Jacinta Cassin reflects on her father, Greg Cassin, 37, First Officer on Flight TE901.
The only thing I really remember about my father was that when he came home, I would run to his suitcase because he always brought me something home from his travels. When he had to leave, I would sit on his foot and hold his leg to make him stay.
My father grew up in a loving family of seven children on a Napier farm. We used to spend part of every summer at his parents’ home. The parents would be working on a project like painting the roof or cutting the hedge while we got under foot or ran off into the forest. All of his siblings had kids and holidays were full of noise and laughter. At night we would all be assigned kitchen tasks and then after dinner the adults would play cards on one of those green velvet card tables.
He loved flying, so much that he joined the airforce to save up to learn to fly. His role was to put the weather balloons up and then use morse code to send wind reports around the country.
He met my mother Anne when he was working for her father as a flight instructor in Rotorua. It was the start of many happy adventures. My mother was a pilot also. They lived and worked in Napier, Taupo, Rotorua, and Fiji where he flew with Fiji Airways/Air Pacific, before landing his dream job with Air New Zealand.
It was the happiest time of his life and ours. He was a loving father and husband, a good Catholic.
He loved his work. He was widely regarded as one of safest pilots you could imagine and was widely respected by his colleagues.
One hostess who worked with him commented ‘he was always such a gentleman.’ His friends remembered his gentle nature and willingness to always lend a hand. Wendy Donaldson (Rankin) and her family were neighbours of the Cassins’ in Fiji. Her father Barry flew with Gregory. She remembered ‘a wonderful family man with a love of flying who was a smiley man who laughed a lot.’
At the time of the crash, I was only four but I remember two men in suits coming to the door while I hid behind my mother’s legs and spending the day huddled all together on the orange chair beside the radio, waiting for news.
I remember the funeral and spending every night dreaming it was a mistake and he would come back.
I remember cousins coming to babysit so mum could attend the enquiry. It was lucky she did. As a pilot herself and having discussed the flight with my father, she caught many inconsistencies in the evidence presented.
I remember, as a child, people saying ‘Oh your dad killed all those people on the plane.’
I remember crying and raging as an adult being told mum didn't have his love letters anymore because boxes of papers were taken and never returned.
I remember the frustration every time a lazy reporter copied an old article which said it was the pilots' fault or they flew in bad weather (written before those were proven not to be true).
I remember it took 20 years for the Mahon report to be tabled in Parliament (where the pilots were cleared).
I remember it took 30 years for an apology from Air New Zealand.
I remember it took 40 for an apology from the government.
When the government gave its formal apology in 2019, I gasped and sobbed. I felt like I could finally breathe properly for the first time in my life. Finally, it felt like all of New Zealand knew the truth.
And I especially remember the kindness of the family of Jim Collins, the pilot. They were the only ones to really know what it was like to be us. I remember the kindness of the passengers' families who never ever seemed to blame the pilots. At least not to me.
It was a public tragedy and a private grief under an immense pressure few could understand. I am so grateful to all those who stood up and made sure the truth was told.
I once stood up at a conference and said, "I will show you the photo that I most think of when I think of my father," and I showed them the tail of that plane in the snow. I reminded them that we don't do training to be compliant, we do training to make people safe, so little girls like me get to have their daddy come home.
If there is any legacy of his life, apart from his family, it would be that more companies understand that it takes good systems AND safety culture AND necessary training to avoid accidents like this. And that if you try and bury it, the truth will always come out.
Jacinta Cassin. March 2024
Note: the memory on this page is in the writer's own words and does not necessarily reflect the views of Manatū Taonga.
Text and images on this page may not be reused without permission.
Read more memories like this: Reflections on Erebus series.
See also, passengers and crew from Flight TE901 (Manatū Taonga)
Jacinta Cassin
