To begin with, the final leg of the route was unusual. The error was made by the company's flight planners when they compiled the official standardised plan. The first one had been made more than a year before, when Air New Zealand began its Antarctica service. It can be said that there were six distinct errors in the chain of events leading to this accident. The second inquiry, a Royal Commission, completely reversed the first finding and laid total blame on the company and its management practices. The first inquiry, conducted by the Air Accident Investigation Office of New Zealand's Ministry of Transport, found the cause of the accident to be pilot error. Following the accident, there were two separate inquiries into why this five year old, perfectly airworthy aeroplane crashed. In the early afternoon of 29th November, 1979, Air New Zealand flight 901, a DC-10 aircraft code named November Zulu Papa, on a scenic return flight to Antarctica, crashed into Mt Erebus, a 3,770 metre high, active volcano situated on Ross Island. Oddly enough, though it's about aviation, the teller of this amazing tale, this fascinating piece of sleuthing, is not an engineer, but an English teacher: Arthur Marcel from Queensland and the Queensland University of Technology, though he has, as you can tell, a deep interest in systems analysis, and systems failure.Īrthur Marcel: In this talk, I wish to use the story of a tragic aviation accident to illustrate a question for modern navigators. Robyn Williams: Today, an intriguing story of compounded error, confusion and death.
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