This Site is dedicated to all those families of the people that have tragically disappeared on flights in and around New Zealand. I only hope that from all the effort in building this site and from all the effort of those taking part in this venture, that it will bear fruit in bringing ‘closure’ to their memories!
Gavin Grimmer
I remembered reading somewhere that there were snow storms reported in the area that
night, and there was quite a lot of snow on the ground the next morning, so then
this means the freezing level possibly went right to the ground in the area due to
a chill factor of the strong winds.
If this was the case, then it is quite possible that the final descent to 5000' was
due to ice and although an updraught may help to slow the descent it would not stop
it.
Using the times from the Radio Comms Timeline that I produced for download, in the
time frame from 7500 ft to 6500 ft to lose 1500 ft = 1176 ft/min, and from 6500 to
5000 = 1836 ft/min, so even if there were updraughts and downdraughts effecting the
descent, this descent was pretty dramatic!
Using the land profile of the course shown as a heavy green line in the above image,
I have made a scaled drawing predicting the continued descent from the 5000 ft point
and where the resulting crash site is likely to be:
This hillside is on the eastern side above the Wangat
River
