In November 1979, Flight 901 departs New Zealand on a sightseeing journey over Antarctica, heading directly towards a volcano. When the plane vanishes, investigators are left with a mystery: how could a seasoned pilot miss a 12,000-foot peak? As they try to piece together the incident, conflicting stories emerge, key evidence disappears, and a troubling picture takes shape – one defined by human error, deceptive illusions, and the hunt for someone to blame.
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Further reading
Many of the key documents are collated at the website https://www.erebus.co.nz, including the initial report of the Chief Inspector of Air Accidents and the findings of Peter Mahon’s Royal Commission. Mahon later wrote a book called Verdict on Erebus. Gordon Vette also wrote a book about the accident and his research into whiteout, called Impact Erebus.
In 2011, New Zealand journalist Paul Holmes worked with Jim Collins’ widow and daughters to write the book Daughters of Erebus. In 2019, Stuff and RNZ interviewed many of the surviving key figures for the podcast series White Silence. For a flavour of the debate that Erebus can still provoke, see forum threads such as this and this. James Reason comments on the Mahon report in his book Beyond Aviation Human Factors, co-authored with Daniel E. Maurino, Neil Johnston and Rob B Lee.
