Flight 901 - The Mount Erebus Disaster
November 28th, 1979; Flight 901 climbed away from Auckland International Airport at 8:00 am bound for Antarctica. On a unique sightseeing experience, carrying an experienced Antarctic guide who pointed out scenic features and landmarks using the aircraft's public-address system, while passengers enjoyed a low-flying sweep of McMurdo Sound.The Antarctic tour was planned to arrive back at Christchurch International Airport at 7:00 pm after flying a total of 5,360 miles. The aircraft would make a 45-minute stop at Christchurch for refuelling and crew change, before flying the remaining 464 miles to Auckland, with an estimated arrival time of 9:00 pm.
Dignitaries, including Sir Edmund Hillary, had acted as guides on previous flights. But had to cancel his appearance on Ft 901 owing to other commitments. His long-time friend and climbing companion, Peter Mulgrew, stood in as guide.
The flights usually operated at about 85% of capacity; the empty seats, usually the centre ones, allowed passengers to move more easily about the cabin to look out of the windows.
Captain Jim Collins and co-pilot Greg Cassin had never flown to Antarctica before, but they were experienced pilots and were considered qualified for the flight. On 9 November 1979, 19 days before departure, the two pilots had attended a briefing in which they were given a copy of the previous flight's flight plan.
Unknown to Captain Collins at the time of the briefing, the flight plan coordinates transcribed into Air New Zealand's ground computer differed from the route flight plan approved in 1977 by the New Zealand Department of Transport Civil Aviation Division. The approved flight plan was along a track directly from Cape Hallett to the McMurdo non-directional beacon (NDB), which, coincidentally, entailed flying almost directly over the 12,448-foot peak of Mount Erebus. However, the printout from Air New Zealand's ground computer system presented at a briefing on 9 November corresponded to a southerly flight path down the middle of the wide McMurdo Sound, leaving Mount Erebus approximately 27 miles to the east. The majority of previous flights had also entered this flight plan's coordinates into their aircraft's INS navigational systems and flown the McMurdo Sound route, unaware that the route flown did not correspond with the approved route.
Captain Leslie Simpson, the pilot of a previous flight on 14 November, and also present at the 9 November briefing, compared the coordinates of the McMurdo TACAN navigation beacon (approximately three miles east of McMurdo NDB) and the McMurdo waypoint that the flight crew had entered into the INS, and was surprised to find a large distance between the two. After this flight, Captain Simpson advised Air New Zealand's Navigation section of the difference in positions. For reasons that were disputed, this triggered Air New Zealand's Navigation section to subsequently resolve to update the McMurdo waypoint coordinates stored in the ground computer to correspond with the coordinates of the McMurdo TACAN beacon, despite this also not corresponding with the approved route.
The Navigation section changed the McMurdo waypoint coordinate stored in the ground computer system at approximately 1:40 am on the morning of the flight. Crucially, the flight crew of Flight 901 was not notified of the change. The flight plan printout given to the crew on the morning of the flight, which was subsequently entered by the flight crew into the aircraft's INS, differed from the flight plan presented at the 9 November briefing and from Captain Collins' map mark-ups, which he had prepared the night before. The key difference between the routes was that the flight plan presented at the 9 November briefing corresponded to a track down McMurdo Sound, giving Mount Erebus a wide berth to the east, whereas the flight plan printed on the morning of the flight corresponded to a track that coincided with Mount Erebus.
As flight 901 began its approach, the radio communications centre allowed the pilots to descend to 10,000 ft and to continue "visually." Air safety regulations at the time did not allow flights to descend to lower than 6,000 ft, even in good weather, although Air New Zealand's own travel magazine showed photographs of previous flights clearly operating below 6,000 ft.
Flight 901 continued its visual approach to McMurdo Sound via a figure-eight manoeuvre, through a gap in a low cloud base (approximately 2,000 to 3,000 feet while over water to establish visual contact with surface landmarks. It was established that the flight crew either was unaware of or ignored the approved route's minimum safe altitude (MSA) of 16,000 feet for the approach to Mount Erebus, and 6,000 feet in the sector south of Mount Erebus.
Cockpit voice recorder transcripts from the last minutes of the flight before impact with Mount Erebus indicated that the flight crew believed they were flying over McMurdo Sound, well to the west of Mount Erebus and with the Ross Ice Shelf visible on the horizon, when in reality they were flying directly toward the mountain. Despite most of the crew being engaged in identifying visual landmarks at the time, they never perceived the mountain directly in front of them.
Passenger photographs taken seconds before collision show perfectly clear visibility well beneath the cloud base, with landmarks 13 miles to the left and 10 miles to the right of the aircraft visible.
Approximately six minutes after completing a descent in Visual Meteorological Conditions, the ground proximity warning system (GPWS) began sounding. Although Collins immediately requested go-around power, there was no time to divert the aircraft. Six seconds later, Flight 901 impacted the side of Mount Erebus and disintegrated, instantly killing everyone on board.
Flight 901 crashed at 77°25′30″S 167°27′30″E and an elevation of 1,467 feet AMSL. To this day, her wreckage remains largely untouched, frozen in time.
So the Chemtrails we see are not to be believed as real. Not normal to see them every day and night and then you say it is not realistic.Sounds like a cover up to me
So the Chemtrails we see are not to be believed as real. Not normal to see them every day and night and then you say it is not realistic.Sounds like a cover up to me
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