Talk:Mount Erebus disaster

Time

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)

Legacy

Just a note for the sake of completeness. Air New Zealand's decision to replace DC-10s with Boeing 747s probably had more to do with the grounding of all DC-10s for five weeks in 1979. There's a very brief mention of this grounding at McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10#Safety_record; I'm surprised Wikipedia doesn't have more on it. Had Air New Zealand not been government owned, it might have collapsed at that point (this is purely speculation on my part).-gadfium 07:54, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Movie

Not any contribution but would like to know if anyone can help with the name of a dramatized movie made of the Mnt Erebus disastar. edras1@absamail.co.za

There was a TV serial (miniseries) that was broadcast in NZ and AU called Erebus: The Aftermath, made in 1988. Perhaps this should be added to the article. --MCB 17:19, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

44 Unidentified victims

How can there be so many people who were unidentified? Wouldn't Air NZ have some kind of paper trail that would say who was on the plane?

That sentence should probably be clarified. It's not that ANZ didn't know who was on the plane, but that the remains of 44 of the victims were not individually identifiable and thus could not be returned to their families for funerals. --MCB 18:01, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• Now fixed. --MCB 19:30, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Changing of coordinates

Who changed them? It's not clear in the article, and I think it's important to note, especially since Mahon found it to be the reason the plane crashed. Iorek85 05:41, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Brian Hewitt of the Navigation Department on the 17th floor of Air New Zealand House 1 Queen St AUckland

But Mahon got this terribly wrong- not being a pilot

The coordinate error would not have mattered if the crew did not arm the Inertial Nav under VFR

The Inertial Nav is an IFR instrument - to be used safely above Minimm Safe Altitude (MSA) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.155.178.202 (talk) 11:04, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Victim Nationalities Discrepancy

This site [1] doesn't agree with the nationalities of victims listed here. It has the following listed:

US:18 (this article says 22) UK:8 (this article says 6) SWISS:3 (this article says 1) JAPAN:23 (this article says 24) FR:1 (this article says 1 - hey something matches) CA:3 (this article says 3 - and again!) NZ:203 (including 20 crew) (this article says 200)

(this article also says 1x Australian)

These add up to 259, so it doesn't even agree with itself (257 victims) - but where are the nationalities listed on this page sourced from? I couldn't find it in any of the refs. PseudoEdit ^(yak) _(track) 21:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Added a cn tag. PseudoEdit ^(yak) _(track) 04:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

About the information I removed

First, mentioning that the airline sold it's DC-10s later seemed irrelevant since nobody faulted the plane itself.

Second, in order to have as cozy a community as the "sizable portion" assertion claimed; everyone would need to know 10,000 people if we use the ultra-conservative figure of 2,000,000 for the population. Of course the higher the actual number, the more people each person would need to know. (I just divided 2,000,000 by 200) I've talked to many friendly New Zealanders but I seriously doubt people's Christmas card lists down there go into the thousands. Anynobody 08:48, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Front page news

This particular article made the front page of The Press today. Seems that an IP address traced to Air New Zealand made some edits to this article that were designed to make the article more favourable to Air NZ. The edit mentioned in the article was appears to be this one from 2003. I had to laugh at the sentence from the article that read "Computer experts contacted by The Press also tracked the altered entry back to Air New Zealand's computer server." -- as if using WHOIS is that hard. Evil Monkey - Hello 21:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Turns out the edits were first discovered by the NZBC blog. They also pointed out another edit that made large additions to the article. Evil Monkey - Hello 01:23, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

An orchestrated litany of lies

A line in the article:

The phrase "An Orchestrated Litany of Lies" has entered New Zealand popular culture.

has been tagged as citation needed. What would be a suitable citation for this?

It would be easy to add three references (or more) from a variety of New Zealand sources showing use of the phrase unconnected to the Erebus report. Is that enough, or do we need a source which actually says "This phrase is now part of New Zealand popular culture"? Here are some sample uses: [2] (the album of this name: ...a famous quote from NZs recent political past...), [3] (...To quote a well known phrase, there has been "An orchestrated litany of lies”...), [4] (...in a phrase that is likely to resound as did “an orchestrated litany of lies” in another investigation...). Some of these are not considered reliable sources, but we are not using them to establish facts but usage.-gadfium 19:40, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Since no one replied, I've added these three refs to the article.-gadfium 17:55, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Continuation of Antarctic flights

Did this incident spell the end of sightseeing flights to Antarctica run by Air New Zealand? Either way I think mention of the continuation (or otherwise) of the service should be made in the "Legacy" section Dick G (talk) 06:29, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there were no more after this. I don't have a ref though.-gadfium 04:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll let you off, just this once... Dick G (talk) 05:36, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Minor edit to correct nature of the Ross Ice Shelf

I have made a minor edit to correct the statement that the Ross Ice Shelf is sea-ice. It certainly isn't; ice shelves are formed where glaciers flow into the sea and are in Antarctica are continuous with the great ice sheets of the continent. --APRCooper (talk) 09:48, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Are all of the crew members from New Zealand?

Were all of the crew members from New Zealand? If so, what source states this? If not, what source and what nationalities are the non-NZ crew members? WhisperToMe 08:45, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

This: http://www.antarctic.homestead.com/901.html states that all of the crew were from Auckland - But does another source say this? WhisperToMe 08:50, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

When was the error to the flight plan made?

In "Circumstances surrounding the accident":

At that time flight plan coordinates were entered into the computer by hand, and during this process a single digit had been typed incorrectly. This resulted in the flight plan, originally intended to fly down the middle of the wide McMurdo Sound, actually being programmed to fly directly over Mount Erebus, some miles to the east.

In "Changes to the coordinates and departure":

Unknown to them, the coordinates had been modified earlier that morning to correct the error introduced years previously and undetected until now. These new coordinates changed the flight plan to fly 45 kilometres (28 miles) east of where the pilots intended the plane to fly. The coordinates instructed the plane to fly over Lewis Bay and directly over Mount Erebus, a 3,794 m (12,448 ft) high volcano, instead of over McMurdo Sound.

So what exactly happened? What I gathered from the article is that the original plan flew over McMurdo Sound, this was changed for some reason to fly over Mt. Erebus, and then the pilots unwittingly entered the new plan. But that contradicts the first quote, which makes it sound like the error was made during the entry process.

The other interpretation I'm getting is that the original plan wrongly flew to Erebus, it was changed westward to McMurdo, but the pilots entered wrongly to go back to Erebus again. But that makes no sense as to why changing the flight plan would've been a problem. Kelvinc (talk) 20:37, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

see section above on who changed the coordinates —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.155.178.202 (talk) 11:07, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I just came across this article through random browsing, and I agree with the OP that the quoted section is entirely incoherent and simply cannot be understood as presently written. As I have no other knowledge of this incident I have no idea what really happened. Can someone with knowledge please correct the offending sections to be comprehensible? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.172.249 (talk) 16:59, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:AirNewZealandFlight901.jpg

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BetacommandBot (talk) 04:19, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

When was the error to the flight plan made? - any answers?

Any answers to the question "When was the error to the flight plan made?" above? This article doesn't make sense as it stands. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.73.18 (talk) 15:45, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

The end of this article helps clarify a little, I think. Also, I think the article used to have this right, look at this diff. 79.69.17.154 (talk) 23:20, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, the article is ambiguous and contradictary in this part. The Mahon Inquiry report seems to clear details about it up though. I'm still reading through all the details (it is a big report and a big download), but it appears that in the pre-flight briefing held some days previously, Captain Collins copied down the lattitude/longitude coordinates shown on a flight plan print-out that was, at that the time, the current one stored on Air New Zealand's ground computer. However, it appears that print-out was text only (computer systems I imagine very basic in 1979). Captain Collins took these coordinates, and hand plotted them on his own personal atlas, which corresponded with a flight path SW down McMurdo Sound, leaving Mt Erebus well to the East. So, this is the route he expected to take, and he was not provided with copies of any maps from Air NZ. However, it appears Air NZ's approved route WAS to fly over Mt Erebus (in the centre of Ross Island), which rose to a height of 12,000 feet. If Air NZ had also given Captain Collins a flight plan map, then he probably would have realised there was a discrepancy. Air New Zealand ground staff spotted the error in the lattitude/longitude waypoint coordinates stored in their ground computer's database and corrected it at 1:40 am the morning of the flight. On the morning of the flight, a fresh print-out of waypoint coordinates was given the the flight crew, who entered these into the flight computer. However, Captain Collins was still under the impression from his previous mark-up of his atlas that he was NOT going to fly over Mt Erebus. Figures 3 and 4 in the Mahon report I think helps clear this up nicely.--NiceDoge (talk) 08:44, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Some further conjecture on my part, but the other part of the question I would like to see answered is WHY Air NZ had, as their approved flight plan, a flight path taking aircraft over the only piece of high ground in the area? That doesn't seem very safe to me, and I bet if any of the previous flights had flown the "authorised" plan (instead of the erroneous one flown by the 13 previous flights) the returning flight crews would have quickly requested that it be changed to a safer one away from Mt Erebus. It may have been that the "authorised" plan was ill-conceived in the first place, and someone just strung together a set of known coordinates already in use in the area and never properly joined the dots together on a map, or did so and didn't consider the safety issues in terms of checking for any high ground along the flight path. Also, who made the corrections to the ground computer navigational database that morning and why? Was it like a junior clerk doing some late-night cross-checking of the paper documents against the computer records when he had nothing better to do on a night-shift? Why didn't Air NZ procedures trigger some sort of safety review by say, an experienced flight crew, before amending the ground computer database records?--NiceDoge (talk) 09:35, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, I think I've got through the guts of the facts presented during the Mahon Inquiry around the sequence of events. I've ignored the parts of that report that have been contested by Air New Zealand (Mahon hypothesises about some events and motives for them) and limited myself to the evidence presented by Air New Zealand staff to the Inquiry. I've inserted the bulk of the text required to fix up the ambiguity and contradictions but I have to do some reference link tidy-ups and also fix up the paragraph in the next section (there is now a little bit of repetitive content).--NiceDoge (talk) 15:48, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

"Recent Revelations" section

Like a previous editor, I removed the conspiracy-theory-laden section titled "Recent Revelations" [sic]. The material is very poorly sourced; it does not meet Wikipedia's verifiability and reliable sourcing policies and does not belong in the article. (The "revelations" are not particularly recent, hence the "[sic]" above.") It is a rambling section that basically consists of original research by synthesis.

As to the sources, the only one that could be considered reliable is John King's 1994 book, New Zealand Tragedies: Aviation Accidents and Disasters, but no direct quotation is given, and the book cannot be verified online. The reference to Secret NZ is cited to a footnote that merely reads, "Secret NZ". The multiple references to poneke.wordpress.com are to an ordinary blog hosted on a blog site, the type of self-published source that is inappropriate for Wikipedia. And both http://www.iasa.co..au/folders/Publications/Legal_Issues/Erebus25yearson.html (even with the extra dot removed from the URL) and http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominionpost/4398336a6749.html are nonexistent links.

This is fringe material that raises a red flag. Exceptional claims require exceptional sources. That is not the case here. Please do not re-inster this material unless well supported by reliable, established sources. --MCB (talk) 07:50, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

"Recent" Revelations Section

Many thanks for taking the time to explain why my "Recent Revelations" section had to go. Unfortunately the person who removed it the first time didn't do this.

The two "non-existant" links that I cited didn't work because I mistyped them. The stuff.co.nz one should have ended "6479 not 6749" and the other one should have been ".com.au" not ".co..au."

It's a pity that the poneke.wordpress.com blog is not allowed as a source. The writers all seem to know what they are talking about and it's very well written and detailed.

Secret New Zealand is a New Zealand TV series, presented by Peter Elliott, about cover-ups and the like in New Zealand's history that screened on TVNZ's Channel One in 2002 and is currently being shown on Sky Network Television's History Channel (New Zealand) with the Erebus Disaster episode being screened last week. Unfortunately there is no Secret New Zealand website.

I'm a bit stumped as to how I could rewrite the esection in a way that doesn't constitute Original Research.

Changes made to "Circumstances surrounding the accident" section

Below I need to cite relevant sections I sourced my changes from in the Mahon Inquiry Report, for both my benefit and for the community to be able to verify the source material. Unfortunately, the source document I am working with (External Link for the article) is a 190 page PDF that was scanned without OCR (text shown as images only) and had to extract from many 1,000s of words (Mahon unfortunately is not very good at "getting to the point" sometimes) a semi-decent summary.

- "...shown a print-out of the flight plan stored on Air New Zealand's computer systems". Paraphrased from Pg 12, Point 35.

- Alteration of coordinates of McMurdo waypoint on Air NZ ground computer system. Pg 13, Point 37.

- Advice from US ATC that descent possible to 1,500 ft. Pg 5, Point 13.

- Cloud base being 2,000 - 3,000 feet. Pg 8, Point 18.

- Flying in visibility out to 23 miles. Pg 10, Point 28.

- Pause in route to descend though cloud. Pg 11. Point 32.

- Captain Collins plotting course on map/atlas night before flight. Pg 12. Point 36.

- Some summary information on how coordinates got mixed up, and why Captain Collins had to make own maps. Pg 12-13

- Great figures showing difference in routes between the one Captain Collins plotted and expected to fly, and actual route. Pg 13-14 Fig 3 and Fig 4.

- Approved route Minimum Safe Altitudes. Pg 17

- Role of pre-flight briefings regarding heeding US ATC advice in descending to 1,500 ft despite route MSA. Pg 18. --NiceDoge (talk) 03:31, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Made some further edits and re-arrangements to this section. Apologies for taking so many edits to "get it right", but as discussed before, the 190 page Mahon Inquiry report is a REALLY hard document to extract concise summaries of facts out of. You really have to scour and re-read sections over and over again to get all the tit-bits together to get a complete picture of what happened. This is probably why the original article and most external sources were ambiguous to begin with (and many with minor factual inaccuracies)--NiceDoge (talk) 16:42, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

A further proposal I would put is to remove any reference to Air New Zealand's data entry into its ground computer of the McMurdo waypoint coordinates being as a result of a data entry "error" (The much quoted single digit typing error). Although that was Air New Zealand's version of events, Mahon believed the coordinates input to the ground computer to be intentional as the first route was impractical, and the "incorrect" route was better, already in use by the airline's pilots, and corresponded to the route used by military aircraft on their approach to McMurdo. He didn't believe Air NZ's version of events (although I think he stopped believing anything much that the Air NZ executives said pretty early on. He was pretty outraged about the shredding of documents immediately after the crash in what appeared to be a very shady way). So the "official" accident report says there was no data entry error, but Air NZ's "official" position was that there was. I suggest wording this neutrally then.--NiceDoge (talk) 16:42, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Vandal alert!

Someone inserted cannibalism claims into the Operation Overdue section! 91.83.26.231 (talk) 21:35, 28 November 2008 (UTC)