The Sightseeing Flight and the Invisible Mountain

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

Pushkin Industries

History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2026

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In November 1979, Flight 901 departs New Zealand on a sightseeing journey over Antarctica, heading directly towards a volcano. When the plane vanishes, investigators are left with a mystery: how could a seasoned pilot miss a 12,000-foot peak? As they try to piece together the incident, conflicting stories emerge, key evidence disappears, and a troubling picture takes shape - one defined by human error, deceptive illusions, and the hunt for someone to blame.

For a full list of show notes, see timharford.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:05.0	We know social media isn't great for our well-being, but logging off is harder than it seems.
0:10.2	People are trapped. They are kind of forced into a situation where they're on social media,
0:16.6	even though they would be happier if social media didn't exist.
0:20.9	Why does this happen?
0:22.0	And what can we do about it?
0:23.6	Hear from the researchers behind this year's World Happiness Report on the Happiness Lab.
0:28.5	Listen to the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:41.2	Pushkin Pushkin
0:41.3	Air New Zealand Flight 901 is flying straight towards a mountain.
0:59.3	257 people are on board, most of them sipping champagne and hearing eagerly out of the windows.
1:08.9	It's November 1979. This is a sightseeing trip to Antarctica.
1:15.7	They took off from New Zealand this morning. They'll enjoy some views of spectacular,
1:21.4	icy landscapes, if it's not too cloudy, of course. Then they'll loop around and land
1:27.4	land back in New Zealand in time for dinner.
1:30.8	Captain Jim Collins talks to the passengers.
1:34.8	The cloud cover in the McMurdo area has increased, although ground visibility is good.
1:40.2	We will be taking advantage of the radar facilities at McMurdo for leaddown, which should take us below the cloud and give us a view of the McMurdo area.
1:51.0	McMurdo, the McMurdo Sound, an inlet between mainland Antarctica and Ross Island.
1:59.0	There's an American research base at McMurdo with a small air strip on the ice.
2:05.0	Captain Collins calls them on the radio to check there were no other planes around.
2:10.4	They assume they'll see him soon, flying low over the inlet.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Pushkin Industries, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Pushkin Industries and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.