If you want to know more, please - go listen.Ī view over the Erebus crash site not long after the disaster shows the trail of debris strewn over the snow. Stuff and RNZ's new podcast, White Silence, explores the tiny details and the big ideas that made Erebus what it was: a disaster for its time and, frankly, a blight on our recent history. The ground proximity warning system was sounding - whoop whoop, pull up - but there was no panic, no extreme evasive manoeuvres.Ĭaptain Collins calmly called for 'go round power' two seconds before impact. When the investigators listened to the cockpit voice recorder (black box) they were stunned to hear that in the final seconds before impact, none of the flight crew saw Erebus in front of them. There was no mechanical failure, it wasn't caught in some polar storm, it just flew into the mountain. The other thing that gets you is the circumstances of the crash: the plane just flew into the mountain. To the point where the Prime Minister - who this year finally announced the plans for a national memorial to the 257 victims of the disaster - wasn't even born when it happened. The argument has dragged on and on and prevented any real closure. But the two sides couldn't agree on whether or not that absolved them of responsibility. Was it the pilots' fault, or Air New Zealand's? The pilots - Captain Jim Collins and First Officer Greg Cassin - had been badly misled. Each convinced the other was responsible for the crash, and neither was prepared to give an inch. Erebus became a story about blame, when it should have been about grief. What came next was, in its own way, just as bad. And this is one of them - that the crash is only a part of the story. When you don't know anything about Erebus, and you start looking into it, there are a couple of things that really grab you. Not just because it's our worst-ever disaster, or a major anniversary is upon us, but because too few people over the years have ever really, properly reckoned with them. What was the orchestrated litany of lies? Who was supposed to be lying? And why did the plane crash? It is still the country's deadliest disaster and it's almost as well-known for one famous phrase: 'An orchestrated litany of lies.'įor all that name recognition though, how much do you really know about what happened? The name of the volcano that an Air New Zealand DC10 slammed into on 28 November, 1979, killing all 257 people on board, has become shorthand for tragedy and controversy. Just the one word and any New Zealander knows what you mean: Antarctica, plane crash. You don't need to say any more than that. Photo: Colin Monteith / Antarctica New Zealand Pictorial CollectionĪnalysis - Erebus. A koru on the tail of Air New Zealand Flight TE901 at the site of the Mount Erebus crash.

Facts about mount erebus