Greece Plane Crash Kills All 121 Aboard By ELENA BECATOROS, Associated Press Writer
1 minute ago



GRAMMATIKO, Greece - A Cypriot airliner with 121 people on board crashed north of Athens on Sunday, and rescuers said they had found no survivors. Reports said the pilots were unconscious when the plane went down, possibly because of a lack of oxygen in the cabin due to decompression.



The Helios Airways flight HCY 522 was headed from Larnaca, Cyprus to Athens International Airport when it crashed at 12:20 p.m. near the coastal town of Grammatiko, about 25 miles north of the Greek capital, leaving flaming debris and luggage strewn across a ravine and surrounding hills.

The Boeing 737, with 115 passengers and six crew members aboard, was due to fly onto Prague, Czech Republic after stopping in Athens.

The cause of the crash was unclear, but first indications were that there was a technical problem "” possibly decompression or lack of oxygen in the cabin_ and not terrorism.

Sotiris Voutas, the first cousin of a passenger on the plane, told Athens' Alpha television station that 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: 'Farewell, cousin, here we're frozen."

The only piece of the plane that remained intact was the tail section. Bits of human flesh, clothing and luggage were scattered around the wreckage, which also started brush fires around the area.

Rescue helicopters flew overhead and firefighting planes swooped low to extinguish some of the fires. Ambulances crowded the roads near the crash site and dark black smoke could be seen rising from various sites around the crash.

"The Helios flight that crashed in the Athens area left Larnaca and was headed for Athens. The exact causes unknown," government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said.

Rescue workers and residents on the scene said they had not found any survivors.

"There is wreckage everywhere. I am here, things here are very difficult, they are indescribable," Grammatiko Mayor George Papageorgiou said. "I am looking at back tail. The fuselage has been destroyed. It fell into a chasm and there are pieces. All the residents are here trying to help."

The head of the Greek airline safety committee, Akrivos Tsolakis, described it as the "worst accident we've ever had."

He speculated that there may have been a problem with the cabin pressure.

"There apparently was a lack of oxygen which is usually the case when the cabin is de-pressurized," Tsolakis said.

Two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled shortly after the plane entered Greek air space over the Aegean Sea and did not respond to radio calls. It is standard Greek air force procedure to intercept any aircraft entering the country's airspace that do not respond to radio calls.

Greek radio and television stations reported that the air force pilots saw no movement in the cockpit of the plane before the crash. There were some reports the two pilots seemed to be unconscious.

"The plane crashed around 400 meters (437 yards) from homes in the area," said Miltiadis Merkouris, a spokesman for the Grammatiko municipality.

In a crash with possible parallels, a lack of oxygen apparently cause the crash that killed golfer Payne Stewart in 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.

Stewart's widow, Tracey, and their two children sued the aircraft manufacturer, claiming a cracked piece of equipment caused cabin air to escape as the plane made its ascent on its flight from Orlando to Dallas. In January, a jury cleared Learjet of responsibility

Learjet argued that the plane lost pressure in another way, and that the aircraft was poorly maintained by Sunjet, the now-defunct Florida company that operated the jet.

Helios Airways, a privately owned airline founded in 1999, is Cyprus' first independent airline. It operates a fleet of Boeing 737 jets between Cyprus and London; Athens; Sofia, Bulgaria; Dublin, Ireland; and Strasbourg, France.

Greek Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis canceled a holiday on the Aegean island of Tinos to return to Athens to deal with the crash. Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos also canceled a vacation.

http://tinyurl.com/88mtf

The passengers were mainly children according to this article:

Plane crash victims mainly children

14aug05
THE majority of the victims of the crash of a Cypriot plane in Greece overnight were Greek children on their way home after a holiday in Cyprus, the Czech Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek said.

Prague was the final destination of the flight, which had taken off from Larnaca.

Paroubek said that 80 of the passengers on the aircraft were children returning to Greece after a stay on the Mediterranean island.

Paroubek did not rule out the possibility of Czech victims on the plane, which according to Greek officials had 121 people on board, including the crew.


http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/...968%255E1702,00.html

Greek Police Raid Helios Airways Offices By ELENA BECATOROS, Associated Press Writer
20 minutes ago



ATHENS, Greece - 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.

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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 try to determine if they were already dead before the crash, while French experts will examine the plane's black-box recorders, officials said.

The cause of Sunday's crash, Greece's deadliest airline disaster, appeared to be technical failure resulting in high-altitude decompression and loss of oxygen. There were no survivors. Yet many questions remained, including why the co-pilot was unconscious in the cockpit 40 minutes before the crash and why he was alone, with the captain nowhere in sight.

The captain's body has yet to be recovered, and Greek investigators "” joined by a U.S. team "” were trying to determine why he was not in his seat while the Boeing 737 was in peril.

Coroners also will examine blood and tissue samples from victims' lungs to determine whether anything they breathed in could have caused their deaths.

"We will seek to determine when they died and how they died," chief Athens coroner Fillipos Koutsaftis said.

Victims' relatives gathered at a central Athens morgue to identify the remains.

There had been 21 children aboard Helios Airways flight ZU522 from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Athens, "all aged 4 and above," Greek deputy Health Minister Giorgos Constantopoulos said Monday. Initially, Greek and Cypriot officials had said there were 48 children on the plane. No explanation was given for the discrepancy.

According the Cypriot government, at least 10 families with children were among the dead. Passengers and crew included at least 12 Greeks, one German "” the pilot "” and a four-member family of Armenian origin. The rest were Cypriot.

The Boeing 737 had been scheduled to continue to Prague, Czech Republic, after Athens. It crashed while on autopilot at 12:05 p.m. Sunday near Grammatiko, a scenic village 25 miles north of the Greek capital, apparently after running out of fuel.

Greek state television had quoted the 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."

Searchers at the crash site were still looking for three bodies, firefighting officials said Monday "” including the pilot. His name was Hans-Juergen Merten, 58, of Berlin, according to German authorities and his neighbors near the German capital's Schoenefeld airport.

The body of the Cypriot co-pilot, Pambos Haralambous, was reportedly found in the cockpit.

In Cyprus, Helios Airways Chairman Andreas Drakos said the airline's crews were operating normally on Sunday, rejecting earlier reports that its pilots and crew were refusing to fly.

The head of the Greek airline safety committee, Akrivos Tsolakis, said that the two recovered black boxes "” a data and cockpit voice recorder "” would be sent to French air safety investigators for examination. The voice recorder was badly damaged by the crash and ensuing fire.

"It's in a bad state and, possibly, it won't give us the information we need," Tsolakis said. "Both boxes will be sent to Paris where a French committee will help us and the foreign experts that are here to decode."

He said he believed his committee would be able to reach a conclusion "in a few days, a very few days."

U.S. experts will join Greek investigators on request by the American government, because the aircraft was manufactured in the United States, Tsolakis said.

The plane took off from Cyprus at 9 a.m. Sunday. About a half-hour later, the pilots reported air-conditioning system problems to Cyprus air-traffic control. Within minutes, the plane entered Greek air space over the Aegean Sea and shortly afterward lost all radio contact.

The Greek air force sent two F-16s fighter jets to intercept the plane. They caught up with the airliner at 34,000 feet and peered inside the cockpit. The jet pilots saw the co-pilot slumped over the controls but could not see the captain, and oxygen masks were dangling inside, government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said.

When the jets flew by a second time they saw two people possibly trying to take control of the plane; it was unclear if they were crew members or passengers. The plane crashed 40 minutes later.

"When a pilot has no communication with the control tower, the procedure dictates that other planes must accompany and help the plane land. Unfortunately, it appeared that the pilot was already dead as was, possibly, everyone else on the plane," Cyprus Transport Minister Haris Thrasou said.

At 34,000 feet, the effects of depressurization are swift, said David Kaminski Morrow, of the British-based Air Transport Intelligence magazine.

"If the aircraft is at 30,000 feet, you don't stay conscious for long, maybe 15 to 30 seconds," he said.

Cyprus declared three days of national mourning, and in Athens flags were ordered to fly at half staff on Tuesday. A 40-day mourning period was declared in Paralymni, a Cypriot town of 10,000 that lost 16 of its residents on the plane.

Meanwhile, police in northern Greece arrested a man Monday who had claimed to have received a telephone text message from a passenger on board a Cypriot airliner which crashed north of Athens, killing 121 people.

Police identified the man as Nektarios-Sotirios Voutas, 32.

He had told Greek television stations after the Helios Airways crash Sunday that his cousin on board the plane sent him a cell-phone text message minutes before the crash saying: "Farewell, cousin, here we're frozen."

Authorities said Monday they had determined he was lying, and his cousin's name was not on the Cypriot government's official list of victims.

___

Associated Press writers Elena Becatoros in Athens, Derek Gatopoulos in Grammatiko, Greece, and Alex Efty in Nicosia, Cyprus, contributed to this story.

http://tinyurl.com/9pvc5

Black box missing recording device, investigator says
ATHENS, Greece (AP) "” Officials on Tuesday said they had found only the exterior container of the cockpit voice recorder from a Cypriot airliner crash that killed 121 people, hampering investigative efforts into the accident's cause.
Autopsies on the bodies of 20 people on board, including one flight attendant, show they were alive when the plane went down, an Athens coroner said Tuesday.

Nikos Kalogrias, one of a team of seven coroners, said the 20 victims' hearts and lungs were functioning when the plane crashed. "The attendant was alive and died of injuries" sustained in the crash, he said.

Private Greek television channel Mega reported that an autopsy on the co-pilot showed he was also alive at impact. Pilots of two Greek F-16 fighter jets had reported seeing the co-pilot slumped over the cockpit controls, apparently unconscious, shortly before the crash.

The voice recorder's internal components were ejected from the container when the plane crashed into a mountainous region north of Athens on Sunday, said Akrivos Tsolakis, the head of the Greek airline safety committee.

"The only fortunate event in the investigation is that we have the flight data recorder," Tsolakis said, adding that the box would be flown to Paris on Wednesday for decoding.

He said a group of investigators would search for the rest of the voice recorder. He said American experts, including a representative of the plane's manufacturer, were providing assistance.

The voice recorder picks up any conversation inside the cockpit but records only the last 30 minutes of sound. Because the airplane appeared to have been flying disabled for several hours, it wasn't clear how useful any recovered conversations would be for investigators.

Tsolakis said the bodies of the plane's Cypriot co-pilot and one of the flight attendant were found next to the wreckage of the cockpit.

The Helios Airways Boeing 737-300, with six crew and 115 passengers, plunged 34,000 feet into a mountainous area near the village of Grammatiko, 25 miles north of Athens. It had taken off in Cyprus and was heading for Prague, Czech Republic.

In Cyprus, police raided the offices of Helios Airways in the coastal city of Larnaca, near the international airport.

A search warrant was issued "to secure ... documents and other evidence which could be useful for the investigation into possible criminal acts," Cyprus' deputy presidential spokesman Marios Karoyian said.

Investigators also were trying to determine why the pilot was not in his seat shortly before the crash.

The pilots of the two F-16 fighter planes 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 for nearly three hours on autopilot, air force officials said, asking not to be named in line with Greek practice.

After the crash, authorities said it appeared to have been caused by a technical failure "” resulting in high-altitude decompression. A Cypriot transport official had said Sunday the passengers and crew may have been dead before the plane crashed.

Searchers were still looking for three bodies, including the plane's German pilot, fire officials said. Cypriot authorities identified him as Marten Hans Jurgen, 50, from Berlin.

A spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with German practice, identified one of the pilots as a 58-year-old German but would not give his full name. It was unclear why there was a discrepancy in his age. Greek and Cypriot authorities often list surnames before given names, and Hans-Juergen would likely be the pilot's first name.

In Berlin, police were guarding the house at the address where the Cypriot government said the pilot lived "” a gray stucco house surrounded by a tidy, tree-filled garden in a quiet Berlin neighborhood near the Schoenefeld airport.

The name on the mailbox said Merten. Neighbors confirmed his first name was Hans-Juergen and said he was a pilot in his 50s, but refused to provide any other details.

The airliner's pilots had reported air conditioning system problems 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."

A man who claimed to have received a telephone text message from a passenger on the plane faced a preliminary hearing Tuesday for disseminating false information and causing a public disturbance.

Police on Monday arrested Nektarios-Sotirios Voutas, 32, who had called Greek television stations shortly after the crash. He claimed a cousin on board had sent him a cell-phone text message saying: "Farewell, cousin, here we're frozen."

The report that the plane was cold was taken as a sign of decompression "” one of the possible explanations authorities have given for the crash. But police said they determined the suspect's story was false.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-08-16-greek-probe_x.htm

Its other 2 jets are safe, Cypriot carrier says
Reuters

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005


NICOSIA Helios Airways, the operator of the Cyprus airliner that crashed in Greece on Aug. 14 killing all 121 people on board, said Tuesday that its remaining two Boeing 737s had successfully completed safety checks in Sweden.

Helios announced it was sending the Boeing 737-800s for checks after its third plunged into mountains north of Athens, killing 115 passengers and six crew. Inquiries are continuing into the cause of the crash, and a definitive conclusion is not expected for about six months.

"In-depth safety checks covered the major aircraft systems, ensuring the full airworthiness of the aircraft," Helios Airways said in a statement. "Both aircraft have now successfully completed the independent checks and re-entered operations."

Greek investigators are trying to determine what happened aboard the doomed plane to leave the pilot and co-pilot unconscious and a trainee with an emergency oxygen supply trying to fly the plane moments before it crashed from lack of fuel. An investigation team that arrived on the island on Monday wants to question engineers who serviced the aircraft before takeoff and check maintenance records.

The aircraft was flying from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Prague, with a stopover in Athens, but lost contact with air traffic controllers shortly after takeoff and flew on autopilot for more than two hours.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/30/news/fly.php

Cyprus plane pilots confused before crash-report
07 Sep 2005 10:52:19 GMT

Source: Reuters

ATHENS, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Alarms heard on a Cyprus passenger plane that crashed near Athens last month confused pilots, who did not realise 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 pressurisation 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 to the newspaper, the crew first heard an alarm warning of a failure to pressurise but which they mistakenly thought was indicating a malfunction of their controls.

A second alarm related to the air cooling system went off minutes later, prompting the captain to leave his seat to try to turn it off. He quickly lost consciousness due to lack of oxygen, officials told the newspaper.

An official involved in the investigation refused to comment on the report.

"This is all speculation and until the official results of the inquiry are released they will remain only speculation," the official told Reuters.

Pilots of two Greek fighter jets that were escorting the plane until the crash have confirmed the crew was visibly unconscious and the captain was not in his seat minutes before fuel ran out and the aircraft rammed into a hillside.

The failure of the plane to pressurise stemmed from maintenance the night before the flight, the report said. The maintenance crew apparently left a pressurisation controller rotary knob out of place and the crew did not catch the mistake during preflight checks the next day, it said. Cyprus President Tassos Papadopoulos had described the August 14 crash as a peculiar accident with only one precedent, suggesting a link to U.S. golfer Payne Stewart's death in a plane crash in 1999.

Stewart was a passenger in a Learjet that crashed in the United States in October 1999, killing all five people on board, after flying for four hours on autopilot with the pilot unconscious or dead at the controls and out of radio contact.

The U.S. investigation into the accident warned of the danger of pilots becoming so engrossed in a minor task they did not swiftly put on oxygen masks when trouble broke out.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L07541337.htm