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400 feet. captain collins realizes something is terribly wrong and calls for maximum thrust. the jet's nose tilts up 10 degrees and they start to climb. but as they pull up, the dc-10's underbelly and wings gouge into the slope of mount erebus an active volcano. 70 tons of jet fuel ignite the cabin. the tail engine breaks off and roars up the slope, along with a horrifying trail of burning wreckage. deputy police officer ted robinson radios the crew. he's met with ann eerie silence. >> we kept calling 901. others were also calling flight

Erubis. >> i kept a log of everyone that was out and what they were doing just for safety sakes. >> 40 minutes from their frozen destination, passengers on flight 901 are standing at the windows, eager for their first glimpse at the endless expanse of ice. >> captain collins radios robinson to find out about the current weather conditions and learns there's a huge problem. >> that particular day the mountain was completely whited out. >> robinson cautions captain collins about the low cloud cover that descend to 2,000 feet. >> i was keen to let him know that he shouldn't come anywhere near ros...

Questions about who exactly is to blame for flight 901. >> everybody has got opinions, but a lot of the evidence just has never been considered. >> but one thing both reports agree on, weather was a key factor. >> the record shows that they had thought they could get into clear air below the cloud at about 2,000 feet. >> a weather condition called sector whiteout made the flanks of mount erebus seem to disappear. the optical illusion caused the approach to lewis sound to look identical to the approach they believed they were flying over mcmurdo sound. >> they were seeing what they expected to ...

Mountaineer keith woodford has his own ideas how new zealand's deadliest aviation disaster could have been avoided. >> if they had reacted 10 seconds earlier, there was a reasonable chance that the plane could have been able to climb out of it. so close. >> but why was the plane flying so close to the volcano? investigators discover that on the morning of november 28th, air new zealand flight ops changed 901's final flight coordinate. instead of flying their usual route down the middle mcmurdo sound, the jet was shifted over lewis sound and directly into mount erebus. >> the shift meant that t...

901. no one had heard anything. >> there's still hope for finding survivors at 7:00 p.m. when air new zealand calls marina collins and asks if she's alone. >> and he said, i don't want to alarm you, but jim's flight is late. we haven't heard from him for a while. i suggest you get somebody to be with you. >> the weather is so bad it's 12 hours before rescuers finally spot the crash site. from the air, it looks like a smudge in the snow. >> when we came around the side of the mountain and saw the total devastation, i was shocked. it just did not look like a plane. >> due to the speed and force ...