Two new books on Erebus disaster both blame Air NZ for tragic plane crash
Sunday, 24 November 2024
As the country prepares to mark the 45th anniversary of the Erebus disaster, two new books by international authors both say Air New Zealand caused the crash that killed 257 people, and then engaged in a shocking cover-up. Mike White reports.
Joey Sheehan was scrolling, clicking, idly doodling at her computer, that day back in 2014.
The Harvard PhD had long been fascinated by sea and air disasters, beginning with the Titanic and Andrea Doria.
Then she found a TV programme that sought to explain various plane crashes, which she’d watch nightly while on the treadmill at her Philadelphia home.
But when Sheehan came across a photo of two men that day, while poking around airline disasters, she didn’t have any idea what she’d stumbled on to.
The older man in the photo was Peter Mahon, a High Court judge whose incendiary report on the 1979 crash of an Air New Zealand DC10 in Antarctica, made him a household name.
The other man was Gordon Vette, a senior Air New Zealand pilot, whose investigations into polar conditions and whiteout helped explain what happened that day when 257 sightseers and crew were instantly killed after flight TE901 ploughed into Mt Erebus in Antarctica.
Sheehan knew nothing about either man. She didn’t know about Mt Erebus. She didn’t know a thing about what was then the world’s fourth-worst air crash.
So she clicked some more, scrolled down further, and began reading.
Robin Fautley was just 13 when he inadvertently became part of New Zealand’s aviation history.
In 1962, Fautley and his family from England took a sightseeing flight from Christchurch to Milford Sound with pilot Brian Chadwick in a de Havilland Dragonfly biplane.
Weeks later Chadwick, the Dragonfly, and four passengers disappeared on the same flight to Milford Sound, sparking the country’s largest aerial search, and one of the country’s most enduring aviation mysteries.
Decades later, 8mm film shot by the Fautleys on their flight was used by those trying to solve the riddle of the Dragonfly, which has never been found.
Fautley, an accountant with a private pilot’s licence, was fascinated with the Dragonfly’s disappearance, and noticed some of those involved in the initial search were also key players during the investigation into the Mt Erebus crash 17 years later.
His research led him to study other New Zealand air crashes, and the official investigations and explanations that followed.
The most controversial of these were the attempts to understand how an Air New Zealand jet taking people on a trip of a lifetime to Antarctica, had simply flown straight into the side of an active volcano.
The chief inspector of air accidents, Ron Chippindale, had been immediately assigned to investigate the November 1979 Erebus crash.
His report concluded pilots Jim Collins and Greg Cassin were flying far too low in poor visibility, were unsure of their position, and their actions resulted in the disaster.
But criticisms that Chippindale, an official of the government that owned Air New Zealand, had minimised the company’s responsibility and liability caused Prime Minister Robert Muldoon to launch another investigation.
He chose High Court judge Peter Mahon to head the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Erebus disaster, believing Mahon was a conservative who would likely confirm Chippindale’s findings.
But Mahon didn’t.
In an excoriating judgment, he cleared the pilots of blame.
Instead, Mahon found a last-minute alteration of navigation coordinates that changed the plane’s flight path by 43km and wasn’t conveyed to the pilots, compounded by an optical whiteout, resulted in them flying into Mt Erebus.
Moreover, in a phrase etched into New Zealand history, Mahon said he had listened to “an orchestrated litany of lies” from Air New Zealand staff guilty of a “predetermined plan of deception”.
Air New Zealand appealed Mahon’s judgment, and the Court of Appeal controversially accepted he had overstepped his mandate.
Incensed, Mahon went to the Privy Council.
While upholding some of the Court of Appeal’s findings, what many forget is that the law lords never challenged Mahon’s conclusions on the cause of the crash.
But for decades, New Zealand has been divided between those who blame reckless pilots for the Erebus disaster, and those who blame a nefarious corporate and its political masters.
And as the country prepares to mark the 45th anniversary of the Erebus tragedy on Thursday, Sheehan and Fautley have marched into the debate from across the world, and passed very clear, and very harsh judgments.
Knowing nothing about the Erebus disaster and its contentious aftermath, Sheehan started at the beginning, reading everything she could: Chippindale and Mahon’s reports; the court judgments; the many books written about the accident; and countless original documents.
“I knew diddly squat. I didn’t even know there was a controversy. Silly me,” Sheehan says. “But I’d stumbled on to this Erebus thing, and I couldn’t put it down.”
Using skills honed during her time at Harvard as a scholar of Chinese history, Sheehan spent 10 years working on her just-released book, Judgment on Erebus.
Initially, Sheehan had little idea how much research and reading would be required.
“I guess it was just as well I didn’t know. Once I’d started, I found I had a tiger by the tail, and I just had to hold on for this ride. I originally thought I was going to be able to complete it by the time of the 40th anniversary. And here we are at the 45th. At least I got in before the 50th.”
Sheehan says it took her a year before she started coming to a conclusion as to what had happened, and who was responsible. But ultimately, she became convinced Air New Zealand was to blame for the crash, through a series of missteps and mistakes.
Bad luck played a part, too, with the “sector whiteout” Vette identified meaning the pilots, who were untrained in this polar phenomenon, and unaware of the changed flight coordinates, thought they were flying up McMurdo Sound, when in fact Mt Erebus lay directly ahead of them.
There was an element of a Swiss cheese scenario, Sheehan says, with several things that could have averted the accident, failing to happen due to random chance and misfortune.
Sheehan is in no doubt Peter Mahon was correct: Air New Zealand’s actions caused the crash, and it then indulged in a concerted cover-up, which involved impugning the pilots.
“They went to great lengths. The people from the airline just lied - lied through their teeth.”
She says the Erebus story is one of heroes and villains, and Mahon was heroic in standing against powerful politicians and officials. “He had a very serious conscience. He couldn’t not tell the truth.”
In contrast, Sheehan says Ron Chippindale, who was employed by a government department, was too close to key Air New Zealand staff who had much at stake if the truth was revealed.
“One hand was washing the other.”
She believes Chippindale, who died in 2008, knew only one finding would be acceptable to Muldoon and the government, and his report was “an energetic exercise in subterfuge”.
“He wasn’t a friend of trying to dig out the truth.”
Sheehan, 76, who had a second career selling real estate before retiring, accepts she’s a layperson. But her scholarly background, and distance from the polarised debate, gave her the advantage of examining the issue dispassionately, she says.
“This is my considered judgment, and I’ve gone through everything. And I don’t think anyone can pick this apart and destroy this thesis.”
Robin Fautley, 77, accepts he is also a layperson.
But his work as a chartered accountant, auditor and liquidator, meant he was trained in forensically researching material, and coming to a conclusion. His background with flying also helped Fautley understand the material he was sifting through.
Despite not knowing Sheehan, or having correspondence with her until recently, Fautley came to an identical conclusion in his book Erebus and the Dragonfly: Air New Zealand’s mistakes caused the crash, and they then tried to hide this, and blame the pilots.
Fautley also started with absolutely no preconceptions or prejudice about what had occurred, or who was responsible, and immediately saw the competing arguments.
“And, rather like Mahon, I didn’t make up my mind one way or other till I’d actually got most of the evidence.”
That took Fautley two years, and he believes Mahon “got it pretty much right”.
“He was a man 25, 30 years ahead of his time, He did the right thing, he was independent, and he wasn’t bullied by anybody. I have a very high admiration of him.”
As for Chippindale, Fautley says the air accident inspector was far out of his depth.
“He should have never been allowed anywhere near it.”
However, many things have changed since 1979, Fautley accepts, including Air New Zealand staff and management, and the presumption that if there’s an accident, responsibility must lie with those in the cockpit.
But there are some, often senior pilots, who can’t accept Mahon’s truth of what happened on Erebus and insist the pilots must be held responsible, given they didn’t know their location - despite thinking they did, Fautley notes.
“And I hope those old pterodactyls, still flying round, realise that Collins and Cassin were caught by a combination of circumstances that even these very clever guys - would they have been able to deal with it? No, they wouldn’t.
“It’s always, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ Simple as that.”
When Sheehan was writing Judgment on Erebus, an aviation group in New Zealand told her, “we don’t need any more Erebus books down here”.
“Well,” says Sheehan, “you can see I beg to differ.”
The fact two new books have been written about Erebus, 45 years after the event, while perhaps irritating or surplus to some, sheds further light on what remains a notorious and divisive event in our history.
Leading aviation historian Richard Waugh welcomes them, noting they are the first international books on the subject, and people will be amazed at the research both authors have done.
Despite having very varied backgrounds, and coming at the issue from different perspectives, Waugh says Sheehan and Fautley arrive at remarkably similar conclusions.
“They don’t pull their punches in terms of the magnitude of the cover-up or fraud. I think Joey and Robin do the families a great service in outlining things more clearly, 45 years on.”
Waugh says that distance from the disaster has allowed more reason and less heat in discussions and examination of the evidence.
But increasingly, that evidence showed the pilots weren’t culpable for the crash - something Mahon and Vette had proven, and even the Privy Council didn’t refute, he says.
“Everybody who’s really digging deep, comes up with new stuff. But it all seems to tilt clearly that Mahon was right, and Chippindale was wrong.”
To that end, Waugh questions why Chippindale’s report continues to have official status, and suggests the Government could move to have it withdrawn.
Moreover, Waugh raises the possibility of a larger inquiry into what happened, given the extent of the cover-up Sheehan and Fautley point to.
“I think there’s still unresolved issues. If you read these two books, it’s still not good enough.”
It showed how the wounds of November 28, 1979 were still raw for many, Waugh says, with the failure to build a memorial to the victims an example of that.
“Gosh, it would be great if something was far better resolved by 2029 for the Erebus families.”
Air New Zealand was approached for comment.
The Sunday Star-Times asked:
How the airline was planning to mark the 45th anniversary of the Erebus disaster?
Did Air New Zealand accept responsibility for the accident lay solely with the company, and not the pilots?
Whether the airline now accepted it was involved in a cover-up to absolve the company and blame the pilots?
Whether the company would apologise to the Erebus pilots’ families for this, and for destroying relevant information?
Did it still stand by the findings of Ron Chippindale, and should his report remain part of the official Erebus record?
Air New Zealand responded: “We don’t have anything to add to this story. Have a good week.”
What do you think? Email sundayletters@stuff.co.nz. Please include your full name and address.
A remembrance service for Erebus family members and those involved in the recovery mission, Operation Overdue, will be held at 1pm, on November 28, at St James Church, 750 Harewood Rd, Christchurch. From 2pm the church will be open to the public to pay their respects.
Sheehan and Fautley’s books will be launched at 1pm, on November 30, at the Air Force Museum, 45 Harvard Ave, Wigram, Christchurch. Contact Richard Waugh for details of the two events: 022 533 9400.