Commercial Jet Crashes North of Athens: 121 Dead...

[philippio]

GRAMMATIKO, Greece - A Cypriot plane crashed into a hill north of Athens on Sunday, killing all 121 people aboard — a third of them children — in Greece's deadliest airline disaster. At least one of the pilots was unconscious when the plane went down, apparently from lack of oxygen.

The Helios Airways flight ZU522 was headed from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Athens International Airport when it crashed at 12:05 p.m. near the 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, carrying 115 passengers and six crew, was to have flown onto Prague, Czech Republic, after stopping in Athens. There were 48 children on board, most of them Greek Cypriots, Helios spokesman Giorgos Dimitriou told reporters at Athens airport.

The cause of the crash was unclear, but it looked like a technical problem — possibly decompression — and not terrorism. "The first indications, in Cyprus and in Greece, are that it was not caused by a terrorist act," said Marios Karoyian, a spokesman for Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos.

Family members wept in anguish as they waited at the Athens and Larnaca airports. When news of the crash emerged at Larnaca, relatives swarmed the airline counters, shouting "murderers" and "you deserve lynching." One woman, Artemis Charalambous, said she was the mother of one of the pilots.

A man whose cousin was a passenger on the plane told Greece's Alpha television he received a cell-phone text message minutes before the crash. "He told me the pilots were unconscious. ... He said: "Farewell, cousin, here we're frozen," Sotiris Voutas said.

The head of the Greek airline safety committee, Akrivos Tsolakis, described the crash as the "worst accident we've ever had." He said the plane's black boxes had been discovered at the scene, containing flight data and voice recordings valuable for determining the cause.

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

The plane lost contact with Greek and Cypriot air traffic control 23 minutes after takeoff. Two F-16 fighter jets were dispatched shortly after the plane entered Greek air space over the Aegean Sea and did not respond to radio calls — a standard Greek practice.

When they intercepted the plane, the jet pilots could see the co-pilot slumped over his seat. The captain was not in the cockpit, and oxygen masks were dangling inside the cabin, government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said.

He said the jet pilots also saw two people apparently trying to take control of the plane, but it was unclear if they were members of the crew or passengers.

"It looks like the plane was on automatic pilot" when it crashed, Helios spokesman Marios Konstantinidis said at Larnaca airport, in Cyprus.

The F-16 jets met the plane at 34,000 feet, a Greek air force spokesman said. At that altitude, depressurization is extremely serious because its effects happen so quickly, said David Kaminski Morrow, deputy news editor 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. It is like standing on top of Mount Everest," he said. "But if you are down at 10,000 feet, you can breath for a lot longer."

Greek state television quoted Cyprus Transport Minister Haris Thrasou as saying the plane had decompression problems in the past. However, Helios representative Dimitriou said the plane had "no problems and was serviced just last week."

On Cyprus, several callers to radio and television programs devoting their broadcasts to the crash said they experienced severe air-conditioning problems when flying on similar Helios jets in recent months. Some said the cabin was freezing and the crew had to provide them with blankets, while others said it became unbearably hot.

Sudden loss of cabin pressure was blamed for a similar crash in South Dakota in October 1999. A private Learjet 35 lost pressure, leaving pro golfer Payne Stewart and four others unconscious. The twin-engine jet went down in a pasture after flying halfway across the country on autopilot.

In June 2002, a Boeing 737-200 of the Canadian carrier WestJet lost cabin pressure soon after lift off because pilots mistakenly shut down the auxiliary power, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada determined. The cabin altitude reached 24,000 feet before the plane descended and pressurization became normal. None of the 118 passengers was injured.

In the Greek crash, 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.

More than 100 firefighters, aided by eight special planes and three helicopters dropping water, fought a huge brush fire caused by the crash. Parts of the remains of the plane were engulfed by the fire. The plane broke up into at least three pieces: the tail, a bit of the cockpit and a piece of the fuselage section that witnesses said contained a large group of bodies.

Fire trucks and ambulances crowded roads near the crash site and dark black smoke could be seen rising from various sites around the crash. A number of black-robed Greek Orthodox Christian were also on the scene.

Rescue workers and residents on the scene said they had found no 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 the back tail. The fuselage has been destroyed. It fell into a chasm and there are pieces. All the residents are here trying to help."

Helios Airways was founded in 1999 as Cyprus' first private airline. It operates a fleet of Boeing 737 jets to cities including 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. The Cypriot president also canceled a vacation.

[shortkat5]

horrible tragedy - my heart goes out to those poor people and their families

[philippio]

By Brian Williams

1 hour, 29 minutes ago

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."

A passenger on the doomed plane said in an SMS text to his cousin in Athens: "The pilot has turned blue. Cousin farewell, we're freezing."

Reuters photographer Yannis Behrakis reported from the crash site that dozens of bodies were still strapped into their seats, some with the remnants of oxygen masks over their faces.

"Two charred bodies were still hugging each other," he said.

The plane broke into many pieces on impact, with the two engines 500 meters away from each other, the cockpit a further 200 metros away and the tail broken off a further distance away.

Greece's defense ministry said it suspected the plane's oxygen supply or pressurization system may have malfunctioned.

Loss of cabin pressure was identified as the probable cause of two similar but smaller-scale air crashes in recent years.

Pro-golfer Payne Stewart and five others were killed when their Learjet aircraft crashed in the United States in 1999 after flying for more than four hours without radio contact.

In 2000 a plane crashed in Australia after flying for more than an hour from 25,000 feet up with no sign of life on board.

Experts told Reuters it was extremely rare for a plane to lose oxygen, and that emergency systems should have kicked in.

"The pilots should have had their masks on," a retired British pilot who did not wish to be named told Reuters. "Why they didn't put them on is the big mystery."

"A loss of pressurization in the cabin is in itself a rare event but to go as far as it incapacitates the pilot is hugely rare," the retired pilot said.

Greek media speculated a toxic gas from possible faulty air-conditioning could have incapacitated the two pilots before they knew they were in danger.

One of the F-16 pilots said he could not see the captain in the cockpit and his co-pilot appeared to be slumped in his seat.

A spokesman for the European Aviation Safety Agency, Daniel Holtgen, based in Cologne, Germany, said the cause of the crash was likely to be a combination of factors:

"It is highly unlikely that the loss of cabin pressure alone would cause such an incident. There would have to be other contributing factors."

[funketeer]

horrible

[Guest onisakura]

My heart and prayers go out to the families. My roommates mother is in greece right now so we heard about it earlier from them. So horrible.

[mursa]

...what makes it even more tragic is that 48 of the casualties were children .

sad indeed .

[funketeer]

true

[Orisha]

"Two charred bodies were still hugging each other," he said.

tragic, so sad. *shakes head in disbelief/horror*

I hope they didn't suffer, although I've read dying from a lack of oxygen is a horrific experience.

[philippio]

Coroner: 6 Alive When Greek Plane Crashed By PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 7 minutes ago

ATHENS, Greece - Initial autopsies showed that at least six of the 121 people aboard a Cypriot plane were alive but not necessarily conscious when the aircraft crashed while on autopilot, a coroner said Monday, as authorities 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.

In Larnaca, the Cypriot city where the flight took off, police raided the offices of Helios Airlines, seeking "evidence which could be useful for the investigation into possible criminal acts," said Cypriot deputy presidential spokesman Marios Karoyian.

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 2 1/2 hours after the crew first radioed in air conditioning problems, officials said.

The fire department has said none of the bodies had masks on their faces.

"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 Helios Airways Boeing 737-300 plunged 34,000 feet into a mountainous area near the village of Grammatiko, 25 miles 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.

Investigators, to be joined by U.S. experts, were sending the plane's data and cockpit voice recorders to France for expert examinations.

But the head of the Greek airline safety committee, Akrivos Tsolakis, said the voice recorder was damaged. "It's in a bad state and, possibly, it won't give us the information we need," he said.

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. A Cypriot transport official had said Sunday the passengers and crew may have been dead before the plane crashed.

U.S. aviation experts said they could not understand the behavior 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."

In a related development, police in northern Greece arrested a man who claimed to have received a telephone text message from a passenger. The man — identified as Nektarios-Sotirios Voutas, 32 — told Greek television stations 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."

But authorities determined he was lying, and arrested him on charges of dissemination of false information.

A passenger list showed there were 20 children under the age of 16 on board, although the airline initially reported as many as 48 children were passengers.

Cypriot authorities identified the pilot as Marten Hans Jurgen, 50, from Berlin. Helios' general manager, Andrewas Drakos, said he did not know how long the pilot had worked for the airline.

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 pilot's home 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 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.

[shortkat5]

is it just me or is the news going from bad to worse to even worse? those poor people......on a side note, about 6 of my bf's relatives are vacationing in greece right now so many concerned phone calls were made