Remembering Mike Lies

Jeffrey Lies’ brother Mike (Michael) Lies was one of 22 passengers from the United States who died in the Erebus accident.

Mike was the eldest of four siblings, with brothers Jeff and Doug, and a sister, Cindy. He was born in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1950, making him only 29 years-old at the time of the Erebus accident. Luckily his wife Lena, who had bought him the ticket as an anniversary gift, wasn’t on the flight, as she did not enjoy long flights. They had no children.

We were a Navy family, so we moved to a new Navy base every two to three years while growing up. This regular movement ensured we had no fear of being thrown into new places, and made us aware of all the beautiful things to see when traveling. Our Navy placements were typically up and down the east and west coast of the United States. The exception to this was between 1959 and 1961, when we were stationed in Bouknadel, a town on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. My younger brother Doug was actually born there. All three of us boys loved to travel. At one point in time, my California-based parents had sons spread out all over, much to their chagrin, from Australia to Florida and Wisconsin.

Mike was an electrical engineer, having graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. Mike worked for TRW Inc (Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc), which was a US contractor with the US Air Force. At the time of his death he was working at Pine Gap, a joint United States-Australian satellite intelligence gathering and signals intelligence surveillance base near Alice Springs (Mparntwe) in Australia’s Northern Territory. He loved to travel the world and see new sights and things that were different from anything he had previously experienced. This was the reason that he was on flight TE901. The idea of flying near an active volcano, and over Antarctica, enthralled him!

I'll never forget where I was when I heard about the accident. I was living in Florida and was driving on my way home from work. I had the radio on, and it was the lead on the top-of-the-hour news bulletin. It was reported that there had been an Air New Zealand plane crash in Antarctica, and it was feared there was significant loss of life. Little did I know that later that night I would receive a phone call from my father telling me that my brother was on that ill-fated flight. Reports over the next couple of days confirmed that there were no survivors. Mike’s body was repatriated to the United States. He is buried in Oakland, California, near the home of his widow’s parents. 

In the States I remember coverage of the accident lasting for only a few days. As far as I know, none of the controversy concerning responsibility for the accident was actively reported in the United States, or at least not reported to the level that I became aware of it. The first inkling I got about what caused the accident was, ironically, as a consequence of Korean Air Lines flight KAL007 from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, Alaska being shot down by a Soviet interceptor aircraft in 1983. During the coverage of this incident someone mentioned that KAL007 might have found itself inadvertently in Soviet airspace due to an error in data entry into the inertial navigation system, which the speaker said had happened with Air New Zealand TE901.

In 2003, I met a man from New Zealand who owned a plumbing company that happened to be doing some work on my house. We got to talking about the Erebus accident. He told me that there was information about it on the Internet. That is when I first found out about the controversy surrounding the cause of the Erebus accident. In 2022, when I found out about the efforts to build a national Erebus memorial, I again researched the accident on the web and got a much better picture of what had transpired.

Mike never got a chance to be a father; he never got to meet my wife, his nieces and nephew, or his great-nieces and -nephews. I am devasted that these people I love never got to meet their wonderful relative, who is the namesake for my son. Rest In Peace, Mike. I miss you and wish that we had more time together.

Read more memories like this: Reflections on Erebus series.

See also, passengers and crew from Flight TE901 (Manatū Taonga)