1.
AV: Black mass of aircraft debris on Mount Erebus, Antarctica.
0.05

2.
AV: Debris with peak of Mount Erebus behind, and row of tents in distance. (2 shots)
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3.
GV: Tail section of aircraft
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4.
AV: Aircraft wreckage.
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Initials RH



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: Air accident inspectors who have found the two vital flight recorders from a crashed Air New Zealand passenger aircraft in Antarctica may now be able to learn the reasons for the accident. The plane crashed on the slopes of the volcanic Mount Erebus during a sightseeing excursion, killing all the 257 people on board.

SYNOPSIS: Investigators believe the DC-10's engines were running and the plane was flying at about 450 miles an hour (720 kilometres an hour) when it disintegrated against Erebus, an active volcano. fierce snow storms at first prevented searchers and investigators from reaching the site, at an altitude of two and a half thousand feet (seven hundred and fifty metres) and on the wrong side of the mountain in relation to the flight plan.

The tail section is the only fragment recognisable from the air. Searchers believe that in the harsh conditions the recovery of all the tourist's bodies will be impossible. And it is that same alien environment with vast frozen wastes and still little understood natural phenomena, which attracted the tourists, and which were thought to have contributed to be crash.