121 dead in Greek air crash

[bejohnson]

Here is a article on a very odd happening. :What the

121 dead in Greek air crash (http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/08/14/greece.crash/index.html)

Sunday, August 14, 2005; Posted: 8:40 a.m. EDT (12:40 GMT)

ATHENS, Greece (CNN) -- A Cypriot plane with "no sign of life" in the cockpit as it approached Athens has crashed into a mountain, killing all 121 people on board, Greek officials said.

F-16 pilots escorting the jet after air traffic controllers lost contact with it said the pilot was not in the cockpit and the co-pilot was slumped over the controls, according to reports.

The pilots of the Helios Airlines Boeing 737 had reported an air conditioning problem, and Greek TV said a passenger sent a text message to his cousin saying it was freezing in the plane.

"The pilot has turned blue (in the face)," the passenger said in the SMS message, Reuters quoted the television report as saying. "Cousin farewell we're freezing."

The plane, Helios Flight 522 with 115 passengers and six crew en route from Larnaca, Cyprus to Athens, crashed about 12 p.m. Sunday (0900 GMT, 5 a.m. ET), officials said.

The Greek government said there were no survivors.

The plane was supposed to continue to Prague, Czech Republic after landing in Athens, according to the Czech Press Agency, citing officials at the Prague airport.

The passengers included 59 adults and eight children who were disembarking at Athens for a vacation, the government said, along with 46 adults and two children who were headed to Prague.

Akrivos Tsolakis, head of the Greek airline safety committee, called the crash the "worst accident we've ever had," The Associated Press reported.

Greek officials said they suspect malfunctions in the oxygen supply or pressurization system could have caused the crash.

Greek police said there were no signs the plane had been hijacked, Reuters reported.

The jet crashed near the coastal town of Grammatikos, about 40 km (25 miles) north of Athens and near the historic town of Marathon.

The crash site was littered with bodies and debris, Athens journalist Paul Anastasi told CNN. Video footage from the site showed the smoking wreckage of the aircraft. Only the tail portion remained identifiable.

The crash sparked forest fires, which officials said were hindering recovery efforts.

"There is wreckage everywhere," Grammatikos Mayor George Papageorgiou told AP from the scene.

"The fuselage has been destroyed. It fell into a chasm and there are pieces. All the residents are here trying to help."

One witness told Reuters: "I saw many bodies scattered around, all of them wearing (oxygen) masks. The tail was cut off and the remaining parts of the plane rolled down a hillside about 500 metres away from the tail."

The jet entered Greek air space about 10:30 a.m., but efforts by air traffic controllers to contact the pilots were futile. After some time, two Greek F-16s were scrambled, Greek Air Force spokesman Yiannis Papageorgiou told CNN.

As the F-16s approached, their pilots saw "no sign of life" in the cockpit, and the plane apparently was on autopilot, Papageorgiou said.

The F-16 pilots reported the pilot was not in the cockpit, and the co-pilot was slumped over the controls, Anastasi said.

They also reported they could see through the plane's windows that the oxygen masks had dropped down.

The F-16s escorted the plane until it struck the mountain.

"Although there are precedents for both pilots losing consciousness at the controls of aircraft in the past, for it to happen on a large airliner like a Boeing 737, with all the backup systems they have there, does seem to be really quite extraordinary," said Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence.

"It really is all very peculiar at the moment, I rather suspect we're heading for a very complicated investigation," he said.

A lack of oxygen apparently caused the crash that killed golfer Payne Stewart in the U.S. state of South Dakota in 1999.

Stewart's twin-engine jet went down in a pasture after flying halfway across the country on autopilot, as Stewart and the four others aboard apparently lay unconscious for lack of oxygen after the plane lost cabin pressure. Everyone was killed.

In Greece, witness Dimitris Karezas, who owns a summer camp in the area of Sunday's crash, told Reuters, "I saw the plane coming. I knew it was serious or that it was some kind of VIP because I saw the two fighter jets.

"Two, three minutes later I heard a big bang and ever since I've started looking for it, but I have not found anything yet," he told reporters.

A spokeswoman for the Czech Airport Authority, Anna Kovarikova, told Reuters the flight had been due to land in Prague at 1:10 p.m. (1110 GMT).

At the Prague airport, where friends and relatives were gathering to meet the flight, screens showing departures and arrivals read simply "delayed" next to the stricken flight.

Helios Airlines is a subsidiary of Cyprus Airlines.

Journalist Anthee Carassavas contributed to this report

[tanman_sg]

That's really sad.

Things like this shouldn't happen.

[egarrard]

Yes, but things break. Unfortunately, they broke this time on a plane with 121 people in board. Thankfully, it didn't go down in the middle of Athens, or someplace like that.

[maud'ib]

Heh, and my management wonders why I don't like travelling... :Nope

This is a tragic story :Crying Sadly mechanical failures and human errors can have devestating effects - particularly when dealing with aircraft.

[3dGameMan]

Greece crash plane may already have been flying tomb: ~source (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-08-14T223804Z_01_KWA433859_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-CRASH-GREECE-DC.XML)


By Brian Williams

ATHENS (Reuters) - A Cypriot airliner that crashed in Greece may already have been a flying tomb when it plunged to earth with some of the 121 people aboard already either dead or unconscious, early indications suggest.

Sunday's crash, the worst air disaster in Greece and the worst involving a Cypriot airline, perplexed aviation experts astounded by what appeared to have been a catastrophic failure of cabin pressure and or oxygen supply at 35,000 feet -- nearly 10 kilometers (six miles) up, higher than Mount Everest.

There was also mystery over the last minutes of the Helios Airlines Boeing 737 flight which was declared "renegade" when it entered Greek air space and failed to make radio contact, causing two F-16 air force jets to scramble to investigate.

All 115 passengers and six crew died, most burned beyond visual recognition, when the plane, with neither pilot in control, spiraled down in a death dive into a mountainous area about 40 km north of Athens.

The plane was on a flight from Larnaca in Cyprus to Prague with a stop in Athens. An airline spokeswoman and Greek authorities denied some media reports that many of those on board were children.

Airport officials in Cyprus said flight HCY522 left Larnaca at 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) on Sunday and lost contact at 10:30 a.m.

Greek Defense Ministry officials said 90 minutes elapsed between the alert first being raised at 10:30 a.m. and the plane crashing at 12:03 p.m.

Greek government spokesman Theodore Roussopoulos said the F-16 pilots sent to investigate reported that with the pilots out of action there may have been a last-gasp effort by others on the plane to bring it back under control.

"The situation was characterized renegade, meaning the aircraft was not under the control of the pilots," Roussopoulos told reporters, explaining how the crisis unfolded after the plane failed to make radio contact.

"At a later stage, the F-16s saw two individuals in the cockpit seemingly trying to regain control of the airplane," Roussoupoulos said.

"The F-16s also saw oxygen masks down when they got close to the aircraft. The aircraft was making continuous right-hand turns to show it had lost radio contact." ...

[brelsfor]

source (http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/452-full.html#190367)

A Boeing 737 flown by Helios Airways, a Cyprus airline, crashed into a mountainside north of Athens yesterday after the pilot reported problems with cabin air systems. There were no survivors. According to early reports, the jet departed from Cyprus at 9 a.m. and lost contact with controllers at 10:30 a.m. Two Greek F-16 fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the aircraft, and one of the F-16 pilots reported abeam the airliner at 34,000 feet that he could not see the captain in the cockpit and the co-pilot appeared to be slumped in his seat, according to Reuters. The Associated Press reported that Greek government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said on a subsequent flyby, the F-16 pilots, "saw two people apparently trying to take control of the Boeing 737. It was unclear whether they were passengers or pilots.


According to www.avweb.com (a very well respected aviation news site) before the controllers lost contact with the pilots they did report a problem with the cabin air systems.

[brelsfor]

Heh, and my management wonders why I don't like travelling... :Nope

This is a tragic story :Crying Sadly mechanical failures and human errors can have devestating effects - particularly when dealing with aircraft.


traveling by air is very safe, for the bilions of miles flown each year there are very few accidents. Mechanical failures happen but large aircraft have 2-3 redundant systems for everything, so quite a big chain of events has to happen before something serious happens.

[tanman_sg]

Many a time my Dad has been on a flight coming into maybe Bankok or Shanghai and suddenly the plane would have to throttle up and leave again...

Reason why? There was another plane on the runway...

I think there are a few close calls in air travel.

[maud'ib]

I flew on business from Toronto to Ottawa during a snowstorm once. The plane came in on it's approach, about 5 ft above the tarmac, then pulled back up. The Captain got on the speaker and said:

"Sorry folks, There was too much snow on the runway to land and we only have enough fuel for one more attempt. So we are re-routing to Montreal to refuel before we can land here."

Since that day, it has been very difficult to get me onto another plane. However my upper management is getting very insistent that I get my passport and start travelling to places like Aus, China, Taiwan and S. Korea :Holy Crap .... I hate travelling ...

[T-shirt]

Something suspicious going on with this crash
Balck boxes were intailly reported as recovered in good shape, then the voice recorder was "damaged", now reported as missing.
WTF?

Also offical reports that "fuel exhaustion" was a factor.
Before it reached it intended destination?

[brelsfor]

I head on the radio today the there were 6 autopsies that showed that people were alive when the plane went in. They may have been unconscious, but were alive.

[brelsfor]

Something suspicious going on with this crash
Balck boxes were intailly reported as recovered in good shape, then the voice recorder was "damaged", now reported as missing.
WTF?

Also offical reports that "fuel exhaustion" was a factor.
Before it reached it intended destination?


As for the black boxes it may have just been an error in reporting. A lot of times when news firsts happens the facts the media are reporting are later found t be false. I have not actually heard anything about the black boxes.

I doubt it ran out of fuel, the pilots had told air traffic controllers about the cabin air system problems, and did not mention fuel. Also there were military f-16's flying beside the 737 until it went in and they would have been able to tell if the engines were not running.

[Bobenis]

I head on the radio today the there were 6 autopsies that showed that people were alive when the plane went in. They may have been unconscious, but were alive.

Either way, most did not know what hit em which is most likely a better thing.

Autopsies show at least 6 people were alive when Cypriot plane crashed

Last Updated Mon, 15 Aug 2005 18:41:45 EDT


CBC News (http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/08/15/some_alive_when_plane_crashed10050815.html)

At least six of the 121 people aboard a Cypriot plane were alive when the Boeing 737 crashed while on autopilot, a coroner said Monday, as authorities raided the airline's offices and struggled to explain the actions of the pilot and crew.

The results of the first six autopsies shed some light on the final minutes of Helios Airlines Flight ZU522, which crashed Sunday into a hillside in suburban Athens, killing all 115 passengers and six crew members. But they failed to answer all the questions.

Greek aviation officials have said the plane apparently lost pressure suddenly, causing a rapid loss of oxygen on board. In that case, passengers and flight crew would have had only seconds to put on oxygen masks before losing consciousness amid subzero temperatures. Death would be minutes behind.

But two fighter jet pilots who scrambled to intercept the plane saw the co-pilot slumped over, oxygen masks in the plane dangling, and two unidentified people trying to take control of the plane.

The pilot was not in his seat when the plane crashed, about 21/2 hours after the crew first radioed in air conditioning problems. "It's odd," said Terry McVenes, executive air safety chairman for the Air Line Pilots Association, International. "It's a very rare event to even have a pressurization problem and in general crews are very well trained to deal with it."

Athens' chief coroner, Fillipos Koutsaftis, said he could not determine whether the six people whose bodies were examined were conscious when the plane plunged 10,400 metres into a mountainous area near the village of Grammatiko, 40 kilometres north of Athens. "Our conclusion is they had circulation and were breathing at the time of death," Koutsaftis said, but stressed: "I cannot rule out that they were unconscious."

Officials in the coroner's office said ongoing autopsies on another six bodies were likely to show similar results. They asked not be named because the results had not yet been publicly released.

Greek and Cypriot officials have ruled out terrorism as a cause of the crash.

In Larnaca, the Cypriot city where the flight took off, police raided the offices of Helios, seeking evidence which could be useful for the investigation into possible criminal acts.

Investigators, to be joined by U.S. experts, were sending the plane's data and cockpit voice recorders to France for expert examinations that could shed light on what happened. But the head of the Greek airline safety committee, Akrivos Tsolakis, said the voice recorder was damaged.

Investigators also were trying to determine why the pilot was not in his seat shortly before the crash. The pilots of two Greek air force F-16 fighter planes scrambled to intercept the plane after it lost contact with air traffic control shortly after entering Greek airspace said they saw the co-pilot slumped over the controls. The pilot did not appear to be in the cockpit, and oxygen masks were seen dangling in the cabin.

The fighter jet pilots also saw two people possibly trying to take control of the plane; it was unclear if they were crew members or passengers.

The plane might have run out of fuel after flying on autopilot, air force officials said, asking not to be named in line with Greek practice. Searchers still were looking for three bodies, including the plane's German pilot, fire officials said.

The body of the Cypriot co-pilot was found in the cockpit. After the crash, authorities said it appeared to have been caused by a technical failure -- resulting in high-altitude decompression.

U.S. aviation experts said they could not understand the behaviour of the flight crew. Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said it was possible that the oxygen in the cockpit failed. He said the NTSB has been concerned about the ability of the pilots to get their masks on quickly enough. "The accident did not have to occur," said Hall. "It has to be either a training issue or an equipment issue."

The airliner's pilots had reported air-conditioning problems to Cyprus air traffic control about a half-hour after takeoff, and Greek state TV quoted Cyprus' transport minister as saying the plane had decompression problems in the past. But a Helios representative said the plane had "no problems and was serviced just last week."

Helios said the Boeing 737-300 was manufactured in 1998 and previously operated by Deutsche BA. It entered the Helios fleet in April 2004, the company said.