Polar suits on Qantas flights

Press, 4 December 1979, Page 6

Polar suits on Qantas flights

PA Wellington Air New Zealand's Antarctic flight-safety precautions did not match those of its Australian rival Qantas. Qantas said yesterday that it carried emergency polar-survival suits for each of the more than 300 passengers on its flights to the ice. The Australian airline made its twenty-fifth flight to Antarctica at the weekend carrying a party of scouts.

Air New Zealand have said that no such emergency equipment was carried on its flights. It has also said that none of the flight crew aboard its crashed DC 10 had had any polar-region flying experience.

A Qantas spokesman. Mr Jim Eames, said from Sydney that Qantas carried the polar-survival suits as a matter of course. The suits included “over-shoes” and a fur-lined hood. They were stowed in the rear of

the Boeing 747 jets which went to the Ice. The Air New Zealand crash site on Mount Erebus had a temperature of about —3deg at the time of the crash, but this can drop to —4odeg or less. Had anybody survived the crash it is almost certain they would have frozen to death in the 12hour lapse between the time of the crash and the discovery of the wreckage. The passengers had only the summer clothes they wore.

Qantas also insist that the captains of its Ice flights must have first flown to the Antarctic in a non-command role on the flight deck. Generally there are two captains aboard each Qantas Ice flight Air New Zealand relied on pre-flight briefings and video tape sessions to familiarise pilots with Antarctic conditions. None of the five members of the crashed DCIO’s flight crew, including the captain, had flown to Antarctica before.