The Sightseeing Flight and the Invisible Mountain

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Air New Zealand Flight 901 is flying straight towards a mountain. 257 people are on board. Most of them sipping champagne and hearing eagerly out of the windows. It's November 1979. This is a sightseeing trip to Antarctica.

It took off from New Zealand this morning.

They'll enjoy some views of spectacular icy landscapes.

If it's not too cloudy, of course.

“Then they'll loop around and land back in New Zealand in time for dinner.”

Captain Jim Collins talks to the passengers. The cloud cover in the McMurdo area has increased although ground visibility is good. We will be taking advantage of the rate-off facilities at McMurdo for Letdown which should take us below the cloud and give us a view of the McMurdo area.

McMurdo. The McMurdo sound an inlet between mainland Antarctica and Ross Island. There's an American research base at McMurdo with a small air strip on the ice. Captain Collins calls them on the radio to check there were no other planes around.

They assume they'll see him soon flying low over the inlet.

But Captain Collins isn't flying towards the water of McMurdo cell. He's flying towards a mountain. A 12,000-foot active volcano to be exact. Also in the cockpit is famed Antarctica Explorer Peter Morgru.

“He's there to entertain the passengers, telling stories and pointing out landmarks.”

This is Peter Morgru again folks. Still can't see very much at the moment. Keep you informed as soon as I see something that gives me a clue as to where we are. Peter Morgru can't see where they are as Collins takes the plane down to a gap in the cloud. But at his play in the cockpit should tell them where they are.

It shows their distance to the next pre-programmed waypoint in their computerised flight path. That morning the crew got a printout of the coordinates for those waypoints, which they manually entered into the plane's navigation system. The flight engineer wants to check something. Where's Eribus in relation to us at the moment?

To the left, he's told. Eribus, that's the 12,000-foot volcano. I'm just thinking of any high-ground in the area, that's all. But Mount Eribus isn't to their left. It's straight in front of them.

Captain Collins keeps descending to 1500 feet. The old Antarctic hand Peter Morgru, hearing through the window, sees enough to get his bearings. Or say he thinks. Ross Island there? They've now lost radio contact with the Americans at McMurdo.

The flight engineer is feeling uneasy. I don't like this. Captain Collins also seems to sense that something isn't right. Where 26 miles north will have to climb out of this. 26 miles north.

That'll be north of the next pre-programmed waypoint. We'll come back to that. Climb out of this. We'll come back to that too. The dialogue in this cockpit recording will be bitterly debated.

But now the ground proximity alert is going off. Pull up. Pull up. 500 feet? They shouldn't be that low.

Maybe it's a false alarm? 400 feet? Anyway, there's a routine procedure when this alert goes off. Boosts the engine power and climb. Captain Collins doesn't sound concerned.

Go round powered, please.

I'm Tim Hartford.

“And you're listening to caution retails.”

When Jim Collins put his name forward for a sightseeing flight to Antarctica, it was more in hope than expectation. Collins was experienced and respected by his colleagues.

He was cautious, methodical, always taking notes.

But aged just 45, he wasn't one of the top guys. A senior pilots who were also company executives. When Air New Zealand started their sightseeing flights, the executive pilots called dibs. They wanted to see Antarctica too.

But now the flights have been running for a couple of years. Ordinary pilots were also getting a turn. Collins was thrilled to see his name on the roster.

“The evening before the flight, he sat at home with a big map.”

Drawing lines and pointing things out to his teenage daughters.

In the morning, Collins wifed Maria, waved him off,

with a reminder to call up the shop on the way home. Don't forget the fish. But the early evening brought a phone call from Air New Zealand. We're just a bit concerned about Jim's flight. We haven't heard from him for a while.

Are you on your own? Well, the cuts are here. Have you got another adult there with you? No. Might be an idea.

“In that moment, said Maria Collins later.”

She was struck by cold fear. At nine o'clock, the television news led with the missing plane. By now, it would be out of fuel. Wherever it was, it wasn't still flying. In the early hours of the morning, another phone call.

The Americans had spotted what remained of the plane. Smudged across the frozen slopes of Mount Erobus. Police from New Zealand were flown out to help with the cleanup. They had no specialist training or experience of Antarctica.

One had never even seen snow.

He recalls, "Mustances were overloaded. All the bodies in the wreckage. And overpowering smell of kerosene. I almost fell through thin ice into a crevice. Screwing across the snow or champagne box.

And money. And cameras. And people's diaries. The policemen couldn't resist taking a peek inside. One described the trip so far and our beautiful the Antarctica was.

The last words in the diary were, "Gee, it's great to be alive." The policeman finds Captain Collins body. And nearby, his wing binder. He looks inside that too. It's intact.

And the pages are filled with what looked like briefing notes. It might be important. He carefully seals it in the bag. Jim had friends among the executive pilots, the company man. Maria Collins noticed that when they called on her,

they started saying things like, "Of course, Jim was too low." Or, "It was so unlike Jim to contravene any regulations." Maria says, "I gained the impression that they were trying to break it to me gently, that Jim would be healed to blame." Then they stopped calling at all.

One spelled it out as he stood in her doorway. Maria, I won't be able to see you anymore. I've got to be with a company. Jim had been a groomsman at his wedding.

One senior pilot who taught Jim to fly, told Maria,

"This isn't Jim, Maria. This is not Jim's behaviour. Something's wrong. I'm going to find out." Just as Maria Collins had feared, when the chief inspector of air accidents published his investigation report, it left no doubt that Jim was to blame. He'd contravene the regulations, flying well below the minimum safe altitude of 16,000 feet.

And he'd done so when the visibility obviously wasn't good. You could tell that from the transcript of the cockpit voice recording. It was damning. We heard some of it earlier. Antarctic expert Peter Morgru, not having a clue where they were.

At one point, just two minutes before impact, a voice says,

"Bithick, here, a bird."

“A bit thick. They must be referring to cloud, right?”

The report also mentioned some sort of error with the waypoint coordinates. But that had been fixed before Collins flight. And anyway, it didn't matter. If Collins had kept to the minimum safe altitude, he wouldn't have crashed. Simple as that.

Still, it has asked to this big. Couldn't be left to the chief inspector of air accidents. There'd need to be a proper formal inquiry with evidence given in public. The government appointed a judge, Peter Morgru, to conduct a royal commission with technical advice from a distinguished air marshal.

Morgru was no fool. He understood that the chief inspector's report was convenient for the government.

“And New Zealand was stay-toed. If the company had screwed up,”

the government could face expensive claims for compensation. But if the pilot screwed up, insurance would fit the bill. Morgru, the government hoped he'd back up the report and the report did seem convincing. Morgru, later, recalled.

I presumed that after testing the evidence at first hand,

I would see no difficulty in confirming the chief inspector's opinion. Still, though, if Jim Collins had known his flight path to constrate towards a 12,000 foot volcano, why was he flying at 1500 feet? Maybe it had to do with that error in the waypoint coordinates.

Mine recalls, I had the impression that there might be a great deal more to this than was admitted on the surface. There was.

“Corsion details will be back after the break.”

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On a normal flight that goes from A to B, your final waypoint is obvious. It's the destination airport. But Air New Zealand sightseeing flights weren't going to land in Antarctica. Then we're going to see some sights then fly back home. So what to choose is the final waypoint for their computerised flight path.

In a way it didn't matter. If visibility was good, they'd just fly around for a bit. But the computer needed a waypoint. So they picked a radio beacon near the American base at McMurdo. It seemed as good a choice as any.

Actually, it was stupid. It meant the flight path went right over an active volcano, Mount Eribus. Even stupider, when Eribus was between the plane and the base, the Americans wouldn't see the plane on their radar and you'd struggle to get a connection on the radio. Then the flight path stored in the company's computer was changed with a new waypoint.

This was much more sensible.

“Now the flight path took you over open water.”

For over a year, pilots of the Antarctic flights got printouts with these sensible new coordinates. But the night before Jim Collins flight, the final waypoint was shifted back again. Back again, back, over, Mount Eribus and nobody told Jim Collins. The public hearings in Peter Mann's courtroom began in July 1980, seven months after the crash.

Air New Zealand's lawyers told Mann that the waypoint change was irrelevant for two reasons.

The first reason they said is that Jim Collins would have been briefed that his flight path went over Mount Eribus. You see it might have looked like a sensible decision to change the flight path to over McMurdo sound. But it wasn't. In fact, it was a mistake. A typographical error when the coordinates got transferred to a new computer system.

For over a year, the airline said, nobody noticed that mistake.

The officer who briefed the pilots told Peter Mann that he always believed the flight path went over Mount Eribus.

The executive pilots agreed, nobody had ever noticed that the waypoint coordinates took them over McMurdo sound instead. Then, Peter Mann heard from the non-executive pilots, who told a very different story. They all said there'd been briefed to fly down McMurdo sound. This all gave Peter Mann a problem. He put it in diplomatic language.

I could not help but be struck by the direct conflict of evidence which had emerged. What he meant was, someone was telling lies. Mann believed the non-executive pilots. One had been at the same briefing as Jim Collins. He told Mann there'd been shown printouts of the coordinates given to other flights.

Mann understood what must have happened. Jim Collins, the habitual note taker, wrote down the coordinates during the briefing. The night before the flight, when his teenage daughters saw him drawing lines on a map, he was plotting his flight path. It took him down Murdo sound. Then, on the morning of the flight, Collins was given a printout of the coordinates to enter into the plane's computer.

“He assumed they must be the same coordinates it's seen at his briefing. Why wouldn't they be?”

Remember when Collins said, "We're 26 miles north." Collins was looking at the cockpit display, which told him he was 26 miles north of the next waypoint. Because he'd plotted his route the night before, he thought that meant he was over the water. But no, the coordinates had been changed. It actually meant they were about to hit a mountain. It seemed to be to Mann that Air New Zealand had made a hideous mistake.

They'd briefed Jim Collins on one flight path, then changed it and didn't tell him. And it seemed to Mann that they were trying to cover up their mistake. By lying that Collins had been briefed, he'd been flying over Mount Errorbus. One piece of evidence would confirm what Collins had been told at his briefing. The notes he'd made. Collins ring-bying, they remember, had been found on the mountain side perfectly readable.

But when Peter Mann got his hands on that ring-binder, it was empty. The pages had been damaged by kerosene, and someone at Air New Zealand had thrown them away. I said there were two reasons the airline claimed the change in waypoint was irrelevant.

“So what if Jim Collins believed his flight path lay 25 miles west of Mount Errorbus?”

If he hadn't been flying too low, he would still have passed safely over the top.

If Collins had followed the regulations, he wouldn't have hit the mountain.

“Simple as that. So, about those regulations.”

Peter Mann noticed once again that Air New Zealand's executives were saying one thing, and the non-executive pilots were saying something else. The executives insisted that the minimum safe altitude was sacked with sacked. The other said, everyone knew those flights to Antarctica flew low. They were sightseeing flights. You can't see many sights from 16,000 feet.

The non-executive pilots told Peter Mann, they had been briefed that they could fly as low as they wanted, as long as they cleared it with the American radar station at Mount Murdoch, which is exactly what Jim Collins had done. We will be taking advantage of the right of facilities in McMurdo for a lift out. Once again, Peter Mann was struck by the lack of documentary evidence

about what had been said to Collins at his briefing. It wasn't just the pages from Collins' ringbinder that had mysteriously disappeared.

The first officer had forgotten his briefing notes at home.

The day after the crash, someone from Air New Zealand called on his grieving widow and took those notes away. Then, the company lost them. Soon after the crash, the airline's CEO ordered that all relevant documents be gathered together and surplus documents put through a shredder. His rationale, he said, was to avoid any leaks,

“but was it only surplus documents that were being shredded or inconvenient ones?”

Some inconvenient documents remained at large, like magazine articles about the sightseeing flights, which made it very clear they were flying far lower than the minimum safe altitude. If that was strictly forbidden, why had no executives taken action after seeing these articles?

The executive said, "We never saw them. We had no idea."

One of those articles was by the boss of the McDonald Douglas Corporation, which made the plane that Air New Zealand flew to Antarctica. In a trade magazine, he published an enthusiastic account of flying low down at Murdoe Sound. He sent a copy to the CEO of Air New Zealand when the CEO gave evidence in Peter Martin's courtroom, he insisted he'd never seen it.

He doesn't read all his mail he explained. Then it transpired that Air New Zealand's marketing department had printed

a million copies of this article and sent one to every household in New Zealand.

Peter Martin asked the CEO to explain. Martin recalled, "He gave no verbal answer. He simply turned towards me and spread his arms outwards in a despairing gesture. He was indicating his total lack of comprehension that such a thing could have happened." The airline's case was falling apart. Jim Collins did have permission to fly low.

He didn't know his flight path went over Errorbus, but they remained one final mystery to unravel. How had Jim Collins failed to see Mount Errorbus when it was right in front of him? The answer seemed obvious. Collins must have been flying through cloud. The transcript of the cockpit voice recording was damning.

Bit thick here, Abert. But that line in the transcript came as a surprise to other pilots who listened to the recording. The quality of that recording was poor. Many parts were hard to make out. They didn't remember hearing anything like that. And anyway, nobody on the flight deck was called Bert.

“Remember what the police had found among the wreckage on the side of the mountain?”

Passengers cameras, some were undamaged, and the films inside were developed.

Jim Collins had descended below the clouds, and visibility was clear for miles around.

“That made Peter Mann suspicious about the transcript,”

so he flew to America to listen with an expert. The quality was poor, but it didn't sound like bit thick here, Abert. The expert thought he heard, "This is Cape Bird." So, Mann arranged to be flown to Antarctica, following the exact same route as Jim Collins. At the moment of the disputed line in the transcript, Mann looked out of the cockpit window.

He saw a Cape. It wasn't Cape Bird. That was 25 miles west. On the flight path Jim Collins thought he was following.

But by tragic coincidence, this Cape just happened to look very much like Cape Bird.

It was confirmation by us twice over. The pilots assumed they were flying over Cape Bird, so they saw Cape Bird. The chief inspector assumed the pilots were flying through cloud, so he heard bit thick here, Abert. Still, though, that didn't solve the mystery. It deepened it.

“If visibility was good, how on earth had Jim Collins failed to see Mount Erobus?”

Corsionary tales will be back in a moment. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than add supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, I Heart's twice as large as the next two combined. So, whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

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“Most of the senior pilots had turned their backs on Jim Collins Widow, Maria.”

But one had not. The man who taught Jim Collins to fly. This isn't Jim, Maria. This is not Jim's baby. Something's wrong. I'm going to find out. The pilot's name was Gordon Vettie. He talked to experienced Antarctic pilots who told him about a phenomenon called Whiteout.

The Air New Zealand pilots who flew to Antarctica, including Vettie himself, had never been there before.

And nobody at Air New Zealand had briefed them about Whiteout. The more Vettie learned, the more horrified he became at the risk he'd unknowingly taken. Whiteout, Vettie discovered, is a peculiar visual illusion that can happen in polar regions in overcast conditions. When the land is white, and the clouds are white, and the light shines in a certain way, you lose all ability to perceive depth or distance.

While the expert told Vettie, it's like being inside a big milk bottle. It can come on suddenly. And you don't necessarily realise that anything's wrong to walk into a snowbank or fall into a hole. Or crash your plane into a frozen mountain. Gordon Vettie understood what had happened in the final moments of the flight.

I don't like this. Where 26 miles north will have to climb out of this. Climb out of this. What did Jim Collins want to climb out of? Vettie says, "It must have been that disconcerting sense of being in a milk bottle."

Collins was below the cloud. He could see for miles to the left and right, but he hadn't been briefed about Whiteout. He had no idea that right in front of him, he'd be unable to tell a flat, expansive frozen water from the rising slopes of a frozen hillside. He'd just have sensed that something was off, so his instinct was to climb.

But it was too late.

If I had been in their position at that time,

“I would probably have been misled in the same respect as they were.”

The Nama Self may well have crashed on Mount Herobus. Gordon Vettie wanted to make sure Peter Marne knew about Whiteout, so he flew in an expert at his own expense to give evidence to Marne's royal commission. Later, when Marne himself visited Antarctica, the Australian Air Force offered him a lift home. The crew were experienced Antarctic flyers,

and they'd been following the news about Marne's royal commission.

They invited Marne to the cockpit for takeoff. They wanted to show him something. The day was overcast. The pilots flew towards a ridge of snow and pointed out how it ended in a black rocky outcrop. Marne recalls, "I could just make out the top of the ridge."

Then they told him, "Now raise your hand to cover that black rocky outcrop." The top of the snow ridge disappeared instantly. All that Marne could see was undifferentiated white. He was stunned. It was one thing to hear about Whiteout from an expert. Quite another to experience it for himself.

The Australian crew were satisfied. That's the illusion that doomed Jim Collins. Marne had spent months growing more and more frustrated that Air New Zealand executives were trying to pull the wool over his eyes. He appreciated that these young men from another country's air force wanted to help him understand. When he wrote up the findings of his royal commission, he thanked every one of them by name and rank.

Peter Marne's findings turned the chief inspectors report on its head.

“The cause of the accident, said Marne, "Wasn't Jim Collins flying too low?”

It was Air New Zealand failing to brief him properly about the risk of Whiteout and failing to tell him that they'd changed his waypoint coordinates between the briefing and the flight." The chief inspector had heaped all the blame on Jim Collins. Marne said Collins deserved no blame at all. Not everyone agrees. On Internet discussion boards, pilots still express strong views either way.

Did Collins relied too much on the computerized navigation system to tell him where he was? Peter Marne didn't think so. He points out how accurate that system is.

Although perhaps we've since grown more mistrustful of the idea that the machine could never fly us into a mountain.

The distinguished air marshal who'd served as Marne's technical advisor thought that the judge had overstepped. He reckoned Collins was maybe 10% to blame. As it happens, I too have strong views on the question of how much to blame Jim Collins.

“I think it's the wrong question. The right question, as with every plane that crashes on this show,”

is what can we learn? When you read Peter Marne's report, you get a sense that he's writing in a different era. You can feel Marne growing towards concepts that in 1981 accident investigators didn't yet have the vocabulary to articulate. Concepts like cognitive biases and human factors such concepts have since been popularised by thinkers such as James Reason, a psychologist and expert on human era. Both Peter Marne and Gordon Vetti instinctively grasped an idea that was then very new that organizational failings can set a trap into which even the most skilled of pilots might fall.

James Reason said that the man report was 10 years ahead of its time. Peter Marne was a subtle and elegant writer. You'll often find him raising an eyebrow through his prose, making it clear what he thinks without spelling it out.

Air New Zealand executives had lied to him, without actually saying it.

“But Marne was too angry to pull his punches.”

Instead, he crafted a memorable turn of phrase that made the accusation explicit. I am forced reluctantly to say that I had to listen to an orchestrated litany of lies, an orchestrated litany of lies, devastating satisfying but unwise.

Marne was a judge, but he wasn't writing as a judge. He was writing as a royal commissioner. That mattered.

The verdicts of a judge can be appealed, but there was no legal mechanism to appeal the findings of a royal commission.

“It's hard to imagine that Air New Zealand would have got far if they could have appealed. What would they have said?”

And it was an improvised litany of lies, a choreographed cacophony of cock-ups? The point was that they couldn't appeal. Air New Zealand's lawyers found a clever way to fight back. They took Marne to court for breaching the principles of natural justice by accusing the company of a cover-up in a way that gave them no right to respond. The case went to the privy council, the highest court in the land. The privy council bent over backwards to praise Marne's investigative work. Brilliant, they said, but agreed that Air New Zealand had a point.

“Legally, Marne had overstepped. Marne was devastated. He resigned as a judge. His health declined rapidly, and he died soon after, aged just 62.”

The legal rangles created just enough merc to let Air New Zealand wriggle off the hook. It wasn't until 2019. The 40th anniversary of the disaster that New Zealand's government formally accepted Marne's report and apologized for Air New Zealand's role in the crash. Gordon Vetti, too, found that Air New Zealand were in no mood to forgive and forget his research into Whiteout. He says, "I'd hope that we might all be able to admit that in ignorance we made a terrible mistake and get on with rebuilding and learning from Armistakes."

No, Vetti was hounded out of his job. I'm somewhat sad that the price I've had to pay for my attempts to find the truth has been much greater than I expected. Gordon Vetti and Peter Marne are the heroes of the Aerobus affair, but if the question is, what can we learn? Perhaps they too have something to teach us.

From Gordon Vetti, we get the sad lesson that seeking the truth can make you powerful enemies, and from Peter Marne, tempting as it is to speak the truth.

Sometimes it's wiser to let the truth speak for itself. For a full list of our sources, see the show notes at TimHarford.com. Corsion details are written by me, TimHarford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines and Ryan Dilly. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. The traditional sound design by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio and Dan Jackson, and Adap Haffry, edited the scripts.

It features the voice talents of Melding Gutrich, Genevieve Gawnt, Stella Hartford, the Seaman Roe, Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cone, Eric Sandler, Carrey Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Corsion details as a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review.

Why not join the Corsionary Club? To sign up, head to patreon.com/corsionaryclub. That's Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N, dot com/corsionaryclub. This is an eye-heart podcast, guaranteed human.