But instead of ice and snow in the distance, what the cockpit was looking at was the mountain right ahead of them. Shortly before 1pm, the plane's proximity alarms went off. With no time to pull up, six seconds later the plane ploughed straight into the side of Mt Erebus.

After hours of waiting and confusion, the assumption back in New Zealand was that the plane must have run out of fuel. Wherever it was, it was no longer in the air.