Erebus claims trial begins

Press, 30 November 1987, Page 8

Erebus claims trial begins

By

TOM BRIDGMAN

NZPA Washington Eight years almost to the day after the ill-fated Air New Zealand flight 901 ploughed into Mount Erebus killing all on board, the families of the dead crew will this week bring a SUSI 6 million ($25.7 million) claim against the United States Government. Mrs Maria Collins, widow of the DCIO pilot, Captain Jim Collins, will be one of the early witnesses in the liability case heard before Judge Harold Greene in the United States Federal District Court in Washington. The case on behalf of the 16 flight and cabin crew is based on claims that United States Navy radar operators at McMurdo Station in Antarctica would have seen the aircraft on their radar

screens and should have alerted the pilot that he was heading for the mountain. The other contention is that irrespective of whether the aircraft appeared on radar, the operators had sufficient information about the flight path to deduce It may have gone behind Mount Erebus and should have contacted the flight crew. All 257 passengers and crew died when the sightseeing tour aircraft slammed into Mount Erebus on November 28, 1979.

In his report into the crash, the late Royal Commissioner, Peter Mahon, formed the view that the aircraft appeared on the radar screen at McMurdo. “If the DCIO was observed on the screen, then the radar operator would

immediately have noticed that it was bearing about 40 degrees to the east of where he had supposed the aircraft to be,” he said.

At the inquiry into the accident it was revealed that incorrect co-ordinates had been programmed into the aircraft’s navigational computer, while the flight also had experienced the disorientating polar visual effect called a "white out.”

Mrs Collins, whose eldest daughter Kathryn, aged 23, is also scheduled to give evidence at the claims trial beginning on Wednesday, is keen to get what she hopes is the last chapter of the long saga behind her.

“I just feel we can’t leave any stone unturned, but also want to put it to rest. You can’t go on and on about it,” she said.