Air New Zealand flight 90 1 incident

On the day of flight departure, Captain Collins and co-pilot cassina entered the coordinates in the flight plan into the plane's computer. But they didn't know that the coordinates of the two waypoints in the flight plan that morning had been changed to fix the mistakes that had not been found before. Compared with the old flight plan, the new flight plan will make the plane's route deviate 45 kilometers eastward-the plane was originally scheduled to fly to McMurdo Bay, but in the new flight plan, the plane will fly directly over Lewis Bay and Mount Erebus at an altitude of 3,794 meters. The plane took off from Auckland International Airport at 8: 021New Zealand time.

After about four hours' flight, the plane flew within 70km of McMurdo Station at12: 30pm. At this time, the radio communication center of McMurdo Station approved the plane to descend to 10000 feet (3050 meters) for visual flight to continue its journey. Although the flight safety regulations at that time did not allow the plane to fly below 6,000 feet (1.830m) in any weather conditions, from the travel magazine of Air New Zealand, Captain Collins believed that most of the former pilots of this flight flew below the restricted altitude in McMurdo Bay in order to provide better scenery for passengers. Therefore, he decided to continue to decline according to the previous practice. At noon 12: 45, Captain Collins was approved by the plane to descend to the altitude of 1500 feet (450 meters) at McMurdo Station, and immediately switched to the autopilot system when the plane descended to this altitude. At that time, white clouds in the sky mixed with snow-covered volcanoes, resulting in the phenomenon of white sky. However, Air New Zealand did not provide pilots with training on this phenomenon, because even pilots who had experienced flying in the polar regions at that time knew little about this phenomenon. Because of this, the pilot on the plane didn't realize the current crisis, only thought that the scenery in front was the Ross Ice Shelf-in fact, the Ross Ice Shelf was behind the volcano.

At noon 12: 49, the aircraft's ground approach warning system (GPWS) issued an alarm to warn the pilot that the aircraft was approaching the ground. Although Captain Collins stepped on the accelerator immediately, he and the other crew members didn't know that Mount Erebus was ahead. They did not lift their noses vigorously, but only lifted their noses 15 degrees according to the training instructions. Six seconds later, the plane crashed into the mountainside of Mount Erebus, and the whole plane immediately disintegrated and exploded. The violent impact shattered the whole plane except the tail wing. The wreckage also caused a 600-meter-long trajectory at the incident site. As the plane caused a violent explosion during the collision, it is believed that all passengers and crew on board were killed immediately.

Since noon 12: 50 (that is, after the incident), McMurdo Station has been trying to contact the plane but failed, so it informed Air New Zealand that it lost contact with the plane. American search and rescue personnel working at McMurdo Station are also on standby. In 2004, part of the wreckage of the crashed passenger plane remained in Mount Erebus.

At one o'clock in the afternoon, the US Navy released a report on the incident:

"Air New Zealand flight 90 1 lost contact ... an LC- 130 fixed-wing aircraft and two UH- 1N helicopters are ready to take off for search and rescue work."

At 3: 43 pm, the US Navy issued a supplementary report saying that the visibility at 3 pm was 40 miles, which ruled out the possibility that the plane crashed into the mountain due to poor visibility. In addition, the report also mentioned that six planes had taken off at that time to search for traces of Air New Zealand aircraft.

At 0: 00 p.m. 10, Air New Zealand announced to the media that flight 90 1 was believed to be missing when the fuel budget of the plane had been used up for about half an hour. At the same time, the search and rescue team has been searching on the scheduled route, but found nothing. Until 0: 55 am on the 29th, the crew of an American plane found that Mount Erebus was covered with unknown debris, which was suspected to be the wreckage of Air New Zealand flight 90 1. There is no sign of life on the ground.

At 8: 00 am on the 29th, about 20 hours after the incident, the search and rescue helicopter successfully landed at the incident site and confirmed that the debris was the wreckage of Air New Zealand flight 90 1, killing all 237 passengers and 20 crew members on board. It is also confirmed that at the time of impact, the flight altitude of the aircraft was 1, 465 feet (445 meters).

After the discovery of the wreckage, many parties participated in the search and identification of the remains. At the peak, 60 people were working at the scene at the same time. This is partly because of the pressure from Japan (24 tourists died in this accident in Japan, the largest number of passengers with nationalities other than New Zealand). The search continued until1979 65438+February 9, and the staff identified 2 13 dead people and transported them back to Auckland together with the wreckage of the plane. However, the bodies of the remaining 44 deceased were buried together on February 22 1980 because they could not be identified.