Free Republic

Paris - A confusing series of alarm signals and the lack of an effective common language between its pilots doomed a Cypriot airliner that crashed near Athens last month, killing all 121 people on board, the daily International Herald Tribune said on Wednesday, quoting investigators. An air system knob that had been incorrectly set during maintenance on the ground prevented the Helios Airways Boeing 737 from pressurising properly, but the crew failed to notice the problem during their preflight checks, people connected to the investigation told the newspaper. Then, as the aircraft ascended through 3 000m, a pressurisation alarm -...

ATHENS, Greece (Reuters) -- Alarms heard on a Cyprus passenger plane that crashed near Athens last month confused pilots, who did not realize there was a lack of oxygen in the cabin, the International Herald Tribune reported on Wednesday. The German captain and his Cypriot co-pilot struggled to communicate effectively in English and misinterpreted the alarms, failing to identify problems with the pressurization of the plane, the report said, citing sources close to the crash investigation. The Boeing 737 plane, operated by Helios Airways, crashed east of Athens on August 14, killing all 121 passengers and crew on board. According...

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...

Cypriot Pilot Cried 'Mayday!' Two Seconds Before Crash Monday, August 22, 2005 ATHENS, Greece — The last man conscious in the cockpit of a doomed Cypriot airliner (search) 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 (search), 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 recent crash of the Cypriot airliner brings some points to mind. What if the pilots were dead and there was no one to fly the plane? The answer is using automated flying/landing using instrumentation. Everyone is familiar with the concept of the autopilot or may at least be familiar with it. Pilots might explain the difference between VFR and IFR flying -- in one case, the pilot relies on being able to see for flying, the other the pilot relies on instrumentation. Many airliners have incorporated features for landing using instruments only. It would be possible with technology to...

TESTS on victims of the Cyprus plane crash showed no sign of carbon monoxide poisoning, a finding that one aviation medicine expert said yesterday could indicate the 121 passengers and crew died from lack of oxygen. ... "The fact that there is no evidence of carbon monoxide poisoning and evidence that the bodies were frozen suggests strongly that they died from anoxia -- the lack of oxygen," Mr Perry said. "This would have come about from a catastrophic pressurisation failure at 35,000 feet with outside air temperatures of minus 50 or so and no air to speak of." The plane...

Paul Czysz, professor emeritus of aerospace engineering at St. Louis University, said the plane's final maneuvers -- a descent from 37,000 feet to 2,000 feet and then an ascent to 7,000 feet -- couldn't have been performed by autopilot. He wonders why a person who knew enough to try to fly a jetliner wouldn't pick up the headset and talk to the ground. "Someone knew how to work the airplane," Czysz said. "Obviously he didn't want to contact the tower."

Cabin staff struggled to control crash plane By Tabitha Morgan in Nicosia (Filed: 17/08/2005) The cabin crew of the Helios Airlines plane that crashed in Greece on Sunday tried to bring it under control but could do nothing to save the aircraft, it was disclosed yesterday. Video footage retrieved from the nose cones of the F16 fighter planes scrambled to accompany the stricken Cypriot aircraft showed a man and a woman enter the cockpit, said Greek media reports. They were thought to be a newly-trained pilot standing in as cabin crew and his stewardess girlfriend. The stewardess was seen in...

ATHENS, Greece (AP) - At least six of the 121 people aboard a Cypriot plane were alive when the aircraft 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,...

ATHENS, Greece -- An autopsy on the body of the co-pilot of a Cyprus airliner that crashed killing all 121 on board shows he was alive when the plane went down, a private Greek television channel has reported. ...more: Officials on Tuesday said they had found only the exterior container of the cockpit voice recorder from the plane, hampering investigative efforts into the accident's cause. The device's internal components were ejected from the container when the plane crashed into a mountainous region north of Athens on Sunday, Akrivos Tsolakis, head of the Greek airline safety committee, told The Associated Press.

The crash of a Cypriot airliner that killed 121 people near Athens likely occurred after it ran out of fuel while heading towards Athens International Airport, a senior government source said Tuesday. "We surmise that the (Helios Airways) plane was heading towards Athens International Airport and that it ran out of fuel," the government official told AFP on condition of anonymity. All 121 people aboard the aircraft died in the accident, which is believed to have occurred after a disastrous air supply failure almost two hours before it smashed into a mountain near the Greek capital. Earlier on Tuesday officials...

THESSALONIKI, Greece — Police in northern Greece today arrested a man who claimed to have received a telephone text message from a passenger on board a Cypriot airliner that crashed north of Athens, killing 121 people. Police identified the man as Nektarios-Sotirios Voutas, 32. Voutas had called Greek television stations shortly after the Helios Airways flight crashed into a mountainous region north of the capital Sunday, saying his cousin, who he identified as Nikos Petridis, was on board. He claimed his cousin had sent him a cell-phone text message minutes before the crash saying: ``Farewell, cousin, here we're frozen.'' The...

Greek Police Raid Helios Airways Offices By ELENA BECATOROS, Associated Press Writer Police in Cyprus raided the offices of Helios Airways in the coastal city of Larnaca on Monday, a day after one of the company's passenger jets slammed into a mountainside near Athens, killing all 121 people on board. Police spokeswoman Christalla Dimitriou said officers "carried out a search" after asking the city's court for a search warrant. There were no arrests and she did not say whether police had confiscated any material from the office. Coroners testing the remains of passengers and crew of the Cypriot airliner will...

Cypriot police raid Helios Airways officesNICOSIA (Reuters) - Cypriot police on Monday raided the Nicosia offices of Helios Airways, owners of the Boeing 737 that crashed in Greece a day earlier killing all 121 people on board, a government spokesman said. "After allegations brought by the Communications and Works Minister and the chief of police, the attorney general issued search warrants for the central offices of Helios to collect documents and other evidence that might be useful in a possible criminal investigation," spokesman Marios Karoyan told Reuters. Cypriot communications and works minister Haris Thrasou also oversees transport, including civil aviation....

ATHENS, Greece (CNN) -- Investigators were working to determine why a Cypriot plane apparently suffered a catastrophic loss of cabin pressure and slammed into a Greek mountain -- possibly with all 121 people on board already dead. All but two of the bodies have been recovered, a Greek government spokesman said Monday, and officials hope autopsies and cockpit recorders will hold clues to Sunday's crash of Helios Airways Flight 522. The autopsies were ordered to determine if the 115 passengers and six crew were already dead or oxygen-starved before the crash, the spokesman said. A Greek Defense Ministry source with...

Accident investigators are probing why a Cypriot airliner slammed into a wooded hillside near Athens with the loss of more than 120 lives amid harrowing accounts of an apparent crisis in the plane's cockpit. Two Greek air force F16 fighters scrambled to investigate after communications were suddenly lost with the Helios Airways twin-engine aircraft, Greek and Cypriot officials said. The fighter pilots "saw two people in the cockpit - we don't know if they were crew members or passengers - appearing to want to take over the controls", said Greek government spokesman Theodore Roussopoulos. They saw "the co-pilot slumped over...

...Aviation experts were perplexed, saying it was rare for a plane to crash because of depressurization. "Although there are precedents for both pilots losing consciousness at the controls of the 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.... Airliners are pressurized by a system that draws air from the engines, which compress air for internal use. A valve at the back of the plane determines how fast air is...

GRAMMATIKO, Greece (AP) - A Cypriot plane full of vacationers slammed into a mountainside north of Athens on Sunday after at least one pilot lost consciousness from lack of oxygen, killing all 121 people aboard, more than a third of them children. The cause of Greece's deadliest plane crash appeared to be technical failure - resulting in high-altitude decompression - and not terrorism, authorities said. A transport official said the 115 passengers and six crew may have been dead when the plane went down. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm not sure if I had to excerpt this, but just in case, I did.

120 die as jet crashes in flames By Kate Connolly in Grammatiko (Filed: 15/08/2005) Two people made a desperate attempt to save a Boeing 737 minutes before it crashed into a Greek hillside killing all 121 people on board, it was reported last night. Many of the dead are thought to be children on their way to a sports tournament. Witnesses in villages near the crash site reported a thunderclap-like bang as the plane hit the hillside The pilots of two F16 fighters that intercepted the Cypriot airliner said that the co-pilot was slumped in his seat and the captain...

Two people tried to take the controls of the Cypriot Boeing 737 passenger jet before it crashed near Athens on Sunday killing all 121 people on board, a Greek government spokesman said. Pilots of two Greek air force F16 fighters that were scrambled to investigate after the doomed aircraft lost contact saw the two people trying to assume control in the cockpit during the final approach, Theodore Roussopoulos said. "They saw two people in the cockpit, we don't know if they were crew members or passengers, appearing to want to take over the controls," he said after a government meeting...