Four hundred and fifty passengers and twenty-four crew members spent New Year's eve taking pictures and celebrating the new year while flying over the frozen continent of Antarctica.
A Qantas A380 Airbus departed and returned to Melbourne for that journey, and the flight captain remarked that this was his fortieth trip over the south pole. It seems that a tragedy thirty years ago has slipped most people's minds.
On November 28, 1979 an Air NewZealand DC 10 on a similar joy flight crashed into Mount Eerebus, an active volcano - and all 257 people aboard died.
For a while, flights to the Antarctic ceased because the risk was considered excessive. It seemed madness to deliberately fly a plane load of people to a place where an emergency landing was impossible - and in the event of a crash - any hope of rescue not even a remote possibility.
But - now we are doing it again !
There is no doubt that aircraft design and management has made improvements, but there is also no denying that unexpected events cause problems which require an immediate descent. Fortunately in most cases the ailing aircraft makes it to an airport somewhere along the route - but that becomes impossible when flying over the frozen continent.
Passengers must know this risk when they pay money to visit the south pole, but in the event that one day their luck runs out - and we have a plane somewhere on the ice - with survivors that can not be rescued - then the whole concept of such flights will again be adversely questioned.
It is a sobering thought when making that travel decision !
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