Posted on 08/23/2005 1:22:27 PM PDT by traumer
ATHENS, Greece (AP) - The last man conscious in the cockpit of a doomed Cypriot airliner made a desperate call for help - ``Mayday! Mayday!'' - two seconds before the plane carrying 121 people smashed into a mountain near Athens.
The man, apparently a flight attendant with pilot training, twice issued distress calls in the final 10 minutes of Helios Airways Flight 522, chief investigator Akrivos Tsolakis told The Associated Press on Monday.
``The second time was a couple of seconds before the crash,'' Tsolakis said, adding the man had ``a very weak tone of voice.''
Earlier Monday, Tsolakis issued a preliminary report on the Aug. 14 crash, which killed all 115 passengers and six crew, that said the Boeing 737-300 lost cabin pressure and eventually ran out of fuel.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.netscape.cnn.com ...
This has been a very sad story. Can not believe the terror he must have felt.
Where was the pilot? If he went back to check on a problem (escaping air) he should have called mayday, put the plane into a dive to lower altitude and then checked on the problem.
Don't know anything about flying a plane, but just what would a MAYDAY call mean. Not as if anyone can rescue a crashing plane.
we will never get the true story here, it changes two or three times a week.
I wonder as the aircraft descended into lower altitudes where there is more oxygen that some folks were regaining conciousness and went to the cockpit or perhaps woke up again having already made it to the cockpit but it was just too late by then to save the aircraft.
At the first sign of any trouble the Mayday would be called to alert authorities. It might also put a wider area on alert in case of a multi-plane terrorist event.
The plane flew mysteriously for over an hour without even making contact with the chase planes.
My guess is the Greek air force shot it down because they didn't know if it was under control of terrorists or to make certain it did not land in a populated area.
I don't think so. Crashes due to fuel exhaustion do not burn like like this bird did.
Interesting theory. It has a lot of merit.
That was my first thought, too . . .what caused the massive fire if there was no fuel to burn?
I came to the conclusion that the fighter jets shot the plane down. Doubtful the truth will be known for a while.
I'm no expert but I think these aircraft draw fuel from a single tank that is kept filled by alternately transfering fuel from other tanks in the fuselage and wings to keep the aircraft balanced. Not sure how automatic the process is, but you could, in theory at least, drain the fuel tank supplying the engines (so that they eventually flamed out and the aircraft descended) and still have fuel in other tanks aboard the aircraft.
The comment about the lower altitude causing some of the passengers and crew to revive is possible but it falls into the same category as the autopilot continuing to keep the plane in controlled flight as it descended after the fuel ran out. Did the auxiliary power system automatically start and provide power to keep the autopilot and the a/c systems on? My understanding is that the autopilot will automatically disengage when the control yoke is moved beyond a certain point. Did the groggy steward's attempts to regain control of the aircraft disengage the autopilot? (Not blaming the victim here. No matter how expert he was or wasn't, when you are out of fuel and you don't know how to get more and get the engines restarted, you are coming down. Probably a task even the pilots would have found difficult.)
God bless their souls and grant their families peace (and definitive answers to why this happened).
The idea is to let people know you are in trouble. Maybe you'll get out and maybe you won't. Part of the proper Mayday message would include your location, as best you know it, so any rescue operation will know where to look for survivors. Your flight number, number on board, etc may also be given.
The biggest problem with the idea that the Greek air force shot the plane down is that the plane had already pretty much flown past most anything important (Athens) and without changing course wouldn't be a threat to much of anything but hicks and goats for a while (i.e., an hour later - over in Italy..)
I haven't seen a map of the flight path yet - talk was it was flying in circles until the gas ran out, so it would have been on a constantly changing heading around some locus.
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