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Cypriot Airliner Crash NOrth of Athens

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Just got word from Channel 93 BBC World just this minute that a Cypriot airliner with more than 100 pax aboard has crashed north of Athens. The plane had reported experiencing difficulties.

 

Details are sketchy, got the news live from BBC World, and as they come in will be provided.

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http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticl...RASH-GREECE.xml

 

http://www.africasia.com/services/news/new...14.klte5x74.php

 

A Cypriot airliner with 121 people on board from Larnaca, Cyprus, crashed Sunday on a mountain on the Euboea peninsula, northeast of Athens, a traffic controller at Athens international airport told

 

Just before the crash, an airport official said the plane appeared to be flying pilotless.

 

"The airport lost all contact with the plane which should have landed in the late morning, and two air force planes sent up in reconaissance found it flying above the Euboea peninsula, but they saw the pilots doubled up in the cabin," Iannis Pantazaratos said.

 

"We do not know how the plane is flying. It is being escorted by the military planes and the airport is in a state of emergency," said Pantazaratos, traffic control chief at Athens airport.

 

The Helios airlines plane was reported to be carrying 115 passengers and six crew.

 

©2005 AFP

 

Pilots doubled up in the cabin? What does that mean?

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Doubled up in the flight deck, is like hunched forward. Some sources are saying atleast one pilot was dead prior to impact.

 

Could this be, the first 737NG lost?

 

Helios Fleet:

5B-DBH 737-86N (c/n30806 l/n790)

5B-DBI 737-86N (c/n30807 l/n829)

5B-DBY 737-31S (c/n29099 l/n2982)

 

May those who perished, rest in peace.

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Dead before impact ?

Meaning hijacking probably?

5111[/snapback]

 

It could either be a hijacking...or a suicide. All depends on what the CVR and FDR reveal.

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while we're all playing doctor/terrorism expert, perhaps heart attack, black out, anything could have caused a loss of consciousness, people are only saying, no confirmation the pilot/s we're dead. When sitting down, you double over when you pass out as well. Perhaps it was fumes in the flightdeck...WHO KNOWS!

 

Sadly, we mourn the loss of 737-31S 5B-DBY.

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cnn said just moments ago that the pilots of greek F-16 jets took off to escort the plane found captain seat was empty and copilot slumped at his seat (motionless). one relative of pax received sms saying that captain was in cabin looking blue and pale and all pax were shivering due to very low temperature.

 

well, anything cannot be discounted until they analyse the blackbox.

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According to BBC World, a passenger sent a text SMS message to a relative saying, "cabin very cold, pilot's turned blue", and an expert interviewed speculates a sudden cabin decompression at FL330 rendering the pilots incapacitated within seconds.

 

It appears that there are no survivors.

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From WIkipedia (Content may change):-

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522

 

Helios Airways Flight 522 (HCY 522) was a Helios Airways Boeing 737-300 (Registration 5B-DBY) flight which crashed on August 14, 2005 at 12:04 local time (EEST = UTC + 3h) into a mountain in a non-populated area between Marathon and Varnavas, Greece. The flight had left Larnaca, Cyprus at 09:07 EEST, was en route to Athens, and scheduled to continue to Prague. Rescue teams have located wreckage near the town of Grammatikos. The plane veered off-course and two F-16 fighter planes from the Hellenic Air Force 116 Combat Wing were launched from Araxos, Greece. They noted that the plane appeared to be on autopilot, that both pilots were unconscious and that one was wearing an oxygen mask. Unconfirmed reports on Greek television say that the pilot collapsed and that there was a problem with the pressurization system and oxygen supply on board, which released toxic substances in the air. Same reports indicate that this specific aircraft has had similar problems in the past with air supply system, but they had allegedly been fixed. According to the Greek government, the passengers included 59 adults and 8 children who were disembarking at Athens for a vacation, along with 46 adults and two children who were headed to Prague. Just before the crash, one of the passengers sent an SMS to his cousin saying "The pilot has turned blue in his face. Farewell cousin, we are freezing."

 

Suspicions that the plane had been hijacked were swiftly ruled out by Greece's foreign ministry.

 

The preliminary report of 121 persons onboard the crashed jet would make this accident 2005's most fatal, and only the second accident that caused more than 100 fatalities. The other was Kam Air Flight 904 with 104 deaths.

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According to sources...the pilots passed out when the F-16 jets were already escorting them for having no contact with the control tower. While escorting, they noticed one pilot hunched onto the controls and the plane juz kept descending flying on its own before crashing. People speculate that there was a decompression and that the pilots were too slow to get their oxygen masks. It also says the same plane has been involved in a decompression problem before...

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that the pilots were too slow to get their oxygen masks.

5122[/snapback]

 

Depending on the altitude, sometimes the pilot just can't. The Payne Stewart case in 1998, the plane (Learjet) was at FL430, the pilot simply did not have time to grab the mask. And back to the current case, pilots of the jet fighters scrambled to oversee the ghost jet did report seeing one of the pilots slumped at the controls with his oxygen mask on.

 

British aviation expert David Learmount, of Flight International, said: "We understand the Learjet was at 43,000ft which is well above what most airliners fly at.

 

"If the aircraft did depressurise at that height literally you wouldn't have time to get an oxygen mask to your face before you passed out from lack of oxygen."

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/485518.stm

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October 6, 2006

Human error was the main cause of Cyprus's worst airline disaster, in which an aircraft crashed into a hillside north of Athens last year killing all 121 people on board, a Cypriot newspaper reported on Friday.

 

Errors by ground and air crew were among eight factors logged by Greek investigators who are expected to hand the result of their official probe into the disaster to Greek and Cypriot authorities next week, the daily Phileleftheros said.

 

Cypriot authorities declined to comment on the report.

 

The crash was highly unusual because the Boeing 737-300, operated by Helios Airways on a Larnaca-Prague flight, flew on autopilot for two hours, its pilots slumped over the controls, before crashing into a Greek hillside when it ran out of fuel.

 

Two Greek air force fighters were scrambled when the plane lost radio contact, and their pilots saw a flight attendant, apparently the only person still conscious on the plane, grappling with the controls before the aircraft crashed.

 

A failure to switch the aircraft's decompression system to automatic from manual mode, by both technicians on the ground and the pilots themselves, triggered the sequence of events, Phileleftheros reported.

 

The system regulates the oxygen supply, which therefore decreased as the aircraft gained altitude and rendered the pilots and passengers unconscious.

 

The August 14, 2005, crash was the worst aviation disaster in Europe in 2005 and the worst on record for Greece or Cyprus.

 

Communications Minister Haris Thrassou declined to comment on the report, saying the official findings of the investigation had not yet been given to the authorities. "I expect this should happen in the coming week," he said

 

(Reuters)

 

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From IASA website, excerpts from the Greek Commission of Inquiry on the Helios crash

A consultant inspector of airworthiness on Monday said that seven incidents concerning functional problems had been reported but ignored before a Cypriot plane crashed a year ago near Athens, which killed all 121 people on board.

 

Marios Pantelis, consultant inspector of airworthiness at the Cypriot Department of Civil Aviation, disclosed the ignorance before the Commission of Inquiry that is looking into the causes of the air crash.

 

Pantelis told the head of the commission Panayiotis Kallis that seven incidents had happened since the aircraft's registration until its final flight, one of which concerns technical failure.

 

He said that he had traveled together with a colleague on April 13-16, 2004, to Germany's Munich to carry out checks on the aircraft, adding that the fatal plane had received a license to be registered in Cyprus on April 15, 2004.

 

"During inspection, no problems had been detected and we proceeded with the registration of the aircraft. The certificate was issued on April 15, although it was said that eight points had to be checked," Pantelis told the commission.

 

Although the problems that had to be fixed on the particular aircraft were classified on level one, which means immediate need for repair, they had later been classified as level two problems, so that time was given to Helios Airways to proceed with the repair, the consultant inspector said.

 

The witness also testified that the crashed aircraft lacked corporate control which is very important for the safety of flights.

 

The Commission of Inquiry, headed by former Supreme Court judge Panayiotis Kallis, is expected to name those involved in the tragedy so that the Attorney General can bring criminal liability charges against those persons.

 

The investigation by the commission has been carried out in an open public hearing procedure, during which the conditions under which the company, the plane and the crew got their licenses are also examined.

 

The commission is also examining how the security and other checks were carried out for that flight and that plane.

 

The Boeing 737 was on its way to Prague via Athens when it crashed into the mountain side north of the Greek capital on Aug. 14, 2005, killing 121 passengers and crew on board, most of them Cypriots going on holiday.

 

The Boeing came down as two Greek F-16 jets were accompanying it after it failed to respond to calls from Athens' control tower.

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another crash.

 

what a week

 

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another crash.

 

what a week

 

Not a new one; read the last two posts properly <_>

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another crash.

 

what a week

 

This crash was more than a year ago la brader :nea: :pardon:

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Not a new one; read the last two posts properly <_>

 

My bad, didn't read that properly

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Synopsis (in English) of accident report can be found here (scroll down a bit):

http://www.yme.gr/pressdetail.php?section=...0504006e7eed25d

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2396691,00.html

 

IPB Image

 

The cabin pressure control system of a Boeing 737. The circled switch toggles between an automatic, manual and "alternate" control of the air pressure. On the Helios flight, it was set to manual

 

The cockpit switch that killed 121 people on a passenger jet

By Sam Knight

 

The worst air crash in Greek and Cypriot aviation history was caused by a single switch out of place, accident investigators concluded today.

 

A report by Greece’s National Aviation Safety Board found that the cabin pressure controls on a Helios Airways flight from Cyprus to Prague on August 14 last year were set to manual rather than automatic by ground staff — an error that was not picked up by the pilot or co-pilot in three subsequent checks.

 

The two pilots then failed to correct the switch as warnings sounded and oxygen masks fell into the passenger cabin.

 

Rendered unconscious by the lack of oxygen, the pilots failed to respond to radio calls as the Boeing 737-300 drifted for more than two hours through Greek airspace before running out fuel and crashing into a hillside 45km (28 miles) north of Athens. All 121 people on board, most of them Cypriots, were killed.

 

Today's report has been eagerly anticipated by aviation safety experts because of the mysterious circumstances of last year's crash.

 

As the Helios Airways jet, flying on autopilot, continued to circle in a holding pattern above Greece, two F16 fighters were scrambled to investigate the aircraft.

 

The two military pilots reported seeing the co-pilot slumped in his seat, unconscious passengers and one man, apparently not the Helios captain, struggling at the controls.

 

Today's report reveals that the F16s accompanied the stricken airliner for 30 minutes, and that one flew in close alongside, when it spotted a "person not wearing an oxygen mask entering the cockpit and occupying the Captain's seat" at 11:49am.

 

The F16 then spent the next five minutes trying to attract the attention of the man, who is thought to have been Andreas Prodromou, a 25-year-old qualified pilot who was working as an air steward, without success. As the aircraft's two engines flamed out from lack of fuel, the man sent out two mayday messages. The jet crashed at 12:03pm.

 

The report, which was prepared by Akrivos Tsolakis, head of Greece’s National Aviation Safety Board, and delivered to the country's Transport Minister, listed three "direct" causes of last year's crash, the first being: "Non-recognition that the cabin pressurisation mode selector was in the MAN (manual) position during the performance of the Preflight procedure, the Before Start checklist and the After Takeoff checklist."

 

According to David Learmount, the Operations and Safety Editor of Flight International magazine who has been briefed on the final report, the switch had been set to manual because ground engineers were testing the airliner's seals after a reported leak.

 

"It would have been ideal if they had set it back to its normal position, which is 'auto'. But they are not required to do that," he said.

 

Investigators blamed the pilots for failing to recognise the "Cabin Altitude Warning Horn", which would have sounded at 10,000ft, and the reasons for the deployment of passenger oxygen masks, at 18,200ft, and a third "Master Caution".

 

Mr Learmount, a former RAF pilot, explained that as cabin pressure fell, two dials and a set of warning lights above the pilots' heads would have informed them of the problem.

 

"Basically they didn't look at it," he said of the control panel. "They can't have done."

 

During their ascent to 34,000ft from Larnaca airport, the pilots contacted Helios Airways's operations centre to report a problem with the aircraft's cooling system. They talked for eight minutes but stopped when the aircraft passed 28,900ft. "Thereafter there was no response to radio calls to the aircraft," today's report said.

 

The ultimate cause of the crash was "incapacitation of the flight crew due to hypoxia (lack of oxygen)". Post-mortem examinations carried out after accident showed that many of the passengers were alive when they hit the ground.

 

As a result of the crash, five recommendations were made to Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer, and the US National Transportation Safety Board, for failing to improve the Boeing 737 after other sudden losses of cabin pressure. Two further recommendations were made to the Greek and Cypriot aviation authorities.

 

Helios Airways, which was renamed Ajet last year after the crash, was criticised for "deficiencies in the organisation, quality management and safety culture".

 

The budget airline narrowly won approval to keep flying in the EU last month, but has been banned from flying in foggy conditions after authorities could not guarantee safety in such conditions.

 

After the crash last year, the airline admitted that the same Boeing 737 had suffered a sudden decompression nine months earlier and had been forced to make an emergency landing at Larnaca.

 

The company said today that it had not yet seen the final report into the accident but was "deeply dismayed" that more emphasis had not been placed on the actions of the ground engineers who had moved the cabin pressure control from its normal position.

 

"The suggestions that the operation of Helios in any way contributed to the accident are not based on any logical analysis of the accident and have been challenged vigorously by the company," it said in a statement.

Edited by Naim

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then its a case of bad CRM...

this is wy checklists are VERY important...

 

interesting that both pilots missed this though...

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Wonder about that picture of the pressurization panel, as ours is a little bit different. It is called STBY instead of ALTN. But in any case the operations remain the same.

 

In AUTO you set the flight altitude and the system works automatically based on the differential pressure and cabin altitude. In STBY you set the cabin altitude based on the placard, and you can control the rate of cabin climb or descend. The system will maintain the outflow valve automatically based on your setting. In MAN you will have to toggle the outflow valve manually to keep the cabin altitude. It is a lot of work and with MAS you'll need an ATP (authorization to proceed) to fly with a manual pressurization system.

 

To all pilots here, be wary when an aircraft just comes out of maintenance. The engineering personnel are well known to leave some funny settings on the switches and dials, depending on what they did during maintenance. It is the pilots job to set it back to normal flight setting.

Edited by Radzi

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