Air New Zealand Flight 901, a sightseeing flight making a round trip to Antarctica and then back to Auckland without landing, is lost with all hands when it crashes into the slopes of Mt. Erebus in Antarctica. Later investigations reveal that the flight crew and passengers were doomed by a typo made during autopilot data entry, switching the plane’s course from a low-altitude flyover of MacMurdo Sound to a low-altitude collision course with the mountain. (Also uncovered are the great lengths taken by Air New Zealand to accuse the crew of incompetence.) The steps taken to uncover the truth mark the birth of modern air disaster investigation, and the end of Antarctic sightseeing flights for at least a decade.
