into hills and mountains. But neither Captain Collins nor First
Officer Cassin had ever flown at low altitude in polar regions
before. Even Mr Mulgrew [the commentator for the passengers], with
his antarctic experience, was completely deceived. The fact that
not one of the five persons on the flight deck ever identified the
rising terrain confirms the totality of this weird and dangerous
ocular illusion as it existed on the approach to Mt. Erebus at
12.50 p.m. on 28 November 1979.

Paragraph 165 of the Commissioner's report also merits quotation. We
have underlined some of it, indicating that in this particular part of
his report the Commissioner seems to accept that when they first heard
of the crash the management of the airline must have been unaware of the
true nature and danger of a whiteout. If so, they would have had no
reason to suppose that the pilot would have elected to fly at such a low
level without real visibility. That is an aspect which could well have
been strongly relied on if, when giving evidence before the
Commissioner, they had realised that they were being accused of trying
to cover up the cause of the crash from an early stage:

The term 'whiteout' has more than one meaning as being descriptive
of weather conditions in snow-covered terrain. For aviation
purposes it is often described as the cause of the visual
difficulty which occurs when a aircraft is attempting to land
during a snowstorm. As already stated, the United States Navy
maintains a special whiteout landing area situated to the south of
its normal landing strips near McMurdo Station. This area is used
when an aircraft, which is committed to a landing, is required to
land when visibility is obscured by a snowstorm. The snow in
Antarctica is perfectly dry, and a wind of only 20 kilometres can