It was New Zealand's biggest peacetime disaster - and some say the nation's biggest cover-up.

On November 28, 1979, an Air New Zealand DC10 crashed into the slopes of Mt Erebus in Antarctica, killing all 257 people on board. But who was really at fault - the pilot or the government-owned airline?

On the 40th anniversary of the tragedy, presenter Garry McAlpine and writer/director John Keir interview the key players in a quest to discover the truth.

They talk to the family of Jim Collins, the pilot who was initially blamed for the accident. For the first time we hear from an American pilot who tried in vain to send a warning to the doomed flight. And the 10-part podcast explains how a national tragedy turned into even darker claims of conspiracy, immortalised in the words of Peter Mahon, the judge who led a commission of inquiry into the disaster and accused Air New Zealand of telling him "an orchestrated litany of lies".

Listen here

Listen to all 10 episodes of the podcast here.

Watch the videos

Watch short videos for the whole series now. 

How the route changed

One of the main causes of the crash was Air New Zealand’s decision to change the flight coordinates without telling the pilots. This motion graphic shows where the pilots thought they were flying, compared to where they actually were.

Presenter
Garry McAlpine

Writer/director
John Keir

Executive producers for NZME
Andrew Laxon
Frances Cook

Design and Graphics
Paul Slater
Phil Welch