Plane may have been hijacked (GREECE)

news24.com ^ | 8/14/05 | N/A

[Gorons]

Athens - A Cypriot Boeing 737 airliner with 121 people on board from Larnaca, Cyprus, crashed apparently pilotless on Sunday near Athens, a traffic controller at Athens international airport told AFP.

Just before the crash, airforce crew observed the airline's pilots doubled up in the cabin, the controller said.

A spokesperson for the Greek army chief-of-staff said hijacking "could not be ruled out".

"An act of piracy is likely," said the spokesperson, Gerassimos Kalpoyannakis. The pilots of the two F16 fighters that were sent up to escort the airliner before the crash "saw a situation that was not normal in the pilots' cabin."

Kalpoyannakis said the plane crashed at Varnava, an uninhabited area about 40 kilometres northeast of Athens and not on the Euboea peninsula as previously reported by the Athens control tower.

He said teams of rescue workers, fire-fighters and ambulances were on their way to the scene and that all the hospitals in the region had been placed on emergency status.

There was no immediate word on casualties.

"The plane has crashed," said Iannis Pantazatos, who was in charge of the Athens airport control tower. "The information was given to us by the air force, which sent two fighters to escort the aircraft."

Shortly before the plane crashed, Pantazatos told AFP: "The airport lost all contact with the plane, which should have landed in the late morning, and two air force planes sent up in reconnaissance found it flying above the Euboea peninsula, but they saw the pilots doubled up in the cabin."

"We do not know how the plane is flying. It is being escorted by the military planes and the airport is in a state of emergency." he said.

The Helios airways plane was reported to be carrying 115 passengers and six crew.

Helios, established in 1999, is the first private airline in Cyprus. It had a fleet of four Boeing 737 jets and operated flights to London, Athens, Sofia, Dublin and Strasbourg in France.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Has there been any word on a passenger list? Nationalities?

We have two friends and each of their families traveling through Greece right now.

[G.Mason]

I have read no article with the passenger list. Sorry.

[Christopher Lincoln]

If the captain was out of the cockpit, and back in the passenger compartment, that would explain how a passenger could know that he was unconscious. See post #44.

[pa mom]

I believe the plane was headed from Cyprus to Athens, then due to go on to Prague.

[mewzilla]

Yeah, but these days what would it take to get a captain to leave the cockpit?

[Brit_Guy]

"Yeah, but these days what would it take to get a captain to leave the cockpit?W


Frankly, outside of the UK and USA not a lot. I am an 'airmiles millionaire' thanks to my job (oh that I could swap that for real money) and this year alone can recall flights in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Australia, and Poland where I have watched either one of the pilots go for a stroll in business class, or they've had the door open for a signifant amount of time while they chat with the air hostesses (sorry, 'Cabin Directors'.) I suspect an internal flight with a tiny airline like this is not going to be the most compliant with international safety protocols sadly. That said, from everything I read, I suspect in this case it has fallen victim to lax maintanance rather than lax security (which is every bit as unforgivable)

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Thanks.

[mewzilla]

I was on a few flights when the captain did that. I enjoyed having the captain come back and chat. The same with the travelogues that some would do. Those were the days. Sigh.

[Walkingfeather]

I agree we should let the investigation go from there... or should I say HERE. We have seen countless times where govt. investigations tend to be how do I say it....less than truthful in the outcomes they seek.

Free republic is here to put thousands of minds together and look at things from every angle and come up with questions "5 official investigators" either did not come up with or willfully ignored ( gorelick,reno,etc).

If we wanted to assume that we will not have any idea what happened till it is officailly investigated then we should march in the streets and call for Dan Rather to come out of retirement and tell us what he thinks we should know.

Your thought process is an old one. I can see someday Free republic having thier own reporters whose job it is to gather information just for this forum. Then post it and do in person follow up and post it for this forum. Where we become our own information gathering service. Then as a whole we investigate what isnt being investigated. We should have our own slush fund for paying for information that needs to be paid for.
We need to not sit back and wait for others to tell us what they want us to know, we need to be generating the questions that they should be answering for us.

WALKINGFEATHER

[John W]

Well said.

[Selene]

Crash: Toxic gases to blame?
14/08/2005 20:04 - (SA)

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'We are all frozen'

Plane may have been hijacked

Plane was flying 'pilotless'

Plane with 121 on board crashes
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1753956,00.html
Paris - A pressurisation failure could not on its own have caused the crash of the Cypriot airliner killing 121 people on Sunday near Athens, French aeronautical experts said.

[Tiger Smack]

Right now we don't KNOW what caused this mishap and anything said right now is speculation only, whereas you have made up your mind it was a terrorist act. Do you think every aircraft mishap is the result of a terrorist attack and ever terrorist act involves a cover-up.

Thank god SOMEONE finally said it...some of you are acting like a bunch of tin foil wearing FOOLS! I bet if someone keyed your car then your be screaming that it was a islamic plot....get a grip people

[firewalk]

Thank god SOMEONE finally said it...some of you are acting like a bunch of tin foil wearing FOOLS! I bet if someone keyed your car then your be screaming that it was a islamic plot....get a grip people

get over yourself...

[BagCamAddict]

"they were "frozen"........... not "freezing". It could have been "frozen in fear".

Or it could have been his colloquial term for "we are dead." Like we might say "we are toast." If someone in another country were to read a text message from one of us saying "we are toast", what do you think their speculation might be? White? Wheat? Burned? Cooked? Fried? French?

Sotiris Voutas, the first cousin of a passenger on the plane, said he received a text message from his relative on his mobile phone minutes before the crash.

"He told me the pilots were unconscious ... he said: 'My cousin I bid you farewell, we are all frozen'."

[Tiger Smack]

"get over yourself..."

OMG! YOU DISAGREE! Your a islamic terrorist named abdullah! AIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

[va4me]

Yeah, but these days what would it take to get a captain to leave the cockpit?

A malfunctioning cockpit oxygen in a de-pressurized airplane would do it.

[EternalHope]

This may have been discussed and I just missed it, but I have a question:

If both pilots passed out due to lack of oxygen, why didn't the passengers pass out too?

[ThePythonicCow]

Of course, as the aircraft descended to a lower altitude the aircrew would recover

If they were still alive. Can you say whether the ambient air pressure at 35,000 feet enough to substain life for an hour, or is it more likely that one will die, without a working air mask? Obviously, the answer could depend on the cardiovascular health of the victim. I can imagine that a Himalayan Sherpa would last longer than a diabetic old man.

They would slowly, and without really noticing, pass out.

That much I can vouch for. In my brief stint in pilot training school (before I decided that flying over Hanoi was too risky, and took a desk job) I did a training run in a high altitude chamber, removing my mask as part of an exercise to learn what it's like to loose air at high altitude. If I am ever sentenced to the death penalty, I want to go out that way. I happily faded away without the slightest distress. If the trainer had not put my mask back on, I would have been quite dead. It's way too easy.

In any case, my favorite speculation of the moment is that the text messaging cousin in the cabin had a working mask, but the pilot didn't, probably due to normal equipment failure and inadequate maintenance. Whether it was equipment failure or terrorists that caused the initial depressurization - that I have no bias on, yet.

[ThePythonicCow]

why didn't the passengers pass out too?

A couple of possibilities come to my mind:

1. Perhaps they did pass out - all of them. Perhaps some died before the plane got lower, perhaps some didn't die and regained consciousness.
2. The more likely possibility, in my uninformed view, is that perhaps some of the masks didn't work. Perhaps the pilot and/or co-pilot were among the lucky ones without working masks.

[beyond the sea]

Yes, I hear you. It's all in the translation, but I bet they were NOT all real cold. I tend to think of the "toast" as you say.