Grammatiko, Greece – Flying 34,000 feet over the Aegean
Sea, the F-16 fighter jet pilots peered into the cockpit of the
Cypriot passenger plane they were sent to save.
No one was at the controls. The co-pilot was slumped over in his
seat. The captain was nowhere in sight. Oxygen masks dangled in the
cabin.
The fighter jets flew by a second time and saw two people
apparently trying to take control of the Boeing 737.
Forty minutes later, Helios Airways flight ZU522 crashed into a
mountainside near the ancient city of Marathon, breaking into
pieces and bursting into flames, hurling bodies and debris across
the scenic valley.
All 121 people on board, more than a third of them children,
were killed in Greece’s deadliest plane disaster. The cause
appeared to be technical failure resulting in high-altitude
decompression and lack of oxygen and not terrorism. A transport
official said the 115 passengers and six-member crew may have been
dead when the plane went down.
“We saw some fighter jets flying very low and after a few
minutes we heard a very loud noise and saw pieces of the plane
flying in the air,” said Spyros Papachristou, a Grammatiko
resident who saw the airliner crash at 12:05 p.m.
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.”
A man whose cousin was a passenger 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
indicating the plane was cold, a sign of decompression.
About a half-hour after takeoff at 9 a.m., pilots reported
air-conditioning system problems to Cyprus air-traffic control.
Within minutes, after entering Greek air space over the Aegean, the
plane lost all radio contact. Two Greek F-16 fighter jets were
dispatched soon afterward.
Government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos described to
reporters what the jet pilots saw inside the cockpit. It was
unclear whether the two people trying to take control were crew
members or passengers. The plane apparently was on automatic pilot
when it crashed, Helios spokesman Marios Konstantinidis said in
Cyprus.
“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.
The head of the Greek airline safety committee, Akrivos
Tsolakis, said the crash was the “worst accident we’ve ever had.”
He said the plane’s black boxes had been recovered, containing 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 F-16 jets met the plane at 34,000 feet, the Greek air force
said. At that altitude, 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. “But if you are down
at 10,000 feet, you can breathe for a lot longer.”
The flight was to have continued to Prague, Czech Republic,
after stopping in Athens. This is the height of Europe’s summer
travel season, when Mediterranean resorts like Cyprus are packed
with tourists. The area was likely to be particularly crowded,
because Monday is a national holiday in Greece and Cyprus.
There were 48 children aboard, mostly Greek Cypriots, Helios
spokesman Giorgos Dimitriou said in Athens.
Greek state television quoted the Cyprus transport minister 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 said
they experienced severe air-conditioning problems on Helios jets in
recent months. Some said the cabin was freezing and the crew
provided blankets; others said it became unbearably hot.
Sudden loss of pressure was blamed for a crash in South Dakota
in 1999, of a Learjet 35 carrying pro golfer Payne Stewart and four
others. They became unconscious, and the jet went down after flying
halfway across the country on autopilot.
In June 2000, a Boeing 737-200 of the Canadian carrier WestJet
lost cabin pressure because pilots mistakenly shut down auxiliary
power. Cabin altitude reached 24,000 feet before the plane
descended and pressurization became normal. None of the 118
passengers was injured.
At the Greek crash scene, more than 100 firefighters, backed by
planes and helicopters dropping water, fought a brush fire caused
by the crash. The plane was in at least three pieces: the tail, a
bit of the cockpit and a piece of fuselage that witnesses said
contained many bodies. Sections of the plane were ablaze.
Fire department rescue vehicles carried body bags up the steep
slopes of the charred valley to a fleet of ambulances. None of the
bodies had masks on their faces, the fire department said.
Black-robed Greek Orthodox priests were on hand.
Relatives from Cyprus were to be taken a reception center near
the Athens airport, but the remains of many victims were charred
beyond identification. The Cyprus transport minister said DNA tests
would be necessary.
Greek Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis canceled a holiday on the
Aegean island of Tinos to return to Athens. The Cypriot president
also canceled a vacation.
Helios Airways, Cyprus’ first private airline, was founded in
1999. It operates a fleet of Boeing 737s to cities including
London; Athens; Sofia, Bulgaria; Dublin, Ireland; and Strasbourg,
France. EU newcomer Cyprus is divided into Turkish and Greek
sectors. Most of its 800,000 people are Greek Cypriots.
