Thirty-eight years on, and there's still no national memorial to those who died on Erebus.

All 257 people on board Air New Zealand flight 901 died on November 28th, 1979, when the plane crashed into Antarctica's Mount Erebus during a sightseeing flight.

It remains the country's worst peacetime disaster.

Erebus families representative, David Allan, was 32 when he lost both of his parents and his sister in the crash.

He said a memorial for the victims has been too long in the making - and it's time the Government made it happen ahead of the 40th anniversary.

"Why isn't there one? It just would seem to me a social responsibility. The whole of New Zealand feels its a logical thing to do."

"They are impatient for an official national memorial," Richard Waugh, spokesman for Erebus National Memorial Project, said. 

"Did the government tell the Pike River families and the families of those who died in the Canterbury earthquakes to wait 30 or 40 years before any memorial? Of course not."

They're now asking those who back the project to write to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern expressing their support.

There is a memorial that marks the crash site on Ross Island.

- with content from NZ Newswire