The Sightseeing Flight and the Invisible Mountain

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

Episode: The Sightseeing Flight and the Invisible Mountain

Release Date: March 27, 2026
Host: Tim Harford
Production: Pushkin Industries

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Overview

In this haunting episode, Tim Harford dissects the tragic story of Air New Zealand Flight 901’s 1979 Antarctic sightseeing flight, which ended with the aircraft crashing into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 onboard. Through a meticulous retelling and investigation, Harford illustrates how a chain of organizational failures, cognitive errors, and visual illusions led to one of the most infamous air disasters—an event initially blamed entirely on pilot error, but whose true causes paint a far more complex picture. The narrative is a powerful cautionary tale about the danger of hidden threats, organizational cover-ups, the cost of speaking the truth, and the challenge of confronting subtle human factors in catastrophe.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Flight and the Crash (01:33 – 06:21)

• Setting the scene:
  Harford recounts the anticipation and excitement as Air New Zealand Flight 901 sets off on a sightseeing trip to Antarctica.
• Descent toward disaster:
  Cockpit dialogue reveals growing confusion and unease as the crew believe they're flying over open water—unaware they’re heading directly at a volcano due to a critical navigation error.
  • Peter Mulgrew, Antarctic explorer, expresses doubt:

    “I don’t like this.” (05:16)

  • Ground proximity warning begins as the crew descends too low.
• Immediate aftermath:
  Harford describes the domestic impacts and the chilling discovery of the wreckage on Mount Erebus.

2. The Initial Blame and the Official Report (11:04 – 14:31)

• Chief Inspector’s judgment:
  The first investigation blames Captain Jim Collins, citing violation of minimum altitude regulations and apparent lack of awareness.
  • Maria Collins, the captain’s widow, recalls the company distancing itself:

    "I gained the impression that they were trying to break it to me gently that Jim would be held to blame." (10:07—11:04)

• Company’s interest:
  Air New Zealand, being state-owned, has a financial and reputational stake in blaming individual error versus organizational failure.

3. The Royal Commission and Judge Peter Mahon (17:43 – 27:43)

• A deeper inquiry:
  Judge Mahon is appointed to lead a Royal Commission, quickly recognizing conflicting evidence between executive and non-executive pilots.
  • Mahon’s realization:

    "I could not help but be struck by the direct conflict of evidence which had emerged." (20:53)

• Critical navigation error revealed:
  The final computerized waypoint was changed the night before the flight—moving it back over Mount Erebus. Collins had been briefed on an older, safer route. He was not informed of the change.
• Evidence of document destruction:
  Key documents and briefing notes (including those belonging to Collins and other pilots) are destroyed or disappear, suggesting a cover-up.
• Cultural practice of flying low:
  Executives claim minimum safe altitudes were always upheld, while non-executive pilots attest to the unofficial but widespread habit of descending for better sightseeing—so long as McMurdo radar was consulted.
  • Evidence from a magazine article showing low-flying described as routine is dismissed by the CEO, despite the marketing department distributing it widely.

4. The Visual Illusion: Whiteout (33:42 – 37:47)

• Why didn’t the pilots see the mountain?
  The cockpit transcript was wrongly interpreted as the crew referring to cloud cover. Developed passenger photographs reveal it was a clear day—so why couldn’t they see Erebus?
• Whiteout explained by pilot Gordon Vette:
  A unique Antarctic phenomenon where white snow merges with white sky, destroying all sense of depth and distance—a “milk bottle” effect.
  • Expert quoted:

    "It's like being inside a big milk bottle." (34:47)

• Mahon's firsthand experience with whiteout:
  During a demonstration with Australian pilots, Mahon is shown how easily the snowy landscape disappears with a minor visual block—an experiment that profoundly affects him.
  • Mahon’s astonishment:

    "The top of the snow ridge disappeared instantly. All that I could see was undifferentiated white. I was stunned." (37:30—37:47)

5. Rethinking Human Error and Organizational Failure (37:47 – 44:29)

• Cognitive bias and organizational traps:
  The episode highlights the “Swiss cheese model” of accident causation (not yet formalized at the time) and the role of systemic human error versus individual blame.
  • Harford’s reflection:

    “Organisational failings can set a trap into which even the most skilled of pilots might fall.” (41:38)

• Vindication and costs:
  Mahon’s report ultimately clears Collins of blame; the true failings are systemic. However, Mahon is penalized for his outspokenness, and Vette, too, is pushed out for seeking the truth.
  • Mahon’s devastating conclusion about Air New Zealand's honesty:

    “I am forced, reluctantly, to say that I had to listen to an orchestrated litany of lies.” (42:01)

  • Vette’s rueful remark:

    “I'm somewhat sad that the price I've had to pay for my attempts to find the truth has been much greater than I expected.” (44:34)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Whiteout explanation:
  "It's like being inside a big milk bottle. It can come on suddenly and you don't necessarily realize that anything's wrong until you...crash your plane into a frozen mountain." (34:47)
• Judge Mahon’s damning phrase (about company cover-up):
  "An orchestrated litany of lies." (42:01)
• Pilot’s empathy for the doomed crew:
  "If I had been in their position at that time, I would probably have been misled in the same respects as they were. And I myself may well have crashed on Mount Erebus." (36:26)
• Lesson about truth and consequences:
  "Seeking the truth can make you powerful enemies." (44:45)

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Important Timestamps

• [01:33–06:21] – The fateful descent and crash sequence, cockpit audio
• [11:04–14:31] – The initial assignment of blame and official report findings
• [17:43–27:43] – The Royal Commission’s inquiry, emerging evidence, and signs of cover-up
• [33:42–37:47] – Explanation and demonstration of the whiteout phenomenon
• [42:01] – Judge Mahon’s published indictment: “An orchestrated litany of lies”
• [44:29–44:45] – Personal costs to truth-seekers

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Closing Reflections & Lessons

Harford notes how advances in accident investigation now better account for cognitive biases and “human factors,” but that the Mount Erebus disaster’s legacy serves as a warning: that tragic outcomes often result from a combination of individual, organizational, and technological failures. The episode is ultimately a meditation on the cost of seeking truth, the complexity of blame, and the incessant human hope that others might learn from our mistakes.

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For further reading and sources, visit timharford.com.

Transcript

[Commercial Announcer]

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[Podcast Host (Tim Harford)]

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Check out odoo-o o.com that's o d o o.com. Pushkin. Air New Zealand flight 901 is flying straight towards a mountain. 257 people are on board, most of them sipping champagne and peering eagerly out of the windows. It's November 1979. This is a sightseeing trip to Antarctica. They took off from New Zealand this morning. They'll enjoy some views of spectacular icy landscapes. If it's not too cloudy, of course, then they'll loop around and land back in New Zealand in time for dinner. Captain Jim Collins talks to the passengers.

[Captain Jim Collins]

The cloud cover in the McMurdo area has increased. Although ground visibility is good, we will be taking advantage of the radar facilities at McMurdo for letdown, which should take us below the cloud and give us a view of the McMurdo area.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

McMurdo the McMurdo Sound, an inlet between mainland Antarctica and Ross Island. There's an American research base at McMurdo with a small airstrip on the ice. Captain Collins calls them on the radio to check there are no other planes around. They assume they'll see him soon, flying low over the inlet. But Captain Collins isn't flying towards the water of McMurdo Sound. He's flying towards a mountain, a 12,000 foot active volcano to be exact. Also in the cockpit is famed Antarctic explorer Peter Mulgrew. He's there to entertain the passengers, telling stories and pointing out landmarks.

[Peter Mulgrew]

This is Peter Mulgrew again, folks.

[Captain Jim Collins]

I still can't see very much at the moment.

[Peter Mulgrew]

Keep you informed. As soon as I see something that gives me a clue as to where we are.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Peter Mulgrew can't see where they are as Collins takes the plane down to a gap in the cloud. But a display in the cockpit should tell them where they are. It shows their distance to the next pre programmed waypoint in their computerized flight path. That morning, the crew got a printout of the coordinates for those waypoints which they manually entered into the plane's navigation system. The flight engineer wants to check something.

[Peter Mulgrew]

Where's Erebus in relation to us at the moment?

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

To the left. He's told erebus. That's the 12,000 foot volcano.

[Peter Mulgrew]

I'm just thinking of any high ground in the area, that's all.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

But Mount Erebus isn't to their left. It's straight in front of them. Captain Collins keeps descending to 1500ft. The old Antarctic hand, Peter Mulgrew, peering through the window, sees enough to get his bearings, or so he thinks.

[Peter Mulgrew]

Ross island there.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

They've now lost radio contact with the Americans at McMurdo. The flight engineer is feeling uneasy.

[Peter Mulgrew]

I don't like this.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Captain Collins also seems to sense that something isn't right.

[Captain Jim Collins]

We're 26 miles north. We'll have to climb out of this.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

26 miles north. That'll be north of the next pre programmed waypoint. We'll come back to that. Climb out of this. We'll come back to that too. The dialogue in this cockpit recording will be bitterly debated. But now the ground proximity alert is going off. Whoop, whoop, Pull up. Whoop, Whoop, pull up.

[Peter Mulgrew]

500ft.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

They shouldn't be that low. Maybe it's a false alarm.

[Peter Mulgrew]

400ft.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Anyway, there's a routine procedure. When this alert goes off, boost the engine power and climb. Captain Collins doesn't sound concerned.

[Captain Jim Collins]

Go around power, please.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Whoop, whoop, Pull up. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. When Jim Collins put his name forward for a sightseeing flight to Antarctica, it was more in hope than expectation. Collins was experienced and respected by his colleagues. He was cautious, methodical, always taking notes. But aged just 45, he wasn't one of the top guys, the senior pilots who were also company executives. When Air New Zealand started their sightseeing flights, the executive pilots called dibs. They wanted to see Antarctica too. But now the flights had been running for a couple of years. Ordinary pilots were also getting a turn. Collins was thrilled to see his name on the roster. The evening before the flight, he sat at home with a big map, drawing lines and pointing things out to his teenage daughters. In the morning, Colin's wife, Maria waved him off with a reminder to call at the shop on the way home. Don't forget the fish. But the early evening brought a phone call from Air New Zealand. We're just a bit concerned about Jim's flight. We haven't heard from him for a while. Are you on your own?

[Commercial Announcer]

Well, the cuds are here.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Have you got another adult there with you?

[Captain Jim Collins]

No.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Might be an idea. In that moment, said Maria Collins. Later, she was struck by cold fear. At 9 o', clock, the television news led with the missing plane. By now, it would be out of fuel. Wherever it was, it wasn't still flying in the early hours of the morning, another phone call. The Americans had spotted what remained of the plane smudged across the frozen slopes of Mount Erebus. Police from New Zealand were flown out to help with the cleanup. They had no specialist training or experience of Antarctica. One had never even seen snow, he recalls.

[Peter Mulgrew]

My senses were overloaded. All the bodies in the wreckage, an overpowering smell of kerosene. I almost fell through thin ice into a crevasse.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Strewn across the snow were champagne bottles and money and cameras and people's diaries. The policeman couldn't resist taking a peek inside.

[Peter Mulgrew]

One described the trip so far and how beautiful the Antarctic was. The last words in the diary were, gee, it's great to be alive.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

The policeman finds Captain Collins body and nearby, his ring binder. He looks inside that too. It's intact and the pages are filled with what look like briefing notes. It might be important he carefully seals it in a bag. Jim had friends among the executive pilots, the company men. Maria Collins noticed that when they called on her, they started saying things like, of course Jim was too low. Or it was so unlike Jim to contravene any regulations. Maria says, I gained the impression that they were trying to break it to

[Commercial Announcer]

me gently, that Jim would be held to blame.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Then they stopped calling at all. One spelled it out as he stood in her doorway. Maria, I won't be able to see you anymore. I've got to be with the company. Jim had been a groomsman at his wedding. But not all of Jymn's mentors deserted him. One senior pilot who'd taught Jim to fly told Maria, this isn't Jim, Maria.

[Peter Mulgrew]

This is not Jim's behavior. Something's wrong. I'm going to find out.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Just as Maria Collins had feared, when the Chief Inspector of air accidents published his investigation report, it left no doubt that Jim was to blame. He'd contravened the regulations, flying well below the minimum safe altitude of 16,000ft, and he'd done so when the visibility obviously wasn't good. You could tell that from the transcript of the cockpit voice recording. It was damning. We heard some of it earlier. Antarctic expert Peter Mulgrew, not having a clue where they were. At one point, just two minutes before impact, a voice says, bit thick here, eh, Bert? A bit thick? They must be referring to cloud, right? The report also mentioned some sort of error with the waypoint coordinates, but that had been fixed before Collins flight. And anyway, it didn't matter. If Collins had kept to the minimum safe altitude, he wouldn't have crashed. Simple as that. Still, a disaster this big couldn't be left to the Chief Inspector of air accidents. There'd need to be a proper formal inquiry with evidence given in public. The government appointed a judge, Peter Marne, to conduct a royal commission with technical advice from a distinguished air marshal. Mahon was no fool. He understood that the Chief Inspector's report was convenient for the government. Air New Zealand was state owned. If the company had screwed up, the government could face expensive claims for compensation. But if the pilot screwed up, insurance would foot the bill. Mahon knew the government hoped he'd back up the report. And the report did seem convincing.

[Captain Jim Collins]

Marne later recalled, I presumed that after testing the evidence at first hand, I would see no difficulty in confirming the Chief Inspector's opinion.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Still, though, if Jim Collins had known his flight path took him straight towards a 12,000 foot volcano, why was he flying at 1500ft? Maybe it had to do with that error in the waypoint coordinates, Marn recalls,

[Captain Jim Collins]

I had the impression that there might be a great deal more to this than was admitted on the surface.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

There was. Cautionary tales will be back after the break.

[Podcast Host (Tim Harford)]

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[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

On a normal flight that goes from A to B, your final waypoint is obvious. It's the destination airport. But Air New Zealand's Sightseeing flights weren't going to land in Antarctica. They were going to see some sights, then fly back home. So what to choose as the final waypoint for their computerized flight path? In a way, it didn't matter. If visibility was good, they'd just fly around for a bit. But the computer needed a waypoint, so they picked a radio beacon near the American base at McMurdo. It seemed as good a choice as any. Actually, it was stupid. It meant the flight path went right over an active volcano, Mount Erebus. Even stupider, when Erebus was between the plane and the base, the Americans wouldn't see the plane on their radar and you'd struggle to get a connection on the radio. Then the flight path stored in the company's computer was changed with a new waypoint 25 miles west, near the end of McMurdo Sound. This was much more sensible. Now the flight path took you over open water for over a year. Pilots of the Antarctic flights got printouts with these sensible new coordinates. But the night before Jim Collins flight, the final waypoint was shifted back again, back over Mount Erebus. And nobody told Jim Collins. The public hearings in Peter Marne's courtroom began in July 1980, seven months after the crash. Air New Zealand's lawyers told Mahon that the waypoint change was irrelevant for two reasons. The first reason, they said, is that Jim Collins would have been briefed that his flight path went over Mount Erebus. You see, it might have looked like a sensible decision to change the flight path to over McMurdo Sound, but it wasn't. In fact, it was a mistake, a typographical error when the coordinates got transferred to a new computer system. For over a year, the airline said, nobody noticed that mistake. The officer who briefed the pilots told Peter Mahon that he always believed the flight path went over Mount Erebus. The executive pilots agreed nobody had ever noticed that the waypoint coordinates took them over McMurdo Sound instead of. Then Peter Marne heard from the non executive pilots who told a very different story. They all said they'd been briefed to fly down McMurdo Sound. This all gave Peter Marn a problem. He put it in diplomatic language.

[Captain Jim Collins]

I could not help but be struck by the direct conflict of evidence which had emerged.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

What he meant was someone was telling lies. Marne believed the non executive pilots. One had been at the same briefing as Jim Collins. He told Marne they'd been shown printouts of the coordinates given to other flights. Marne understood what must have happened. Jim Collins, the Habitual note taker wrote down the coordinates during the briefing. The night before the flight, when his teenage daughters saw him drawing lines on a map, he was plotting his flight path. It took him down McMurdo Sound. Then, on the morning of the flight, Collins was given a printout of the coordinates to enter into the plane's computer. He assumed they must be the same coordinates he'd seen at his briefing. Why wouldn't they be? Remember when Collins said, We're 26 miles north? Collins was looking at the cockpit display which told him he was 26 miles north of the next waypoint. Because he'd plotted his route the night before, he thought that meant he was over the water. But no, the coordinates had been changed. It actually meant they were about to hit a mountain. It seemed to Peter Mah that Air New Zealand had made a hideous mistake. They'd briefed Jim Collins on one flight path, then changed it and didn't tell him. And it seemed to Marn that they were trying to cover up their mistake by lying that Collins had been briefed he'd be flying over Mount Erebus. One piece of evidence would confirm what Collins had been told at his briefing. The notes he'd made Collins ring binder, remember, had been found on the mountainside. Perfectly readable. But when Peter Marne got his hands on that ring binder, it was empty. The pages had been damaged by kerosene and someone at Air New Zealand had thrown them away. I said there were two reasons the airline claimed the change in waypoint was irrelevant. So what if Jim Collins believed his flight path lay 25 miles west of Mount Erebus? If he hadn't been flying too low, he would still have passed safely over the top. The minimum safe altitude, remember, was 16,000ft. If Collins had followed the regulations, he wouldn't have hit the mountain. Simple as that. So, about those regulations. Peter Mahon noticed once again that Air New Zealand's executives were saying one thing and the non executive pilots were saying something else. The executives insisted that the minimum safe altitude was sacrosanct. The others said everyone knew those flights to Antarctica flew low. They were sightseeing flights. You can't see many sights from 16,000ft. The non executive pilots told Peter Marne they'd been briefed that they could fly as low as they wanted as long as they cleared it with the American radar station at McMurdo. Which is exactly what Jim Collins had done.

[Captain Jim Collins]

We will be taking advantage of the radar facilities and at McMurdo for letdown.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Once again, Peter Marn was Struck by the lack of documentary evidence about what had been said to Collins at his briefing, it wasn't just the pages from Collins ring Binder that had mysteriously disappeared. The first officer had forgotten his briefing notes at home. The day after the crash, someone from Air New Zealand called on his grieving widow and took those notes away. Then the company lost them. Soon after the crash, the airline's CEO ordered that all relevant documents be gathered together and surplus documents put through a shredder. His rationale, he said, was to avoid any leaks. But was it only surplus documents that were being shredded, or inconvenient ones? Some inconvenient documents remained at large, like magazine articles about the sightseeing flights, which made it very clear they were flying far lower than the minimum safe altitude. If that was strictly forbidden, why had no executives taken action after seeing these articles? The executive said, we never saw them. We had no idea. One of those articles was by the boss of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, which made the plane that Air New Zealand flew to Antarctica. In a trade magazine, he published an enthusiastic account of flying low down McMurray Murdo Sound. He sent a copy to the CEO of Air New Zealand. When the CEO gave evidence in Peter Marne's courtroom, he insisted he'd never seen it. He doesn't read all his mail, he explained. Then it transpired that Air New Zealand's marketing department had printed a million copies of this article and sent one to every household in New Zealand. Peter Marne asked the CEO to explain, Marn recalled.

[Captain Jim Collins]

He gave no verbal answer. He simply turned towards me and spread his arms outwards in a despairing gesture. He was indicating his total lack of comprehension that such a thing could have happened. I knew the feeling.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

The airline's case was falling apart. Jim Collins did have permission to fly low. He didn't know his flight path went over Erebus. But there remained one final mystery to unravel. How had Jim Collins failed to see Mount Erebus when it was right in front of him? The answer seemed obvious. Collins must have been flying through cloud. The transcript of the cockpit voice recording was damning. Bit thick here, eh, Bert? But that line in the transcript came as a surprise to other pilots who'd listened to the recording. The quality of that recording was poor. Poor? Many parts were hard to make out. They didn't remember hearing anything like that. And anyway, nobody on the flight deck was called Bert. Remember what the police had found among the wreckage on the side of the mountain? Passengers cameras. Some were undamaged and the films inside were developed. They showed the plane hadn't been in thick cloud at all. Far from it. Jim Collins had descended below the clouds and visibility was clear for miles around. That made Peter Marn suspicious about the transcript, so he flew to America to listen with an expert. The quality was poor, but it didn't sound like. Bit thick here, eh, Bert? The expert thought he heard this is Cape Bird. So Marne arranged to be flown to Antarctica following the exact same route as Jim Collins. At the moment of the disputed line in the transcript, Marne looked out of the cockpit window. He saw a cape. It wasn't Cape bird. That was 25 miles west on the flight path Jim Collins thought he was following. But by tragic coincidence, this cape just happened to look very much like Cape Bird. It was confirmation bias twice over. The pilots assumed they were flying over Cape Bird, so they saw Cape Bird. The Chief Inspector assumed the pilots were flying through cloud. So he heard. Bit thick here, eh, Bert? Still, though, that didn't solve the mystery, it deepened it. If visibility was good, how on earth had Jim Collins failed to see Mount Erebus? Cautionary tales will be back in a moment.

[Podcast Host (Tim Harford)]

There's a pattern in how we adopt new technologies. We embrace the convenience first. The trade offs reveal themselves later, sometimes much later. AI has arrived at that inflection point and the question worth asking is whether the tool you're using can handle the kind of deep thinking and useful applications you need. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you when you're working through something complicated. Tracing where the evidence leads, testing whether an idea holds up. Claud doesn't rush to tidy conclusions. It sits in the complexity with you. Claude does deep research that synthesizes across dozens of sources with proper citations, reasoning you can follow step by step, built for people who'd rather wrestle with the question than settle for the first answer. Try Claud for free at Claude AI Tales and see why problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner.

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[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Most of the senior pilots had turned their backs on Jim Collins widow Maria. But one had not. The man who taught Jim Collins to

[Peter Mulgrew]

fly this isn't Jim, Maria. This is not Jim's behavior. Something's wrong. I'm going to find out.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

The pilot's name was Gordon Vetti. He talked to experienced Antarctic pilots who told him about a phenomenon called whiteout. The Air New Zealand pilots who flew to Antarctica, including Vetti himself, had never been there before, and nobody at Air New Zealand had briefed them about Whiteout. The more Vetti learned, the more horrified he became at the risk he'd unknowingly taken. Whiteout, Vetti discovered, is a peculiar visual illusion that can happen in polar regions in overcast conditions, when the land is white and the clouds are white and the light shines in a certain way, you lose all ability to perceive depth or distance. One expert told Vetti, it's like being inside a big milk bottle. It can come on suddenly and you don't necessarily realise that anything's wrong until you walk into a snowbank or fall into a hole or crash your plane into a frozen mountain. Gordon Vetti understood what had happened in the final moments of the flight.

[Peter Mulgrew]

I don't like this.

[Captain Jim Collins]

We're 26 miles north. We'll have to climb out of this.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Climb out of this. What did Jim Collins want to climb out of? Vetti says it must have been that disconcerting sense of being in a milk bottle. Collins was below the cloud. He could see for miles to the left and right, but he hadn't been briefed about Whiteout. He had no idea that right in front of of him he'd be unable to tell a flat expanse of frozen water from the rising slopes of a frozen hillside. He'd just have sensed that something was off. So his instinct was to climb. But it was too late. Vetti shudders to think of it, if

[Peter Mulgrew]

I had been in their position at the that time, I would probably have been misled in the same respects as they were. And I myself may well have crashed on Mount Erebus.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Gordon Vetti wanted to make sure Peter Marne knew about Whiteout. So he flew in an expert at his own expense to give evidence to Marne's Royal Commission. Later, when Marne himself visited Antarctica, the Australian Air Force offered him a lift home. The crew were experienced Antarctic flyers and they'd been following the news about Marne's Royal Commission. They invited Marne to the cockpit for takeoff. They wanted to show him something. The day was overcast. The pilots flew towards a ridge of snow and pointed out how it ended in a black rocky outcrop, Marne recalls.

[Captain Jim Collins]

I could just make out the top of the ridge.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Then they told him, now raise your hand to cover that black rocky outcrop.

[Captain Jim Collins]

The top of the snow ridge disappeared instantly.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

All that Marne could see was undifferentiated white. He was stunned. It was one thing to hear about Whiteout from an expert, quite another to experience it for himself. The Australian crew were satisfied. That's the illusion that doomed Jim Collins. Mahon had spent months growing more and more frustrated that Air New Zealand executives were trying to pull the wool over his eyes. He appreciated that these young men from another country's air force wanted to help him understand. When he wrote up the findings of his Royal Commission, he thanked every one of them by name and rank. Peter Marne's findings turned the Chief Inspector's report on its head. The cause of the accident, said Marne, wasn't Jim Collins flying too low. It was Air New Zealand failing to brief him properly about the risk of Whiteout and failing to tell him that they'd changed his waypoint coordinates between the briefing and the flight. The Chief Inspector had heaped all the blame on Jim Collins. Marne said Collins deserved no blame at all. Not Everyone agrees on Internet discussion boards, pilots still express strong views either way. Did Collins rely too much on the computerized navigation system to tell him where he was? Peter Marn didn't think so. He points out how accurate that system is, although perhaps we've since grown more mistrustful of the idea that the machine could never fly us into a mountain. The distinguished air marshal who'd served as Marne's technical advisor thought that the judge had overstepped. He reckoned Collins was maybe 10% to blame. As it happens, I too have strong views on the question of how much to blame Jim Collins. I think it's the wrong question. The right question, as with every plane that crashes on this show, is what can we learn? When you read Peter Mann's report, you get a sense that he's writing in a different era. You can feel Marn groping towards concepts that in 1981, accident investigators didn't yet have the vocabulary to articulate concepts like cognitive biases and human factors. Such concepts have since been popularized by thinkers such as James Reason, a psychologist and expert on human error. Both Peter Marne and Gordon Vetti instinctively grasped an idea that was then very that organisational failings can set a trap into which even the most skilled of pilots might fall. James Reason said that the Marne report was 10 years ahead of its time. Peter Marn was a subtle and elegant writer. You'll often find him raising an eyebrow through his prose, making it clear what he thinks without spelling it out. When he wrote up his commission's findings, he could have crafted a memorable turn of phrase that left no doubt ere New Zealand executives had lied to him without actually saying it. But Marne was too angry to pull his punches. Instead, he crafted a memorable turn of phrase that made the accusation explicit.

[Captain Jim Collins]

I am forced, reluctantly, to say that I had to listen to an orchestrated litany of lies.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

An orchestrated litany of lies. Devastating, satisfying, but unwise. Mahon was a judge, but he wasn't writing as a judge. He was writing as a Royal Commissioner. That mattered. The verdicts of a judge can be appealed, but there was no legal mechanism to appeal the findings of a royal commission. It's hard to imagine that Air New Zealand would have got far if they could have appealed. What would they have said? That it was an improvised litany of lies, a choreographed cacophony of cock ups. The point was that they couldn't appeal. Air New Zealand's lawyers found a clever way to fight back. They took Maugham to court for breaching the principles of natural justice. By accusing the company of a cover up in a way that gave them no right to respond. The case went to the Privy Council, the highest court in the land. The Privy Council bent over backwards to praise Mahon's investigative work. Brilliant, they said, but agreed that Air New Zealand had a point. Legally, Marne had overstepped. Mahon was devastated. He resigned as a judge. His health declined rapidly and he died soon after, aged just 62. The legal wrangles created just enough murk to let Air New Zealand wriggle off the hook. It wasn't until 2019 that the 40th anniversary of the disaster that New Zealand's government formally accepted Mahon's report and apologised for Air New Zealand's role in the crash. Gordon Vetti too found that Air New Zealand were in no mood to forgive and forget. His research into Whiteout, he says, I'd

[Peter Mulgrew]

hoped that we might all be able to admit that in ignorance we made a terrible mistake and get on with rebuilding and learning from our mistakes.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Nope. Vetti was hounded out of his job.

[Peter Mulgrew]

I'm somewhat sad that the price I've had to pay for my attempts to find the truth has been much greater than I expected.

[Narrator (Tim Harford)]

Gordon Vetti and Peter Marnie are the heroes of the Erebus affair. But if the question is, what can we learn, perhaps they too have something to teach us. From Gordon Vetti we get the sad lesson that seeking the truth can make you powerful enemies. And from Peter tempting as it is to speak the truth, sometimes it's wiser to let the truth speak for itself. For a full list of our sources, see the show [e-mail]. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fiennes and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise, additional sound design by Carlos San Juan at Brainaudio and Dan Jackson. Ben Nadaff Haffrey edited the scripts. It features the voice of talents of Melanie Gutteridge, Genevieve Gaunt, Stella Harford, Macea Monroe, Jamal Westman and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brodie, Christina Sullivan, Keira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review it really does make a difference to us and if you want to hear it ad free and receive a bonus audio episode, video episode and members only newsletter every month. Why not join the Cautionary club? To sign up, head to patreon.com cautionaryclub that's Patreon. Patreon P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com cautionaryclub. Cautionary Tales is supported by Claude History

[Podcast Host (Tim Harford)]

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[Podcast Host (Tim Harford)]

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