Beginning in February 1977, Air New Zealand offered tourist overflights from Auckland to the Antarctic. These flights were quite popular--in 1979 four were offered. They flew the route shown at left (from the information brochure). The last of these scheduled flights, Flight TE 901, a DC-10 with 237 passengers and 20 crew, took off from Auckland at 0820 on 28 November, on what was supposed to be an 11-hour turnaround flight. But it crashed into the side of Mt. Erebus at 1249, killing all aboard.
Navy sitrep reporting the missing Air New Zealand flightThe loss of radio contact was noted at McMurdo, and Air New Zealand and the rest of the world was soon notified that communications had been lost. The Navy--Naval Support Force Antarctica (NSFA) was the primary American agency involved with the search operation...and they alerted the world with the first of several situation reports (right). This and the rest of the operational sitreps are from this page of the Archives New Zealand site mentioned below (archive site). [I wrote many Navy messages, not only while I was in the Navy, but also when I was writing sitreps and other stuff while at Pole in 1976-77. So if you are not familiar with Navy teletype messages, note the "day time group" Z 280343Z NOV 79. The numbers indicate that the message was sent on 28 November at 0343 UTC; the initial letter Z is the priority. There were 4 designated priorities--"R" being routine, 99% of messages, "P" for priority, "O" for "operational" (really important), and "Z" for "flash"--reserved for stuff like "we're being attacked, wake up the CNO and the President." (Yes, the CNO was one of the addressees.)]
