miss Brooks and teacher at lynfiled college answerd the following questions
about the erebus crash. Her father was Gordon Brooks the flight
engineer. The image to the left is Gordon Brooks
Transcript:
about the erebus crash. Her father was Gordon Brooks the flight
engineer. The image to the left is Gordon Brooks
Transcript:
So, your
dad was on the Erebus flight...
Yeah,
my dad was for working for Air New Zealand. He was a flight engineer. At that
time, in the planes, you used to have your two pilots and you'd have a flight
engineer. A flight engineer looks after - or used to look after, because they
don't have them now - but used to look after all the things to do with the
engine and the plane, the mechanical requirements, check all the in-flights,
check that everything was working properly in flight...he was rostered on; it
was a normal work day for him. It was his job.
Do you
think that the investigation that followed was adequate? Was it up to
standards?
No,
it wasn't. I think its...it wasn't at all. It was...there were so many problems
with the investigation itself, for example, it started more or less from the
moment that people knew about the crash, there was a cover up started by Air New
Zealand...and then, simultaneously, with the actual plane crash site, the police
were sent to recover bodies and the proper procedure would been to then declare
it a closed zone which only the police could enter for the purpose of collecting
evidence. In this case, they didn't do that. They had representatives from Air
New Zealand and from the airline company itself coming down and taking what they
wanted from the crash site and evidence went missing from the crash site itself.
So, a lot of things were done poorly. It wasn't handled well at all and the
eventual court case, of course, as everyone knows now...it turned out there was
a lot of corruption in that court case and truth wasn't told and...it was all
handled badly, I think.
Who do you
personally blame for it?
I
don't blame any person. I think...there's a very interesting theory called
Cheese Cutter Theory. Its a theory that...its an aviation theory, right, so - it
means its developed for airlines but a lot of management companies now use it.
Its being used across management; its gone beyond aviation. Its called Cheese
Cutter Theory. So, what it means is...do you know Guerrier cheese, where you
have all the holes in the Guerrier cheese? So, if you took a Guerrier cheese,
right, and you sliced it up really thinly...and then you want to put it back
together, right, so you've got to put all your slices back in exactly the right
place so all your holes match up and if something wanted to fly through the
cheese, it could fly through the cheese, right...like if you had a plane flying
through the cheese...but if you took any one of those slices and didn't put it
back in the right place - everything else in your cheese could be right but that
one slice - your plane can't fly through. So, the idea with Cheese Cutter Theory
is that its a very, very complex thing to get an airplane off the ground and
into the air - there's a lot of different factors involved: there's your
aircraft, there's people on the ground, there's people in the plane, there's
you're control towers, there's other countries, because you have to fly through
other countries airspace, so you have to be in contact with their control towers
etcetera...there are so many factors and if any one factor is wrong, it can halt
the whole procedure. So, with something like this Erebus crash, it wasn't just
one thing at fault - there was a range of things at fault, so that day, it was
like the Guerrier cheese got sliced up, put together badly, too many holes,
plane, as you know, it crashed because there were just too many things wrong. No
one thing to blame. There were just little problems all over the place. For some
reason, on that day, they all came together in that way...and bad luck. The
plane crashed.
Did you
take any action to see justice, personally, or with any groups?
Our
family joined in a action against the U.S. - not against the American government
but against the American defence forces, because on that day they were supposed
to be maintaining radio contact with the plane and if they had done that
successfully, they might have been able to tell the plane that it was in the
wrong area...but for some reason that day they weren't doing their job and so
the DC-10 had lost contact with the radio tower down in Antarctica. Its never
been established what really happened down at the American base on that day, why
they weren't doing what they should have been doing, but our family and some of
the other families of crew members, we took a class action against them. It went
to the high court in London and they said that we were unable to pursue it any
further. We weren't allowed to sue the Americans...
So, since
your father was a flight engineer, I'm guessing he didn't really have any
concerns about the safety of it...?
...no,
he felt very confident about the plane being safe and that was the second time
he'd gone down - so, it was the second time he'd flown down himself - so he felt
very confident about the plane. He and all the other people flying, they all
loved their jobs and they loved what they did, so for them it wasn't just a job;
it was a personal love...and they took it very seriously that you've got
passengers in the plane so there's no way they would have gotten that plane and
flown that day if they thought a single thing was wrong.
How did you
hear about it?
Air
New Zealand phoned our family in the afternoon to say that the plane was
missing, so it was before the information was released to the public. They do
that for employees, just to let you know that there is a possible crisis
unfolding.
Was this
when it crashed or when they'd lost contact?
When
they'd lost contact - so at that point, we didn't know if it had crashed. They
said we haven't found the plane; its possible we will find them - and we're
hoping we will - at that point, they really hoped that they would find them and
its more or less just a procedure that if a plane is missing, you phone the
families. It wasn't the first time we'd had a phone call like that...
Do you
think Air New Zealand would have done the same thing for the passengers'
families, before it got released to the public?
No,
they don't. They didn't do that. I don't know what procedure would be these days
but in those days...it was quite horrible the way the families found out because
a lot of people were waiting at the airport to pick people up and somebody just
came out and said - when it was overdue...like hours overdue - "The plane is
missing; we think it has crashed". People weren't told sensitively or told well.
It wasn't handled very well...it was handled really, really badly. Really badly.
You'd like to think that these days they'd do it differently but then they were
quite...it was like they didn't even care about the relatives who's families had
died...I think it was too big. It was too big - we had no experience in New
Zealand of this kind of thing happening and they didn't know how to handle it
properly and they handled it really badly.
So, when
you first got the phone call, how did you and other people close to him cope
with it?
We
actually...it sound weird but we actually got a gut feeling, we knew actually,
that something was bad so we all just...there was my sister and I and my mum and
we all just started crying because we just had a bad gut feeling that this was
not going to work out well. So even though nothing had been confirmed, I think
we just knew in our hearts that things weren't good because we just...I think
for us we just suddenly knew that that was it.
Have you
been down to Antarctica, to the memorial service?
Yeah,
I went down a couple of years ago. It was amazing. Its such an incredible place
so it felt really special to be able to go there and be able to have the
experience of being there...and also just on the flight down to see what people
saw on the original flight. I always wondered 'why would you go down, what was
the big deal flying over ice?' but when I saw it myself, flying over, it was so
beautiful and so interesting. It was really amazing and I could finally for the
first time understand why you want to sell tickets to the public so see this. I
was really quite special. It was amazing.
Did it help
with the grief, going down there and being able visit the crash site?
No,
nothing can make up for losing somebody that you love and nothing can ever fix
that...but, I don't know. For me, it didn't change anything but for some people
it did. For some people it felt like they'd finished their family member's
journey by being able to go down and come back to New Zealand...and for some
people who knew that some of the body parts of their family members were still
in Antarctica, it was really special to be able to go down and to be able to
have a memorial service, right there, where they knew their body parts were. For
some people it did have a lot of really special meaning in that way.
Do you
remain prejudiced at Air New Zealand and what would you have wanted them to do
differently?
Air
New Zealand today is a different company; there are different people involved.
Having said that, there are still people who were involved with Air New Zealand
at the time who are still involved with Air New Zealand and yes, I do have a
prejudice against them...and how they could have done it differently? They could
have been honest at the time. Its that simple. They should have been honest.
They should have told the truth. They should have accepted the consequence...and
I don't think we've seen the full story. There was a lot of political
involvement behind the scenes and I don't think we've ever heard the full story
and I'm hoping, in my lifetime, we'll get to hear the full story of what really
went on behind the scenes because at the moment I don't think we have all the
pieces to be able to know what really went on behind the scenes but there was a
lot of political involvement.
Is there
anything that you would like to add, anything we haven't covered?
...it
did affect aviation in the world because at the time it was the fourth or fifth
worst air crash in the world. Its still the fifteenth now, so you know, it was
huge. When they have a crash like that, a major crash, a lot of people get
involved in the investigation - good people who just really want to know what
the problem was, what really happened, so that they can make sure that doesn't
happen again in the future. So, as a result of that Air New Zealand DC-10 crash
in Antarctica, it changed a lot of aviation practice around the world. Aviation
around the world was interested so its led to a lot of changes in the airlines
across the world, not just Air New Zealand...its changed some of the management
practices in aviation, again, across the world, not just in New Zealand...its
through that Cheese Cutter Theory being developed that led to...its a case study
in management now...managing the whole Air New Zealand disaster of Erebus and
the DC-10...its become a case study in management...so its contributed to fields
apart from aviation and...and the New Zealand Police - because they were
involved in going down to recover the bodies and as a result of their
experiences there's been changes made in the police force, for example they've
brought in psychologists now for police because the police involved in going to
recover bodies had a really bad time recovering the bodies and a lot of the men
came back and they...some of them had break downs. They were psychologically
affected but at that time there was no counselling for police. They were just
told to go back to work and forget about it and a lot of them couldn't and as a
result they really suffered, so since then they have psychologists for the
police. A lot of different things came out of the accident beyond just Air New
Zealand so it did make some really positive contributions in that way, changing
how a lot of the things were done.
You know
how you said it was your father's second time going down to Antarctica? What was
the first time like?
Amazing.
He loved it. Again, he was working and there was even something in the cover up.
They said that no one else had gone - none of the crew had been to Antarctica
before so that's why they weren't experienced, but that wasn't true because that
was actually my dad's second flight down as a crew person...he absolutely loved
it the first time - thought it was the most amazing thing - so on this flight,
he actually tried to get my sister and I onto the flight. He was trying really
hard to get us on and in the end, because it was such a popular flight and all
the tickets were sold out - there just wasn't a single spare seat on the plane;
he was just going to get us on and we could sit where the air hostesses sat,
like as a special crew thing but he couldn't even sneak us on, and luckily,
because we would have been dead too, my sister and I...he loved education, so he
was really passionate about getting out and seeing the world and how things are
and he was like "I really want you girls to see this because its so beautiful
and amazing" and even the week before the flight, he showed me on a
map...because he was really interested in what he did as a job, so when they had
new routes he would get a map and he would trace out the map - he would put pins
on the map and tie red thread to figure out the route. So he would show me...on
the map, he put in the pins and got the red thread and showed me how they were
flying down New Zealand, down to Christchurch and then on to Antarctica. So, he
showed me the exact route...afterwards I thought 'Oh my god, that'd be really
interesting to know where he put that final red pin', like where he thought they
were exactly in Antarctica compared to the coordinates that were later changed
on the plane. You know, that would have been very interesting...if you listen to
the black box recording - his voice is on the black box recording - and he talks
about not being sure about where they are, and I wonder, because that was part
of him, mapping things out ahead of time - he had this visual sense of where
they were and he knew something was wrong, something wasn't making sense,
because he had been there before and he knew he had mapped it out a number of
times and kinda understood the terrain and so something for him felt wrong...but
I think if he thought for a second that they were actually in front of a
volcano, there was no way they would have flown into it. They would have got out
there in time. That was the sad thing: they'd actually started to pull the plane
up but the volcano was already there and they couldn't get high enough to get
off over it. I mean, that's the Cheese Cutter Theory again. If they had just
been in a different part of Antarctica, they would have just flown through the
air; no one would have been the wiser. The accident wouldn't have happened...or
if they hadn't had a white-out and they could have seen the mountain clearly,
they would have flown around it or over it...every little thing counts.
I also
heard they started flying the plane lower so they could get more of a
view...
That
was actually an impact and that's something that was addressed in the inquiry
and the pilots were blamed personally for flying low but the reality was, behind
the scenes at the time, the pilots were under constant pressure to fly lower
because they were selling the plane flights to the public on the basis that you
could get photos from the plane. So they were always pressuring and pressuring
the pilots to go lower, so it had been an ongoing problem for the last year,
year and a half, with Air New Zealand and the pilot, they didn't want to fly
lower in Antarctica and the management kept telling them "You have to, you have
to". So there was huge pressure for them to go lower but the pilots themselves
were arguing - it wasn't safe and they didn't want to have to do that. So that
whole thing of them flying low, there's a huge controversy around that.
...but
it wasn't recorded. There were official rules for what they were supposed to do
but then there was what management had told them they had to do. They had been
told verbally in meeting again and again that this is what they had to do...but
later, when it came to the inquiry, the company denied having said that but
everyone who worked for Air New Zealand at the time knew the truth: that that
had been what they had been actually told to do and pressure to do, constantly
pressured to do.
Do you know
anything about the files that went missing during the investigation?
No,
nobody knows where those things are. There is actually a locked archive at Air
New Zealand that's got stuff that nobody has ever seen...whether it in there or
whether those things were just destroyed - I suspect they were destroyed. There
were housed broken into afterwards, evidence taken...things like that. Who knows
what's happened to that sort of stuff
I heard
there was one returned with pages missing...
The
police had seen it on the snow, Captain Collins' diary. They'd taken it...seen
it on the snow, saw that it was full of all his notes and then later on when it
was produced at the inquiry, the diary was conveniently empty and Air New
Zealand said 'that's how we found it on the snow; it was empty' and the police
knew that it wasn't true because it had been full of evidence which was
destroyed. Camera's had film ripped out and destroyed because people had photos
- some of the photos were used later in evidence but a lot of photos were
destroyed if they didn't fit the theory they were trying to present...huge cover
up.
Do you
think one day they'll find the body parts?
Yeah,
they will. They have some years. Some years in summer, if there's a really large
melt of snow, the plane has been uncovered and so other people have flown over
it and seen it there - so, some years its just completely covered with snow.
When we went down to Antarctica it was completely covered with snow, at that
time..but sometimes it has been uncovered. If someone wanted to do down and dig
and look for what's buried there, they could. Some of its visible, some of its
pushed in so deep because of the impact of the crash...it was so strong that
some stuff was just pushed right into the ground.
Was the
actual wreckage used for the investigation?
No,
because...what they did was, they took the black box - you always take the black
box; that's your recording of what goes on in the flight and its designed to
withstand impact. So they collected the black box, collected some other pieces
of key evidence...that was important, because at the time, the DC-10, the actual
plane it was, it was the first plane of its type. It was a new aircraft design,
so the makers, Donald McDouglas of DC-10, they were very interested in the crash
because they wanted to know why this amazing plane of theirs - it was a bit like
the Titanic - because it was a new model plane and it was meant to be the best
of its sort in the world and they wanted to know why it had crashed, so they
came down to the crash site as well and collected bits and pieces but a lot of
the plane was so destroyed that there wasn't really a lot to collect and it was
in bits. It was more putting together the pieces of a puzzle later from the
black box, from photos, from other evidence. There wasn't a lot of intact plane
pieces to collect.
Would the
fact that it was a new model have anything to do with the crash?
I
don't think it did. I think the plane itself was a very good plane. That model
went on and flew successfully for years. It was a really, really good, strong
design. I don't think the design of the plane was a problem at all...as far as I
know - I could be wrong but I don't think there was any problem with the plane's
design at all...the bigger problem was probably someone changing the coordinates
and not telling other people because at the time, it was the first plane that
had that kind of computer system in it. Before that, they didn't have those kind
of computer systems. That's what made the DC-10 so new and special, that it had
autopilot and had this computerised system that could fly your plane for you.
The problem was not that computer system but it was back at Air New Zealand
where someone changed coordinates in the office, without realising that if they
did that, then they had to tell the crew members because it meant their plane
was going in a slightly different angle...and back in the office it was a two
degree change. It seemed really small to the person doing it. They thought
they'd done something helpful and useful but once the people were in the plane,
flying, that small two degree angle became a huge matter of miles. So it became
a huge chance which affected, of course, where they thought they were. Now,
there are procedures...you couldn't make a change without telling other people.
There are multiple procedures in place to make sure that that couldn't happen
again and maybe that's something to do with the early days of computing but
people still didn't realise how much changing something in a computer could
affect something in real life. Nowadays, we're a lot more computer-literate.
People know these things and we have systems and there are automatic back up
procedures
...I
think if that person had thought for two seconds that what they had done would
cause any problem, they wouldn't have done it or they would have told everybody.
Nobody meant the crash to happen. No one wanted it to happen.
dad was on the Erebus flight...
Yeah,
my dad was for working for Air New Zealand. He was a flight engineer. At that
time, in the planes, you used to have your two pilots and you'd have a flight
engineer. A flight engineer looks after - or used to look after, because they
don't have them now - but used to look after all the things to do with the
engine and the plane, the mechanical requirements, check all the in-flights,
check that everything was working properly in flight...he was rostered on; it
was a normal work day for him. It was his job.
Do you
think that the investigation that followed was adequate? Was it up to
standards?
No,
it wasn't. I think its...it wasn't at all. It was...there were so many problems
with the investigation itself, for example, it started more or less from the
moment that people knew about the crash, there was a cover up started by Air New
Zealand...and then, simultaneously, with the actual plane crash site, the police
were sent to recover bodies and the proper procedure would been to then declare
it a closed zone which only the police could enter for the purpose of collecting
evidence. In this case, they didn't do that. They had representatives from Air
New Zealand and from the airline company itself coming down and taking what they
wanted from the crash site and evidence went missing from the crash site itself.
So, a lot of things were done poorly. It wasn't handled well at all and the
eventual court case, of course, as everyone knows now...it turned out there was
a lot of corruption in that court case and truth wasn't told and...it was all
handled badly, I think.
Who do you
personally blame for it?
I
don't blame any person. I think...there's a very interesting theory called
Cheese Cutter Theory. Its a theory that...its an aviation theory, right, so - it
means its developed for airlines but a lot of management companies now use it.
Its being used across management; its gone beyond aviation. Its called Cheese
Cutter Theory. So, what it means is...do you know Guerrier cheese, where you
have all the holes in the Guerrier cheese? So, if you took a Guerrier cheese,
right, and you sliced it up really thinly...and then you want to put it back
together, right, so you've got to put all your slices back in exactly the right
place so all your holes match up and if something wanted to fly through the
cheese, it could fly through the cheese, right...like if you had a plane flying
through the cheese...but if you took any one of those slices and didn't put it
back in the right place - everything else in your cheese could be right but that
one slice - your plane can't fly through. So, the idea with Cheese Cutter Theory
is that its a very, very complex thing to get an airplane off the ground and
into the air - there's a lot of different factors involved: there's your
aircraft, there's people on the ground, there's people in the plane, there's
you're control towers, there's other countries, because you have to fly through
other countries airspace, so you have to be in contact with their control towers
etcetera...there are so many factors and if any one factor is wrong, it can halt
the whole procedure. So, with something like this Erebus crash, it wasn't just
one thing at fault - there was a range of things at fault, so that day, it was
like the Guerrier cheese got sliced up, put together badly, too many holes,
plane, as you know, it crashed because there were just too many things wrong. No
one thing to blame. There were just little problems all over the place. For some
reason, on that day, they all came together in that way...and bad luck. The
plane crashed.
Did you
take any action to see justice, personally, or with any groups?
Our
family joined in a action against the U.S. - not against the American government
but against the American defence forces, because on that day they were supposed
to be maintaining radio contact with the plane and if they had done that
successfully, they might have been able to tell the plane that it was in the
wrong area...but for some reason that day they weren't doing their job and so
the DC-10 had lost contact with the radio tower down in Antarctica. Its never
been established what really happened down at the American base on that day, why
they weren't doing what they should have been doing, but our family and some of
the other families of crew members, we took a class action against them. It went
to the high court in London and they said that we were unable to pursue it any
further. We weren't allowed to sue the Americans...
So, since
your father was a flight engineer, I'm guessing he didn't really have any
concerns about the safety of it...?
...no,
he felt very confident about the plane being safe and that was the second time
he'd gone down - so, it was the second time he'd flown down himself - so he felt
very confident about the plane. He and all the other people flying, they all
loved their jobs and they loved what they did, so for them it wasn't just a job;
it was a personal love...and they took it very seriously that you've got
passengers in the plane so there's no way they would have gotten that plane and
flown that day if they thought a single thing was wrong.
How did you
hear about it?
Air
New Zealand phoned our family in the afternoon to say that the plane was
missing, so it was before the information was released to the public. They do
that for employees, just to let you know that there is a possible crisis
unfolding.
Was this
when it crashed or when they'd lost contact?
When
they'd lost contact - so at that point, we didn't know if it had crashed. They
said we haven't found the plane; its possible we will find them - and we're
hoping we will - at that point, they really hoped that they would find them and
its more or less just a procedure that if a plane is missing, you phone the
families. It wasn't the first time we'd had a phone call like that...
Do you
think Air New Zealand would have done the same thing for the passengers'
families, before it got released to the public?
No,
they don't. They didn't do that. I don't know what procedure would be these days
but in those days...it was quite horrible the way the families found out because
a lot of people were waiting at the airport to pick people up and somebody just
came out and said - when it was overdue...like hours overdue - "The plane is
missing; we think it has crashed". People weren't told sensitively or told well.
It wasn't handled very well...it was handled really, really badly. Really badly.
You'd like to think that these days they'd do it differently but then they were
quite...it was like they didn't even care about the relatives who's families had
died...I think it was too big. It was too big - we had no experience in New
Zealand of this kind of thing happening and they didn't know how to handle it
properly and they handled it really badly.
So, when
you first got the phone call, how did you and other people close to him cope
with it?
We
actually...it sound weird but we actually got a gut feeling, we knew actually,
that something was bad so we all just...there was my sister and I and my mum and
we all just started crying because we just had a bad gut feeling that this was
not going to work out well. So even though nothing had been confirmed, I think
we just knew in our hearts that things weren't good because we just...I think
for us we just suddenly knew that that was it.
Have you
been down to Antarctica, to the memorial service?
Yeah,
I went down a couple of years ago. It was amazing. Its such an incredible place
so it felt really special to be able to go there and be able to have the
experience of being there...and also just on the flight down to see what people
saw on the original flight. I always wondered 'why would you go down, what was
the big deal flying over ice?' but when I saw it myself, flying over, it was so
beautiful and so interesting. It was really amazing and I could finally for the
first time understand why you want to sell tickets to the public so see this. I
was really quite special. It was amazing.
Did it help
with the grief, going down there and being able visit the crash site?
No,
nothing can make up for losing somebody that you love and nothing can ever fix
that...but, I don't know. For me, it didn't change anything but for some people
it did. For some people it felt like they'd finished their family member's
journey by being able to go down and come back to New Zealand...and for some
people who knew that some of the body parts of their family members were still
in Antarctica, it was really special to be able to go down and to be able to
have a memorial service, right there, where they knew their body parts were. For
some people it did have a lot of really special meaning in that way.
Do you
remain prejudiced at Air New Zealand and what would you have wanted them to do
differently?
Air
New Zealand today is a different company; there are different people involved.
Having said that, there are still people who were involved with Air New Zealand
at the time who are still involved with Air New Zealand and yes, I do have a
prejudice against them...and how they could have done it differently? They could
have been honest at the time. Its that simple. They should have been honest.
They should have told the truth. They should have accepted the consequence...and
I don't think we've seen the full story. There was a lot of political
involvement behind the scenes and I don't think we've ever heard the full story
and I'm hoping, in my lifetime, we'll get to hear the full story of what really
went on behind the scenes because at the moment I don't think we have all the
pieces to be able to know what really went on behind the scenes but there was a
lot of political involvement.
Is there
anything that you would like to add, anything we haven't covered?
...it
did affect aviation in the world because at the time it was the fourth or fifth
worst air crash in the world. Its still the fifteenth now, so you know, it was
huge. When they have a crash like that, a major crash, a lot of people get
involved in the investigation - good people who just really want to know what
the problem was, what really happened, so that they can make sure that doesn't
happen again in the future. So, as a result of that Air New Zealand DC-10 crash
in Antarctica, it changed a lot of aviation practice around the world. Aviation
around the world was interested so its led to a lot of changes in the airlines
across the world, not just Air New Zealand...its changed some of the management
practices in aviation, again, across the world, not just in New Zealand...its
through that Cheese Cutter Theory being developed that led to...its a case study
in management now...managing the whole Air New Zealand disaster of Erebus and
the DC-10...its become a case study in management...so its contributed to fields
apart from aviation and...and the New Zealand Police - because they were
involved in going down to recover the bodies and as a result of their
experiences there's been changes made in the police force, for example they've
brought in psychologists now for police because the police involved in going to
recover bodies had a really bad time recovering the bodies and a lot of the men
came back and they...some of them had break downs. They were psychologically
affected but at that time there was no counselling for police. They were just
told to go back to work and forget about it and a lot of them couldn't and as a
result they really suffered, so since then they have psychologists for the
police. A lot of different things came out of the accident beyond just Air New
Zealand so it did make some really positive contributions in that way, changing
how a lot of the things were done.
You know
how you said it was your father's second time going down to Antarctica? What was
the first time like?
Amazing.
He loved it. Again, he was working and there was even something in the cover up.
They said that no one else had gone - none of the crew had been to Antarctica
before so that's why they weren't experienced, but that wasn't true because that
was actually my dad's second flight down as a crew person...he absolutely loved
it the first time - thought it was the most amazing thing - so on this flight,
he actually tried to get my sister and I onto the flight. He was trying really
hard to get us on and in the end, because it was such a popular flight and all
the tickets were sold out - there just wasn't a single spare seat on the plane;
he was just going to get us on and we could sit where the air hostesses sat,
like as a special crew thing but he couldn't even sneak us on, and luckily,
because we would have been dead too, my sister and I...he loved education, so he
was really passionate about getting out and seeing the world and how things are
and he was like "I really want you girls to see this because its so beautiful
and amazing" and even the week before the flight, he showed me on a
map...because he was really interested in what he did as a job, so when they had
new routes he would get a map and he would trace out the map - he would put pins
on the map and tie red thread to figure out the route. So he would show me...on
the map, he put in the pins and got the red thread and showed me how they were
flying down New Zealand, down to Christchurch and then on to Antarctica. So, he
showed me the exact route...afterwards I thought 'Oh my god, that'd be really
interesting to know where he put that final red pin', like where he thought they
were exactly in Antarctica compared to the coordinates that were later changed
on the plane. You know, that would have been very interesting...if you listen to
the black box recording - his voice is on the black box recording - and he talks
about not being sure about where they are, and I wonder, because that was part
of him, mapping things out ahead of time - he had this visual sense of where
they were and he knew something was wrong, something wasn't making sense,
because he had been there before and he knew he had mapped it out a number of
times and kinda understood the terrain and so something for him felt wrong...but
I think if he thought for a second that they were actually in front of a
volcano, there was no way they would have flown into it. They would have got out
there in time. That was the sad thing: they'd actually started to pull the plane
up but the volcano was already there and they couldn't get high enough to get
off over it. I mean, that's the Cheese Cutter Theory again. If they had just
been in a different part of Antarctica, they would have just flown through the
air; no one would have been the wiser. The accident wouldn't have happened...or
if they hadn't had a white-out and they could have seen the mountain clearly,
they would have flown around it or over it...every little thing counts.
I also
heard they started flying the plane lower so they could get more of a
view...
That
was actually an impact and that's something that was addressed in the inquiry
and the pilots were blamed personally for flying low but the reality was, behind
the scenes at the time, the pilots were under constant pressure to fly lower
because they were selling the plane flights to the public on the basis that you
could get photos from the plane. So they were always pressuring and pressuring
the pilots to go lower, so it had been an ongoing problem for the last year,
year and a half, with Air New Zealand and the pilot, they didn't want to fly
lower in Antarctica and the management kept telling them "You have to, you have
to". So there was huge pressure for them to go lower but the pilots themselves
were arguing - it wasn't safe and they didn't want to have to do that. So that
whole thing of them flying low, there's a huge controversy around that.
...but
it wasn't recorded. There were official rules for what they were supposed to do
but then there was what management had told them they had to do. They had been
told verbally in meeting again and again that this is what they had to do...but
later, when it came to the inquiry, the company denied having said that but
everyone who worked for Air New Zealand at the time knew the truth: that that
had been what they had been actually told to do and pressure to do, constantly
pressured to do.
Do you know
anything about the files that went missing during the investigation?
No,
nobody knows where those things are. There is actually a locked archive at Air
New Zealand that's got stuff that nobody has ever seen...whether it in there or
whether those things were just destroyed - I suspect they were destroyed. There
were housed broken into afterwards, evidence taken...things like that. Who knows
what's happened to that sort of stuff
I heard
there was one returned with pages missing...
The
police had seen it on the snow, Captain Collins' diary. They'd taken it...seen
it on the snow, saw that it was full of all his notes and then later on when it
was produced at the inquiry, the diary was conveniently empty and Air New
Zealand said 'that's how we found it on the snow; it was empty' and the police
knew that it wasn't true because it had been full of evidence which was
destroyed. Camera's had film ripped out and destroyed because people had photos
- some of the photos were used later in evidence but a lot of photos were
destroyed if they didn't fit the theory they were trying to present...huge cover
up.
Do you
think one day they'll find the body parts?
Yeah,
they will. They have some years. Some years in summer, if there's a really large
melt of snow, the plane has been uncovered and so other people have flown over
it and seen it there - so, some years its just completely covered with snow.
When we went down to Antarctica it was completely covered with snow, at that
time..but sometimes it has been uncovered. If someone wanted to do down and dig
and look for what's buried there, they could. Some of its visible, some of its
pushed in so deep because of the impact of the crash...it was so strong that
some stuff was just pushed right into the ground.
Was the
actual wreckage used for the investigation?
No,
because...what they did was, they took the black box - you always take the black
box; that's your recording of what goes on in the flight and its designed to
withstand impact. So they collected the black box, collected some other pieces
of key evidence...that was important, because at the time, the DC-10, the actual
plane it was, it was the first plane of its type. It was a new aircraft design,
so the makers, Donald McDouglas of DC-10, they were very interested in the crash
because they wanted to know why this amazing plane of theirs - it was a bit like
the Titanic - because it was a new model plane and it was meant to be the best
of its sort in the world and they wanted to know why it had crashed, so they
came down to the crash site as well and collected bits and pieces but a lot of
the plane was so destroyed that there wasn't really a lot to collect and it was
in bits. It was more putting together the pieces of a puzzle later from the
black box, from photos, from other evidence. There wasn't a lot of intact plane
pieces to collect.
Would the
fact that it was a new model have anything to do with the crash?
I
don't think it did. I think the plane itself was a very good plane. That model
went on and flew successfully for years. It was a really, really good, strong
design. I don't think the design of the plane was a problem at all...as far as I
know - I could be wrong but I don't think there was any problem with the plane's
design at all...the bigger problem was probably someone changing the coordinates
and not telling other people because at the time, it was the first plane that
had that kind of computer system in it. Before that, they didn't have those kind
of computer systems. That's what made the DC-10 so new and special, that it had
autopilot and had this computerised system that could fly your plane for you.
The problem was not that computer system but it was back at Air New Zealand
where someone changed coordinates in the office, without realising that if they
did that, then they had to tell the crew members because it meant their plane
was going in a slightly different angle...and back in the office it was a two
degree change. It seemed really small to the person doing it. They thought
they'd done something helpful and useful but once the people were in the plane,
flying, that small two degree angle became a huge matter of miles. So it became
a huge chance which affected, of course, where they thought they were. Now,
there are procedures...you couldn't make a change without telling other people.
There are multiple procedures in place to make sure that that couldn't happen
again and maybe that's something to do with the early days of computing but
people still didn't realise how much changing something in a computer could
affect something in real life. Nowadays, we're a lot more computer-literate.
People know these things and we have systems and there are automatic back up
procedures
...I
think if that person had thought for two seconds that what they had done would
cause any problem, they wouldn't have done it or they would have told everybody.
Nobody meant the crash to happen. No one wanted it to happen.