Wellington - Six relatives of those killed when an Air New Zealand plane crashed on an Antarctic sightseeing flight 30 years ago were flown to the Ice Continent Friday for a memorial service. They include Pip Collins, daughter of Jim Collins, captain of the DC10 which crashed into the side of 3,794-metre Mount Erebus in white-out conditions on November 28, 1979, killing all 257 passengers and crew on board.
The toll made it the fourth worst crash in aviation history at the time.
It remains New Zealand's most deadly disaster and has had a lasting impact on a small country where it has been said everyone knew, or had connections to, someone who was on board.
The six, chosen by Air New Zealand in a ballot of about 70 relatives who wanted to go, left Christchurch on a United States Air Force Globemaster making a scheduled resupply flight to people at Antarctic scientific bases.
They are due to go by helicopter to the crash site for Saturday's service if weather conditions permit.
Before leaving, Collins told Television New Zealand she had visited the site where her father died countless times in her mind. "I have probably been preparing for this trip in a way for the last 30 years."
Some of the bodies were never recovered and it is the first time relatives have been able to visit the site since the accident.
The aftermath of the crash and the inquest into why it occurred live on a generation later.
Mechanical failure was ruled out and the formal air accident investigation blamed errors by the two pilots, neither of whom had flown the sightseeing flight to the Antarctic before. It said the plane was flying too low in the conditions.
But an inquiry by Judge Peter Mahon blamed Air New Zealand, saying that unknown to the pilots it had made a last-minute change to the automatic flight path on the aircraft's computerised navigation system which took it not over McMurdo Sound, but 45 kilometres to the east over Ross Island and straight into Mount Erebus.
Mahon accused the airline of a cover up and said its witnesses had indulged in an "orchestrated litany of lies."
Then Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, who was determined to protect the state-owned airline from damaging publicity, disowned the inquiry he had ordered and the Court of Appeal subsequently also rejected Mahon's findings.
Memorial services will also be held in Auckland and Christchurch on Saturday.
