"I had got the call that night to go to the Air New Zealand building. The Auckland Star photographer's image of the devastated chief executive that night was unforgettable. You realise it's never going to be behind you."įred Freeman, now 74, was in the Air New Zealand boardroom the night chief executive Morrie Davis told the waiting reporters and photographers that all hope was gone for the missing flight. "It's amazing how long it goes on for, 25 years later, and there's still talk about it. You take on a new focus, and concentrate on that, and it gets you through. I've found that life, when these things happen, it makes you turn in another direction, and it's not all bad. "It's quite unbelievable that it happened when I look back I still feel quite astounded at what happened. But you go into survival mode, and it's a sort of numb, horrible feeling. just how many other families would be hurting as well. I guess I didn't really allow myself to believe it until they rang to say they'd found the body. (It was) still very much hopeful, wishful thinking. You sort of try and think up scenarios: maybe he didn't go on that flight for some reason. I had this crazy notion that maybe he was in a snow cave somewhere, and still surviving. I (held out hope) for days, because it was days before his body was found. It hadn't been heard from for several hours by then. Somebody came on the line to say 'yes, it does appear to be true'. "So I rang up the Air New Zealand office to find out if it really was true. I just couldn't believe that somebody would do that. "I felt disbelief (when I heard), because I was just rung up by a staff member to say that the plane was missing. Her daughter Maria flies jumbo jets for Air New Zealand. Now 56 and living in Nelson, she still misses intensely the sensation of flying a plane. Six years ago she was blinded by a stroke. After the crash, Cassin went on to gain her own commercial pilot's licence, becoming a top flight instructor whose lessons included aerobatics. Here, three people discuss how their lives were changed forever by the Erebus disaster.Īnne Cassin's husband was Greg Cassin, co-pilot of the Erebus flight. Even now, the aviation industry remains sharply divided over the issue.Įrebus 25 years onNext Sunday, Sir Edmund Hillary, who was originally scheduled to be a commentator on that flight, will give a reading at a memorial service in Antarctica. Mahon was rebuked by superior courts, and prime minister Rob Muldoon refused to table the report, but many of the public came to Mahon's defence. Mahon's famous accusation, of "an orchestrated litany of lies", still reverberates down the years. Mahon also levelled the charge of an attempted cover-up by the national airline. It was a change of which the pilots were unaware. On the other, Commission of Inquiry head Justice Peter Mahon blamed Air New Zealand for a last-minute change to the flight path that took the plane over towering Mt Erebus. He said the pilots were flying too low when they had not established where they were. On one side of what was to become a bitter national debate, air accident chief inspector Ron Chippindale ruled it was pilot error. The pain continued as New Zealanders tried to understand what had happened. The remains of 213 bodies were identified, but for the families of a further 44, the pain of loss was made more intense because the remains of their loved ones were never found. The crash was only the beginning of the anguish for those most closely bound up in this loss. In a small country, it seemed as if everyone knew, or had connections to, someone who had been on board the jet as it smashed into the side of Mt Erebus. Flight TE901's sightseeing joyride over Antarctica was due to take 11 hours. Ruth Laugesen talks to three people whose lives were changed by the Erebus crash.Īt 8.20am, a quarter of a century ago next Sunday, 237 passengers and 20 crew fastened their seatbelts for what was supposed to be a very special trip. It was the disaster that rocked a nation.
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