modern, wide-body machine, serving mainly intercontinental flights. This particular example was also relatively new, being approximately five years old at the time of the accident.

What may seem surprising, the destination of Air New Zealand flight number 901 was exactly the same airport from which the machine took off – Auckland Airport. This was not an ordinary cruise destination, but a long, 12-hour sightseeing flight. Flight over Antarctica.

Sightseeing flights over Antarctica

Air New Zealand, like Qantas in Australia, began operating such flights in February 1977. Ordinary passenger planes carrying well over 200 people took off from the Auckland airport and after a few hours reached the coast of Antarctica, the only continent almost untouched by man.

Over the white land, the plane significantly lowered its altitude so that passengers could enjoy the extraordinary views of the endless icy desert, and then – already at cruising altitude – returned to New Zealand. First, it landed in Christchurch in the south of the country, where some passengers disembarked and the plane was refueled, and then in Auckland on the North Island.

The end of 1979 was the peak of popularity of this type of flights, which – despite the relatively high price – sold out a few days after the opening of the ticket pool for the next season. Air New Zealand didn’t even have to worry about advertising because the planes flew almost full anyway. Passengers were ready to pay just over 300 New Zealand dollars to observe the inaccessible, harsh continent from the air in truly luxurious conditions, at room temperature and with a glass of champagne in hand.

For travelers from all over the world, it was also an interesting alternative to the (still existing) cruises from Argentina and Chile. These not only last for several days, but also cost much more. Taking advantage of the offer of a carrier from New Zealand, passengers could leave early in the morning and return home for dinner.

They were flying straight into an active volcano. They didn’t even see him

Flight flight number 901, like the others, was almost full. 237 passengers and 20 crew members boarded the plane. For the convenience of travelers, the middle rows of the plane were left empty so that they could move freely around the deck, looking for the best shot.

The take-off and the first part of the flight went without any problems. Although it was the first flight over Antarctica for Captain Thomas James Collins and First Officer Gregory Mark Cassini, they were very experienced pilots, and several days before take-off they had been trained in navigating the plane in unusual, polar conditions.

The plan presented to them was to fly over the McMurdo Strait and bypass the huge volcano Erebus, located on Ross Island, at a safe distance. The top of Erebus rises to 3,794 meters above sea level, and this volcano is the most active in Antarctica. Next, passengers were to see the almost perfectly flat and snow-white Ross Ice Shelf, which stretches hundreds of kilometers into the continent.

Several dozen kilometers from the coast of the seventh continent, the pilots contacted the controllers of the American McMurdo research station located on Ross Island, who agreed to lower the altitude to 3,000 meters. Regulations at the time allowed flights with a minimum altitude of just over 1,800 meters, but it was an open secret that Air New Zealand pilots regularly flouted this rule. The carrier’s catalogs included numerous photos from previous cruises to Antarctica, which were taken at an altitude of several hundred meters at most on the surface of the continent.

So it was this time. Captain Collins informed controllers that he would descend to 610 meters and then engage the autopilot. The problem appeared completely unexpectedly. At 12:49, an alarm sounded in the cockpit of the plane warning that it was approaching the ground. A few seconds later, the plane hit the slope of the Erebus volcano, which it was supposed to avoid at a safe distance.

The machine exploded, killing all passengers and crew members – a total of 257 people. Probably none of them realized that the machine was flying straight into the slope of a huge volcano. Even the pilots were convinced until the last moments of the flight that they saw the snow-white Ross Ice Shelf in front of them. Only a few seconds before impact, they suddenly increased the power of the engines, trying to lift the plane.

The plane was found in pieces. 257 people died.

The wreck of the plane, or rather its remains, was found on a mountain slope, 447 meters above the sea surface. Initially, however, traffic controllers and airlines did not realize that a tragedy had occurred. Contact with the plane was lost, and the Americans informed the carrier shortly later.

However, Air New Zealand initially did not inform about the missing plane. The families of the victims who were waiting at the Christchurch airport were reassured, explaining that delays do happen. American Air Force helicopters arrived at the crash site only around midnight, and the carrier reported the accident in the morning the next day. Shortly afterwards, the Americans confirmed that no survivors had been found.

The impact was so powerful that the bodies of many victims literally disappeared from the crash site. Ultimately, investigators managed to find the bodies of only 114 people, and another 99 people were identified based on the examination of the remains. The remains of 16 people who could not be identified were buried in a mass grave, and 28 victims were never found.

Fragment of the plane wreck in 2004 photo: Mike subritzky at English Wikipedia / public domain

Poor visibility and zero contrast. The investigation blamed the pilots

The report of the investigation into the causes of the disaster was published in June 1980. It showed that the pilots could not see the volcano because its image blended with the surface of the glacier below and the clouds above. Due to the minimal contrast between the mountain, the rest of the land and the sky, it was impossible to see the horizon.

The blame for the disaster was entirely placed on the pilots, who not only descended below the permissible altitude, but also decided to continue the flight in poor visibility conditions. However, under public pressure, the New Zealand government agreed to create a new commission of inquiry, which consisted of only one member – the widely respected judge Peter Mahon. He examined the causes of the disaster much more thoroughly and published the results of the investigation in April 1981.

The pilots were innocent. The lines concealed a key fact from them

The investigator not only completely cleared the pilots of the blame, but also accused Air New Zealand of a number of irregularities and concluded that the carrier was responsible for the tragedy. It turned out that two weeks before the disaster, one of the pilots of another flight noticed and reported significant discrepancies between the route approved by the New Zealand Ministry of Transport and the coordinates recorded in the Air New Zealand computer system.

The official route assumed a direct flight (at a safe height) over Ross Island and the Erebus volcano itself. Meanwhile, the route included in the line system assumed bypassing the volcano at a considerable distance over the McMurdo Strait. During the training of the Collins and Cassini pilots, a flight option to avoid the volcano was discussed (the error was noticed a few days after the training). However, the night before the disaster, it was decided to correct the discrepancies by entering the officially approved route (directly over the volcano) into the computer.

As Mahon noted, the carrier not only did not inform the pilots about this fact, but also withheld such key information during the first investigation. And it was the change of the flight route without notice to the crew of flight 901 that was considered the official cause of the disaster. The pilots were convinced until the last moment that they were flying safely over the ice covering the waters of McMurdo Sound, according to the plan they had been given.

Moreover, it was found that the pilots were given permission to lower the flight (below the permissible altitude), but even if they had stayed at the prescribed 1,800 meters, they would not have avoided the collision with the Erebus volcano (almost 3,800 meters high). Additionally, it was shown that the pilots could experience an optical illusion that may occur in polar conditions, and they were not prepared for such an eventuality during training.

Air New Zealand Flight 901 remains the worst air disaster in New Zealand history and the only accident involving a scheduled airliner that occurred in Antarctica. It was also the first fatal incident in the history of the carrier, which has been operating since 1940.

Fragments of the plane wreck remain on the slope of the volcano to this day. A cross commemorating the tragedy was also erected near the crash site. The management of Air New Zealand officially apologized to the victims’ relatives only 30 years after the tragedy – in 2009. A decade later (in November 2019), the New Zealand government also blamed the disaster and the (initially) ineffective investigation of its causes.