Tour to a Snowy Death

A golden anniversary flight goes down with 257 victims

The clear, crisp morning promised perfect weather for flying and sightseeing, as Air New Zealand's Flight 901, a gleaming white-and-silver DC-10 with turquoise trim, took off from Auckland Airport. Coddled by a solicitous crew of 20, the 237 passengers settled down to a hefty breakfast as they began an exotic aerial voyage: an eleven-hour, 7,189-mile flight over the savage, frozen scenery of Antarctica. The $365 tourist junket, of a kind that has become popular in Australia and New Zealand in recent years, had been advertised as "a voyage to the end of the world."

By a bizarre coincidence, it was 50 years to the day--Nov. 28, 1929--since Commander Richard Byrd and three companions struggled across the region's perilous mountains, to complete the first flight over the South Pole in a Ford trimotor called the Floyd Bennett. Flight 901 was scheduled to be far more comfortable, cruising at 35,000 ft., well above any turbulence, descending only in spots to 6,000 ft. for a closer look at the scenery. All the while, the cabin crew kept the sightseers plied with plentiful food and drink. Lunch offered a choice of Tournedos Rossini or Chicken Sauvaroff, plus a special meringue dessert named Peach Erebus. That dish was to be served as the aircraft passed one of the most spectacular sights of the trip: 12,400-ft. Mount Erebus, the polar region's largest volcano, located on Ross Island off the Antarctic coast. (Erebus in Greek mythology was the son of Chaos and represented unfathomable darkness.)

The dessert was probably never served. Sometime after 2 p.m., when radio contact with the aircraft was lost, the three-engine jet rammed into the snow covered side of Mount Erebus and exploded. Nine hours later, search aircraft from the nearby U.S. airbase at McMurdo Sound spotted the wreckage strewn over a quarter-mile area of the steep slope at 2,500 ft. Despite blizzard conditions, three New Zealand mountaineers managed to land at the scene by helicopter; they confirmed that there were no survivors at the site that rescue volunteers later described as "a hellhole."

The crash, the world's fourth most serious aviation tragedy,* was the third DC-10 disaster this year. It thus raised initial apprehensions about another possible mechanical failure like the faulty engine mounting that caused the U.S.'s worst single air disaster in Chicago last May. However, there was no evidence that the aircraft was defective. Though the exact cause of the crash remained undetermined at week's end, suspicions centered on possible pilot error. Captain Jim Collins, 45, was a flyer of 21 years' experience with a reputation for being "the epitome of a non-risk taker," but it was his first flight on that particular polar route. One theory was that he may have been battered by a sudden "cat"--a burst of vicious clear-air turbulence. Others speculated that Collins might have been the victim of the most treacherous hazard in polar flying: a "whiteout," when blowing snow can cause even the most experienced pilots to lose all sense of perspective and direction.

*The three worst crashes: the 1977 collision of two Boeing 747s at Tenerife that killed 582; the 1974 crash of a Turkish Airlines DC-10 near Paris in which 346 died; this year's plunge of the American Airlines DC-10 at Chicago's O'Hare Airport with a loss of 275.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.