Newsstand - B 737 crashed in Greece, 121 feared dead

Helios Airlines Flight 522 with 115 passengers and six crew crashed en route from Larnaca, Cyprus to Athens about 12 p.m. (0900 GMT, 5 a.m. ET) Sunday, officials said

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/08/14/greece.crash/index.html

Helios Airlines Flight 522 with 115 passengers and six crew crashed en route from Larnaca, Cyprus to Athens about 12 p.m. (0900 GMT, 5 a.m. ET) Sunday, officials said

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/08/14/greece.crash/index.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=462498

Reason? Door to pilot cabin were close and no one could help pilots. USA policy after 9 11 is reason why 121 people die. [deleted by the moderator as against FT TOS --richard, moderator]

Reason? Door to pilot cabin were close and no one could help pilots. USA policy after 9 11 is reason why 121 people die. White scare american should pay price for it.

I disagree completely.

While there has been much stupidity post-9/11, securing the cockpit doors has been one of the few common sense measures taken.

Even if the pilots needed help, most people (contrary to how it appears in the movies) are in no position to land a 737, even with help from the ground.

deleted by the moderator.

Wow... pretty extremist comment there.

Reason? Door to pilot cabin were close and no one could help pilots. USA policy after 9 11 is reason why 121 people die. deleted by the moderator.

Come one everyone. Let the troll disappear on his own. No need to fan the flames. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Door to pilot cabin were close and no one could help pilots.

Since the cockpit door on any commercial airliner - including the 737 series - is not an airlock, when the cockpit lost oxygen and/or pressure, so did the main cabin. So everyone on the plane was incapacitated or deceased and nobody could have done anything even if the cockpit was wide open and every passenger was a trained and certified 737 pilot.

Not to mention, a passenger text-messaged their cousin via SMS that one of the pilots was "blue in the face" (meaning apoxia - lack of oxygen - had set in) and that they themselves were "freezing" (likely losing feeling in their extremities as apoxia set in on themselves). Now chances are the pilot this passenger saw was probably the First Officer and they were probably in the cabin, trying to determine the issue. But that means they were aware something was wrong, but were overcome before they could react.

This is probably a similar problem to what happened to golfer Payne Stewart's private jet. The problem was so gradual that the passengers and crew never knew what happened to them until they were incapacitated.

Reason? Door to pilot cabin were close and no one could help pilots. USA policy after 9 11 is reason why 121 people die. deleted by the moderator

In addition to being inflammatory, my understanding is that this statement is also technically incorrect. The design of the new cockpit door locks was actually rather smart, and took the case of pilot incapacitation into account. The flight attendants can open the door from the outside with a combination after a short delay, during which time the pilots can "veto" the entry with a switch.

(Information gleaned from a PPRUNE discussion...quite possibly considered a state secret by the TSA.)

Since the cockpit door on any commercial airliner - including the 737 series - is not an airlock, when the cockpit lost oxygen and/or pressure, so did the main cabin. So everyone on the plane was incapacitated or deceased and nobody could have done anything even if the cockpit was wide open and every passenger was a trained and certified 737 pilot.


Not necessarily -- the pilot emergency oxygen system is completely separate from the passenger overhead mask system. Also, there are portable oxygen cylinders for the crew stored in the galleys.


This is probably a similar problem to what happened to golfer Payne Stewart's private jet. The problem was so gradual that the passengers and crew never knew what happened to them until they were incapacitated.

There is a cabin pressure alarm on the 737. If it was working properly, then it would have sounded when the effective cabin altitude went above 10,000 feet, no matter how slowly or how rapidly the depressurization happened.

My neighbor's bright college student son, "Tony," who is into spy novels, mysteries and non-fiction books about espionage, speculates that this suspicious crash was a cover-up for an assassination -- someone was onboard that the "black hats" wanted dead, and they were willing to kill an entire aircraft full of people to accomplish their goal. He says that the passenger list will be carefully scrutinized by intelligence agencies to see if any likely target for such a murder can be identified.

The method "Tony" suspects was used to incapacitate all the passengers and crew without a depressurization alarm or other visible damage was release of a toxin in the form of a rapid-acting, highly dispersable gas or chemical agent. That could account for the O2 masks observed by the fighter pilots, which would have been deliberately deployed and were likely functional when people began to go down, but wouldn't help once the toxin had been inhaled/absorbed. Tony says that sabotaged electronics would have been timed to simultaneously disable radio communications with the ground to prevent a report from being made.

I'd like to dismiss "Tony's" speculations as just the product of an over-active imagination at work in a brain not yet fully matured. But I remain disquieted about the scenario he proposes. Is there a toxin that could be deployed as he described? If there is, would it be detectable somehow after the crash?

I'd like to dismiss "Tony's" speculations as just the product of an over-active imagination at work in a brain not yet fully matured. But I remain disquieted about the scenario he proposes. Is there a toxin that could be deployed as he described? If there is, would it be detectable somehow after the crash?

The conventional explanation for these unfortunate events (depressurization through a faulty air conditioning pack followed by a nonfunctional or contaminated pilot emergency oxygen supply) seems much more plausible, doesn't it? (Then again, maybe that's just what They want us to believe...)

Not necessarily -- the pilot emergency oxygen system is completely separate from the passenger overhead mask system. Also, there are portable oxygen cylinders for the crew stored in the galleys.

If the pressurization fails, atmospheric pressure at high altitude may be too thin to allow the lungs to inflate, but I believe this is more an issue at 60,000ft then 30,000. Reviewing Payne's NTSB report, it notes that the oxygen system on board was not rated for above 40,000ft (the plane was at 45,000) and that prolonged operation at 35,000ft was not recommended.

I wonder if the pilot's O2 system either failed or the pilots exhausted the supply (possibly by staying too high for too long and not descending to 10,000ft) and the other pilot referenced in the SMS message was attempting to grab some of the emergency/cabin crew O2 canisters when they were overcome by anoxia (assuming it was a problem with the oxygen/pressurization system).


There is a cabin pressure alarm on the 737. If it was working properly, then it would have sounded when the effective cabin altitude went above 10,000 feet, no matter how slowly or how rapidly the depressurization happened.

Obviously at this point we're at random speculation, but the sensor may have failed or been deactivated, or the flight crew failed to head the warning until it was too late.

Is there a toxin that could be deployed as he described? If there is, would it be detectable somehow after the crash?

There are types of nerve agents that interfere with the body's ability to transfer oxygen. So even though you can still breate, oxygen does not get sent to the cells, which quickly die (followed soonafter by the entire body).

The conventional explanation for these unfortunate events (depressurization through a faulty air conditioning pack followed by a nonfunctional or contaminated pilot emergency oxygen supply) seems much more plausible, doesn't it? (Then again, maybe that's just what They want us to believe...)
Reuters is currently reporting:

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 characterised 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."
I don't understand how hypoxia (low oxygen) from a depressurization would selectively incapacitate the pilot and co-pilot, but not the "two individuals in the cockpit seemingly trying to regain control of the airplane."

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."
Any hypothetical saboteurs skilled enough to undertake a mission this sophisticated could probably figure out how send a phony text message as a diversion, right?

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 pressurisation 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.
Toxic gas from a faulty A/C unit? Really?

And it's supposedly capable of selectively affecting just the pilot and copilot?

Has anything even remotely similar ever been reported? Wouldn't the FAA and Boeing have known about this danger long ago? 737s are old aircraft with zillions of logged miles.

(Is this theory any more plausible than my neighbor's sons's speculation about assassination-by-sabotage?)

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."


Comments, anyone?

Comments, anyone?

CO in the ventilation system is consistent with all the elements listed up to now.
How it could have got there, I don't know.

It was the new Al Qaida death ray.

Secret agents?
Death rays?

Has anyone here ever heard of Ockhams Razor? :confused:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor

MSNBC News Service is reporting:

. . .
Fake text message revealed

Meanwhile, Greek police on Monday arrested a man they said had pulled a hoax on TV stations by saying he had received a mobile phone message from a cousin on the Helios jet, a message that said the passengers were freezing cold shortly before it crashed.

“The pilot has turned blue. Cousin farewell, we’re freezing,” the supposed message said, in words flashed around the world as a dramatic description of the Cypriot plane’s plight.

“The man did not receive any message from the plane and has been charged with spreading false information,” a police spokesman said.

At least six of the 121 people killed were alive when the plane smashed into the ground, the investigation’s chief coroner said on Monday.

“Until now I have done an autopsy on six bodies, and the first evidence is that, when they were killed, they had circulation in their heart and lungs,” Chief Coroner Philippos Koutsaftis told reporters.

“That does not mean that they were conscious but that they had breath and circulation. They had circulation and heartbeat, so they were alive.”

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.

Search for captain's body

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 . . . ."

Does anyone have anymore info on this? Will the black box readings make it more clearer?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/16/wcrash16.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/16/ixnewstop.html

Offices of the airline whose Boeing 737 crashed on Sunday killing all 121 aboard were raided by police in Cyprus last night.

As the country began three days of mourning, warrants were issued for a search of the Helios Airways offices in Nicosia. Greek and Cypriot authorities want to know why the flight from Larnaca to Prague, with a stopover in Athens, went down.

My neighbor's son may have been early in suspecting that the circumstances of this crash were suspicious -- but he certainly isn't alone in those suspicions anymore. Most of the latest discussions are now found at TravelBuzz/Cypriot airliner crashes in Athens.

Any updates on what happend?

Not much, but here
http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/457-full.html#190469
they mention that they found the copilot's diary, and imply that it might be incriminating against the airline.

Not much, but here
http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/457-full.html#190469
they mention that they found the copilot's diary, and imply that it might be incriminating against the airline.

Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Orlando, FL, US
Posts: 441

Orlando ^ Love it there !! Lived there for a few years a short while back. Great City !!

Update in the NYT with some interesting new findings:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/international/europe/07cypriot.html

Thanks for posting this. I probably would not have ran across it on my own.

At 10,000 feet, an alarm went off to warn the crew that the plane would not pressurize. Crew members mistakenly thought that the alarm horn was a warning to tell them that their controls were not set properly for takeoff, the officials said.

The same horn is used for both conditions, although it will sound for takeoff configuration only while the plane is still on the ground.

thanks too. Interesting news.