Synopsis

Air New Zealand Flight 901 was an international one-day sightseeing flight over Antarctica from Auckland International Airport in New Zealand. On November 28th 1979 the plane crashed into Mount Erebus killing all crew members and passengers on board.
The crew, captain Jim Collins and first oficer Greg Cassin, had not flown to Antarctica before. However, the flight was deemed a straightforward flight. Three weeks before departure the pilots attended a briefing session were they were given the printouts of previous flights to Antarctica. The plan gave the coordinates for the sightseeing trip to Antarctica and across McMurdo Sound.
On 28th November the pilots entered the series of latitude and longitude co-ordinates into the aircraft computer but the pilots did not know that the coordinates had been changed earlier that morning and when they entered into the computer it changed the flight path 45 kilometres to the east.
Around 12.30 pm the McMurdo station gave permission to Flight 901 to descend to 3050 meters and continue visually. Fifteen minutes later the captain told the McMurdo station that he was dropping further to 610 meters. At this point when the captain looked at the navigational system, but the flight 901 was not where the crew or the McMurdo station thought it was. The change in the two coordinates put the flight path across Lewis Sound and towards the 3794 meter Mount Erebus. The captain of the flight faced whiteout because the white of the ice blended with the white of the mountain therefore he could not see the slope on the land. Around 12.49 pm the GPWS gave the pilots a warning but there was no time for them to save themselves from disaster.
11 hours later the crew of a United States Navy plane found the wreckage on the side of Mount Erebus and there were no signs of survivors. After further investigation they found out that the plane crashed into Mount Erebus because the act of airline in changing the flight path without telling the air crew.

Aviation crash video

Part 1 of X

Video embedded from YouTube on 14 November 2011

Flight summary

Aircraft type: McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30
Departure time: 8.20
Date: 28, November 1979
Passenger: 237
Crew: 20
Survivors: 0
Duration: 11 hour
Destination: Christchurch International Airport
Accident type: Controlled flight into terrain