Air New Zealand Flight 901 Crash Site | place with historical importance, aircraft crash site

 place with historical importance, aircraft crash site

Air New Zealand Flight 901 was a scheduled Air New Zealand Antarctic sightseeing flight that operated from Auckland Airport to Antarctica via Christchurch. Operating McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 ZK-NZP, Flight 901's crew became disoriented in whiteout conditions and believed they were flying over McMurdo Sound when in fact they were on a collision course with the slopes of Mt. Erebus. While trying to identify visual surface landmarks through breaks in the cloud cover below the aircraft, Flight 901 collided with the mountainside at 1250hrs local time at an altitude of roughly 1,467ft above sea level at this location.

The force of the impact disentegrated the aircraft and instantly killed all 237 passengers and 20 crew aboard the aircraft in what remains New Zealand's deadliest peacetime disaster.