Letters telling stories of that day, of the weeks that followed, of the trauma that arises any time that Erebus is mentioned. “I have read many accounts from family members.
And persecution on top of pain,” Ms Ardern said. She said the government’s botched response “was wrong”. On 28 November 1979, a sightseeing aircraft carrying 257 people crashed head-on into the side of a volcano in Antarctica. On Thursday, Ardern gathered with victims’ families at Government House in Auckland to deliver the formal apology. Previous governments failed to table those inquiries in parliament until 20 years after the crash. There have been calls for a memorial and the re-airing of grievances thrown up by two official and conflicting reports conducted in the aftermath of the crash. Vision of icy permafrost taken from out the window of the doomed flight.įorty years after the tragedy, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave a “wholehearted and wide-reaching” apology to the victim’s families. On 28 November 1979, the Air New Zealand DC10 with 257 people aboard took off from Auckland International Airport and flew 2000 miles southwards to the Antarctic, to plunge into the slopes of Mt Erebus, a 20,000-foot volcano. The footage was shot by a passenger on board the doomed flight, not long before the scenic flight crashed into the mountain, according to Radio New Zealand. The crash of Flight 901 was the loneliest of the world’s air disasters. Some of the passengers are clutching cameras, and others holding drinks. There is also vision from inside the cabin, showing members of the flight walking happily around the cabin, which is filled with bright-coloured seating. A warning signal that went off in the plane gave the pilot less than six seconds notice of the tragedy ahead.įootage retrieved from inside the aircraft shows the plane calmly flying over dramatic frozen Antarctic waterways, and sparse hilly permafrost. The doomed flight, filled with happy tourists keen to spend a day flying over the stunning expanse of the Antarctic, departed from Auckland on November 8, in 1979.Įverybody on the flight would be killed, as it plunged nose-first into Mount Erebus. The tragic Mount Erebus Disaster, which happened 40 years ago this week, is one of the worst peacetime disasters in New Zealand’s history. Chilling footage shows the last moments of passengers on board a doomed Air New Zealand sightseeing flight, which crashed into a mountain, killing everybody on board.
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