27/09: I can't comment on your hypothetical. But Vette can comment, because he flew that same route.
skol: Vette was an AirNZ/Teal employee from the late 1940s. He spent 4-5 years in the RNZAF in the 1950s, and then rejoined the airline. In the late 1960s, he established many of AirNZs huge legs across the Pacific - in a DC8.
After the DC10 was introduced in the early 1970s, he managed to persuade AirNZ to give him some slots on DC8 flights so that he could maintain his navigators licence.
No-one can dispute Vette's credentials. But has he ever, anywhere, said that he himself would have parked that aircraft on Mt Erebus?