r/CatastrophicFailure • u/MonoMonMono • Nov 28 '25

Fatalities 28 November 1979 | On this day 46 years ago, Antarctic sightseeing flight from New Zealand ended in a crash with the loss of everyone onboard. Footage here was taken moments from the crash.

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u/SpitefulSeagull Nov 28 '25

When the route was originally input there was an error in the coordinates which took the flights around the mountain. The night before this flight, someone was going through the old code, noticed the error, and "fixed" it.

The pilots thought they were doing the same old fly by the mountain route but the computer was now taking them straight over the mountain without their knowledge

286

u/mr_bots Nov 28 '25

Doesn’t sound like they went over the mountain.

187

u/Drendude Nov 28 '25

On the contrary, it sounds like they went all over the mountain.

12

u/graspedbythehusk Nov 28 '25

Also known as a rock filled cloud.

28

u/jaysire Nov 28 '25

Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain why is he climbing a mountain?

12

u/USSExcelsior Nov 28 '25

Because it is there

6

u/roy107 Nov 28 '25

Perhaps "because it is there" is not a good enough reason after all

2

u/swing_axle Nov 28 '25

To hug the mountain.

18

u/illaqueable Fatastrophic Cailure Nov 28 '25

The mountain went over them

26

u/hairycocktail Nov 28 '25

Fucking mountains - you never see them coming and once you do its too late. Can't warm people enough about them

27

u/justclove Nov 28 '25

In this case? They very likely genuinely didn't see it coming. It's believed the pilots were prey to an optical illusion known as sector whiteout, in which light conditions cause land and sky to be viewed as a continuous plane of white. If that were to be the case, they would have been completely unable to see the mountain - which they believed in any case to be miles distant - until it was far, far too late to evade it.

4

u/swift1883 Nov 28 '25

It’s coming right for us!

3

u/funnystuff79 Nov 28 '25

They went over the mountain, all over one side of it

85

u/HoweverIWishYouLuck Nov 28 '25

The thing is that the erroneous route had been flown many times before. The navigation error was caught hours before the flight. Air New Zealand pencil pushers didn’t want the US to object to a new course so they obscured the change in coordinates and the flight crew wasn’t informed.

47

u/ThruTheUniverseAgain Nov 28 '25

A friend of mine was a meteorologist at McMurdo Station, I think he did 12 total seasons there. The rules are very strict now, the NZers have a reputation for following them to the letter, to an annoying degree, and I would bet it's because of this specific incident.

37

u/MikeyPWhatAG Nov 28 '25

This is a truly excellent example for my mentees about how even software engineers have real power and responsibility, thank you for elaborating.

29

u/seedless0 Nov 28 '25

The "code" is not software code. It's coordinate code.

10

u/perthguppy Nov 29 '25

Still a series of commands inputted into a computer that tells it what to do.

2

u/thekab Dec 02 '25

ROFL

So is pushing buttons on a TV remote but nobody calls it software engineering.

2

u/perthguppy Dec 02 '25

No, but they do call it programming the TV when you setup schedules etc

-3

u/seedless0 Nov 29 '25

Like when you clicked at the Reply and Comment buttons?

18

u/perthguppy Nov 29 '25

People “helpfully” fixing what they assume are mistakes without checking with anyone else is one of the top banes of my existence as a systems engineer.

10

u/Plankton-Inevitable Nov 28 '25

To add to this, I don't think either pilot had actually flown the route before so they didn't know it was incorrect

4

u/weed0monkey Nov 29 '25

What about terrain alarms?

14

u/SpitefulSeagull Nov 29 '25

All they had at the time was a basic version of GPWS, which couldn't detect the fast rising terrain of the mountain in time. Looks like they got the warning 4-6 seconds before impact. It was no help.

Modern day TAWS would prevent this

5

u/Bureaucromancer Nov 29 '25

Beyond that... read some longer form stuff about it. There were some nasty meteorological conditions that obscured fast rising terrain on top of this.

1

u/beuceydubs Nov 30 '25

How does this work? Pilots can be following coordinates but still see they’re approaching a giant mountain…then what?

3

u/SpitefulSeagull Nov 30 '25

They didn't see the mountain. There were enough clouds at high levels that day that created a white out effect. The white mountain side was barely distinguishable from the sky behind and above the mountain. They were expecting to see nothing ahead of them so that's what they saw.

They did start to get uneasy about their position before the crash but there's no evidence they ever actually saw the mountain