Customer Reviews

Impact Erebus

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Former Air New Zealand Check and Training Captain Gordon Vette's conviction that the official accident investigation report was as misleading as the whiteout conditions prevailing in Lewis Bay on 28 November 1979 ultimately led to this meticulously researched and referenced book.
His first-hand knowledge of Captain Jim Collins, and his equally experienced and professional crew aboard TE901 that day, plus his own experience crewing an earlier Antarctic sightseeing flight, prompted his "insider's" reappraisal of the events leading to the disaster.
In essence, Vette believed that a sequence of systemic failures in the airline's administrative and operational areas led to the changed destination coordinates for McMurdo the night before the accident flight, culminating in the fateful omission to advise this to his colleagues.
Vette mounts a convincing, and exhaustively substantiated (and copiously illustrated) case for Captain Collins and his crew operating the flight in accordance with the well-founded expectations derived from the earlier route briefing they had received.
His own research into whiteout - a phenomenon well understood by professional Antarctic military and civilian pilots, but appreciated (if that) as more of a mere "intellectual concept" by those unfamiliar with the sub-polar latitudes of the world - is applied in this book to his familiar world of the airline pilot. He has tested these theories, exemplified them by experience, and recounted them in great detail in this fascinating book.
Trigonometric reconstruction of cloud, light and weather conditions, applied to analysis of sight and viewing angles (according to passengers' photographs recovered from the wreck) showed that critical visual references would have been missed, mistaken or misinterpreted by the crew at key points in their otherwise proper and safe handling of the aircraft.
Particularly compelling are the illustrations - which underscored Vette's expert testimony and submission to the Mahon Royal Commission - showing that, in the prevailing conditions, the few visual cues available to Collins and his crew (and the experienced Antarctic commentators on the flight) served only to reinforce their belief that they were over the flat sea ice of McMurdo Sound ... safely to the west of the high ground of Ross Island.
Anyone with an interest in the Erebus crash a quarter of a century ago - not to mention an intellectual curiosity into the workings of perception and the human mind on an airliner flightdeck - is strongly advised to read and obtain this book.