The crew reported in at 43 miles from the station and asked for approval to descend further, confirming that they had clear visibility. These sight-seeing flights regularly descended below the minimum safe altitude of 16,000 feet so that the passengers could gain a better view and take photographs.Īir Traffic Control at McMurdo Station (Mac Centre) was aware of this and the controller advised the flight that once the flight was within radar range, about 40 miles (65 km) from the station, the flight could descend safely down to 1,500 feet using the radar controlled let-down service. The flight descended over McMurdo Sound for a view of Mount Erebus and McMurdo Station. Neither of the pilots had ever flown to Antartica before and the flight engineer had only been there once. The flight was due to arrive over Antarctica shortly after noon NZST. The passengers were offered a champagne breakfast and three films about the Antarctic as they made their way south. Hillary’s friend Peter Mulgrew, a New Zealand mountaineer and yachtsman, filled in for Hillary as the commentator for the flight. Sir Edmund Hillary had been a guide on previous flights and had been scheduled for the 28th of November flight but cancelled in favour of a speaking tour in the US. The flight included an experienced Antarctic guide to explain the sights over the public address system. The Mount Erebus Disaster, as it came to be known, is famous not just for the tragic accident, New Zealand’s worst peacetime disaster, but also because the final accident report’s conclusion was overturned within a year.Īir New Zealand flight 901 was an all-day sight-seeing trip departing Auckland at 08:00 and then landing at Christchurch at 19:00 for refuelling before returning the passengers to Auckland at 21:00, 13 hours after departure. However, in the following 100 years, it has been rarely visited.On the 28th of November 1979, a sight-seeing flight to Antartica crashed into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 on board. It was later scaled by members of an expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1908. Mount Erebus was first discovered and seen erupting by Captain James Ross, an explorer, in 1841 when he and his crew sailed past the island. The ice tongue ranges 50 to 300 m (~164 to 984 ft) in thickness and stands 10 meters (33 feet) above the waterline. Where it flows into McMurdo Sound at sea level, an impressive 11-kilometer (~ 7 mile) long ice tongue protrudes into the sea as the annual snowfall exceeds the annual snowmelt. The average summit temperature is around -20˚C (-4˚F) during the summer and -50˚C (-58˚F) in the winter.Įrebus glacier extends down the lower flanks of the cone. The stratovolcano is 3794 meters (12,447 feet) above sea level. Volcanic eruptions are frequent, but the blasts are relatively mild and of the Strombolian-type. Continuous emissions of gas and steam provide just the right conditions for building towering columns of ice known as ice fumaroles. Sitting on a relatively thin continental crust, molten magma easily erupts on the surface, having originated from deep in the Earth’s interior.
Terror) that make up the triangular-shaped island.Įrebus is the southernmost volcano in the world, and it is most famous for its lava lake and ice fumaroles. Mt Erebus is the largest and only active center of the four volcanic peaks (Mt. Located on the western half of Ross Island stands Mount Erebus – the tallest active volcano in Antarctica. Mount Erebus is the southernmost volcano in the world?
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