On the 30th anniversary, Air New Zealand’s CEO Rob Fyfe apologised to families of the dead during the unveiling of “momentum” a sculpture marking the significant events in Air New Zealand’s history. In 2008, Justice Mahon was awarded posthumously the Jim Collins Memorial Award by the New Zealand Airline Pilots Association for “ changing the general approach used in transport accidents investigations world wide.” Air NZ was accused of failing to provide enough support to the families of those killed. What was damning was that Justice Mahon stated that Air New Zealand’s executives had engaged in “ an orchestrated litany of lies” by covering up evidence and lying to investigators. Due to “ a malevolent trick of the polar light“, known as a whiteout situation, the crew were unable to visually identify the mountain in front of them. The new flight plan took the aircraft directly over the mountain. He noted that the dominant cause of the disaster was Air New Zealand’s alteration of the flight plan waypoint coordinates in the ground navigation computer without advising the crew. His ground breaking report released in April, 1981 cleared the crew of blame in the disaster. The NZ government’s Attorney-General Jim McLay engaged High Court judge Justice Peter Mahon to conduct a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the tragedy. The crash damaged Air New Zealand’s reputation and sowed further doubt about the safety of the DC10. It was also Air New Zealand’s second accident in that year. There was such grief in NZ as the small nation felt connected to the disaster in so many ways. This was followed by complex search and rescue mission and a bitter and complicated investigation. All 237 passengers and 20 crew were killed. Due to a computing error, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 slammed into Mount Erebus a 3,794 metre (12,448 ft) volcano located on Ross Island. On 28th November 1979, Air New Zealand flight TE 901 took off from Auckland for a sightseeing flight over Antarctica. I have been pondering about what to say about Air New Zealand’s safety video.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |