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Talk:Mount Erebus disaster/Archive 2

< Talk:Mount Erebus disaster
Latest comment: 1 year ago by PatrickDunfordNZ in topic Untitled
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Untitled

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments4 people in discussion

The reference by Mahon to Air NZ changing the route without telling the crew is of course only partly true, and unfortunately a cause of much misunderstanding. The crew were in fact given a printout of the route, and entered it into the aircrafts computer themselves. They failed to look at the plan closely enough, but it cannot be said that they weren't told.124.197.15.138 (talk) 20:24, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Erm, no. The original INS co-ordinates provided by the airline's Navigation Section to the flight crews included an error that resulted in the previous flights flying some way out over McMurdo Sound, the intended course in fact bringing the flight over Mount Erebus itself. The original flight plan assumed a safe height higher than the mountain, so this was not in itself dangerous. On actual flights however it was normal to descend to below 5,000 ft to allow passengers a better view, as was well known by the airline's management, although they later denied this despite published accounts of the flights stating so. As the erroneous course placed the aircraft out over the Sound, and away from the mountain, this error did not matter much and it was not noticed on previous flights.
Immediately before the accident flight however the error was discovered by the Navigation Section and corrected and the updated INS co-ordinates given to the crew without the flight crew being informed of the correction. The crew therefore thought that the course being flown would fly them as usual in towards the mountain from a safe area out over the waters of the Sound.
Instead, the aircraft's INS flew the aircraft on the originally-intended course, and in misleading visibility, i.e., a true white out, the crew flew the aircraft right into Mount Erebus. If the INS co-ordinates had remained as they had been previously, i.e., with the error uncorrected, they would not have been near the mountain and the accident would not have occurred. That is rather the point of the matter.
Logic and common sense would seem to dictate that if you know a crew are going to be flying at low level in the vicinity of a mountain that any change in their programmed course needs to be conveyed to them while they can still do something about it, rather than allowing them to only find it out for themselves upon impact.
The right time to notify Capt. Collins of the change was the evening before the flight when he was planning the journey and still had time to take the change into account and to factor-in its implications. Not to change it without telling anyone. If that was the only option, they should have done nothing, left the error uncorrected, and waited until he had returned.
... and what makes this accident so sad is that not only did so many people die due to a simple error, the people responsible instead of admitting their (honest) mistake, then tried to cover it all up - with the co-operation of the NZ Government and some of its departments - in a way that was almost laughable, their lies being so poorly thought out and transparent that they must have failed to notice that Mahon was a barrister and high court judge, and had spent most of his career in court listening to better and more accomplished liars than themselves, whose, if one watches the Royal Commission's proceedings, attempts at obfuscation appear positively amateurish. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.148.220.131 (talk) 13:52, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Close But NO CIGAR. What this well research edit ignores is the fact that Captain SIMPSON came back from his flight to the ice on 14th Nov 1989 and advised that he had noted a 26 Nm discrepancy between his intended flt path and where the INS put him as he approached MC Sound. This is highly suggestive that the INS coordinates he or his FO had loaded on the 14th as per Nav section coordinate print out were for the Over Erebus 1977 flight plan. I'd suggest that the stumble bums at ANZ did nothing to investigate this until the last moment before the accident flight on the 28th Nov. The reason that the earlier TE901 flight did not crash into Erebus is that it approached the Antarctic mass in the clear and Simpson took manual control of the flight path and there never was an issue for that flight. Had it approached Erebus low in AGL and under foul weather conditions it too may have crashed.

erm, no. The originally planned route took the flight over mount Erebus at a safe height, however when the INS co-ordinates for this route were being entered manually into the company's computer system several figures were entered incorrectly. Subsequent flights used these incorrect co-ordinates which instead routed the flights safely down McMurdo Sound and on these flights it became normal practice to descend to low level in order to give their paying passengers good views of the terrain. These flights completed normally and the descent to lower levels was reported in various publications. However, Capt. Simpson, who was aware of the original planned routing over Erebus, noticed these co-ordinate errors on one of his flights, compared to the originally planned route, and notified Air New Zealand's Navigation Section, who then corrected these errors on the eve of Capt. Collins' flight and without telling him or his crew. Capt. Collins had planned his route on a chart using the route flown by previous flights which took them down McMurdo Sound and so drew his tracks accordingly. Thus Capt. Collins was expecting to fly down McMurdo Sound the same as all the previous flights had done. On the morning of the flight Air New Zealand's Navigation Section handed a computer printout (containing the corrected figures) of the INS co-ordinates to the crew, who then entered them into the aircraft's INS thinking these were the same as for previous flights - Collins' crew had not flown the route before. The INS then navigated the aircraft into Mount Erebus without the crew realising, due to a 'whiteout'. Air New Zealand then tried to argue that the crew should have checked the figures before entering them into the INS but Judge Mahon stated that the crew were entitled to expect that the company's Navigation Section be able to provide accurate and correct figures, that, after all, is what Navigation Section is there for, and the crew had already plotted the intended track on their charts the evening before the flight.

Comment on previous post above : "If the INS co-ordinates had remained as they had been previously, i.e., with the error uncorrected, they would not have been near the mountain and the accident would not have occurred. That is rather the point of the matter."


I believe that Mahon found that the story of the HEWLETT transcription error into the Alpha system was a lie (I have heard this but not read the whole report nor have access to it ) . I believe this to be true as well. I believe that the INS route was intentionally revised at a suggestion of Air Nz pilots or pilot to agree with the route that the USAF LC 130 flights took because the route was safer and gave MC better radar coverage of approaching aircraft. The fact that Erebus was an active volcano was possibly also a consideration. THis INS route change was clearly an informal change. Most if not all of the a/c on the 1978 season flights flew this MC Sound route. It was also the route that the Briefing Section of Air NZ based the pre flight briefings on. TimFid (talk) 22:02, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

No the name of the Chief Navigator is Brian Hewitt not Hewlett. PatrickDunfordNZ (talk) 11:50, 11 November 2024 (UTC)
The Navigation Officer, Mr. Brian Hewlett, was testifying under oath and with the possible penalty of being charged for perjury should he be found to have lied. He was not a high ranking member of Air New Zealand with political connections and it is difficult to imagine what motivation he would have had in telling lies to the enquiry, considering that he was in fact admitting to a grievous error such that no qualified Navigator would wish to admit. That he did in fact admit to such an error does at least display some integrity, integrity that was noticeably absent from Air New Zealand's senior management. I should also perhaps point out that if some financial incentive was offered to Mr. Hewlett to commit perjury then it would have needed to have been a quite substantial one as after admitting in court to such an error Mr. Hewlett was almost certainly guaranteeing that he would never be employed in any responsible position in any airline ever again.
None of the Air New Zealand flight crew witnesses made any mention of the original route being changed for the reason you suggest. Indeed the only flight crew member who made any mention of a change of route was Capt. Simpson when he suggested the route be 'corrected' to that which was originally planned, i.e., over Mount Erebus. It is also notable that all the press reports and even the press releases put out by Air New Zealand long before the accident specifically mentioned the route of the flight taking them '... down McMurdo Sound'.
If as you suggest the route change was an 'informal' one then I can only marvel at the implied lack of professionalism displayed at Air New Zealand i.e., they changed the route they were flying and didn't bother to communicate this fact to their own Navigation Section?
BTW, I have read the report.

Time

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I'm not sure that the times given are in NZST, they could be in NZDT as the crash took place in November when NZ was using Daylight Time. Evil Monkey∴Hello 10:23, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

The same thought just occurred to me! I think NZDT would be in effect in late November 1979. -- FP 10:33, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

There's a little confusion over time - the New Zealand mainland was operating on NZDT, but McMurdo Station was operating on NZST. I am trying to fix that. Lcmortensen (mailbox) 01:12, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Mount Erebus disaster/Archive 2/GA2

File:Air New Zealand Flight 901.jpg Nominated for Deletion

Latest comment: 15 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
An image used in this article, File:Air New Zealand Flight 901.jpg, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests May 2011
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Archived references not used in the article

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

--Jetstreamer Talk 18:10, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Recent additions

Latest comment: 11 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I think it's time to start a new thread regarding the addition of recent content . First of all, the accident is not the 18th worst in aviation history because accidents with more fatalities include collisions between two aircraft and the they cannot be considered individually. Furthermore, WP:VERIFY requires a citation exactly supporting the material added. Given that this is not the case for second citation of the first diff, it borders WP:ORIGINAL. The same applies for the first citation added in the second diff. The 18th worst accident stuff appears nowhere in first citation of the first diff, and the resemblance between the article and that source is astonishing. Clearly, there's a violation of at least two policies in the diffs provided, so I'm removing these edits in a week or so unless strong arguments for keeping them are given.--Jetstreamer Talk 11:08, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Agree, I removed it 124.149.118.17 (talk) 12:00, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
Paragraph removed per WP:SILENCE.--Jetstreamer Talk 22:38, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

"(as the crew assumed)"

Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Paragraph two of this article includes the text: "(as the crew assumed)".

In the context of this article, this text implies that the flight crew made an assumption in the absence of reasonable and proper factual data, which of course is untrue, as the crew had been briefed by the airline's navigation section 19 days earlier (as is discussed elsewhere in this article). The crew's "assumption" was therefore based on the data presented by navigation experts at this briefing and therefore was not an assumption, but a belief reasonably based on the content of the briefing.

To represent this belief on the part of the flight crew as an assumption is, in my opinion, inaccurate and an affront to the professionalism and integrity of the flight crew of flight 901. I have no doubt that the authors of this article had no such intent and I therefore respectfully submit that the word "assumed" should be replaced by "believed" in this paragraph.

Thanks for all your great work.

Selwyn James Scj242 (talk) 04:23, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

@Scj242: go on and change it yourself; if some editor disagrees, we'll discuss it later. This great work of ours can be your great work too. --Deeday-UK (talk) 12:58, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
I have changed 'assumed' to 'had been led to believe'.

Route map request

Latest comment: 9 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Could we please get a route map for this article? I'm having difficulty picturing where the bulk of the 5,360 miles (8,630 km) is spent when the return trip from Christchurch to Auckland is only 464 miles (747 km). The only map I see linked is this reference. However, that's more of a crash map than a route map. – voidxor (talk | contrib) 07:05, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Most of the distance was spent flying to and from Antarctica. The travel agent brochure at NZ History Online for the November 1979 flights has the full route map . Lcmortensen (mailbox) 09:12, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
A quick Google search will point to various sites with map images, such as this site . So, it'll be a matter of just picking one. KyuuA4 (Talk:キュウ) 22:25, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
Latest comment: 5 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

@Wikimeowcat: I can see devoting a sentence to this in the Legacy section, but anything more than that would be undue weight. It certainly does not warrant its own section. Brycehughes (talk) 11:31, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Leave it out completely, Wikipedia is not a tabloid newspaper.Andrewgprout (talk) 12:29, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
Fine by me. Brycehughes (talk) 23:40, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 11 May 2021

Latest comment: 5 years ago10 comments7 people in discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Air New Zealand Flight 901 → Mount Erebus disaster – The common name of the incident. Aircorn (talk) 10:57, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Note: The page was moved on the 11th May to to Air New Zealand Flight 901. Before that it spent 15 months at Mount Erebus disaster. Prior to that it had been at Air New Zealand Flight 901 since 2005. Aircorn (talk) 11:24, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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