120 Die As Jet Crashes In Flames (Greece)

Two people made a desperate attempt to save a Boeing 737 minutes before it crashed into a Greek hillside killing all 121 people on board, it was reported last night.

Many of the dead are thought to be children on their way to a sports tournament.

Witnesses in villages near the crash site reported a thunderclap-like bang as the plane hit the hillside

The pilots of two F16 fighters that intercepted the Cypriot airliner said that the co-pilot was slumped in his seat and the captain was not in the cockpit while oxygen masks could be seen hanging down.

When they swooped past the Helios Airways plane once more, they saw two people apparently trying to take command of the controls, but it was unclear if they were crew or passengers, the Greek government said.

Air traffic controllers in Athens had been unable to make contact with the plane as it approached the capital from Larnaca in Cyprus and the fighters were scrambled to intercept the flight over the Aegean in case of a terrorist attack.

Soon after yesterday morning's crash in the hills 25 miles north of Athens, officials ruled out the likelihood of terrorism amid suggestions that decompression leading to a severe drop in cabin pressure was a likely cause of the disaster.

Messages from passengers aboard the doomed airliner seemed to back up the theory.

Sotiris Voutas spoke to his cousin minutes before the crash and was told: "We're cold, the pilot is blue. We're going to die. Farewell."

The only piece of the plane which failed to disintegrate in the crash was its blue tail. All that could be seen was the tail's crushed face of Helios, the Greek god of the sun.

Bodies were strewn across the countryside. Witnesses said most were charred by the fire which took hold of the wreckage.

Many of the bodies were wearing oxygen masks. Rescue workers said there was no sign of survivors.

At Larnaca, desperate relatives thronged the airport demanding news of their loved ones. Commotion broke out as they fought ground staff for access to a list of passenger names.

Greek television broadcast pictures of screaming relatives, some of whom had to be physically restrained as they heard the news and became hysterical.

All but four of the passengers were believed to have been Cypriot, 48 of them children from a sports school. The nationality of the other four had not been disclosed by last night but was believed to be Greek.

The plane was due to refuel at Athens before flying on to Prague, where the children were to take part in a sports tournament.

At Prague airport the flight was flashed up as "delayed" on the arrivals board, as people gathered waiting for friends and relatives.

Witnesses in villages surrounding the crash site, a valley known as Agia Triada or Holy Trinity and home to a Greek Orthodox monastery, reported hearing a thunderclap-like bang as the plane careered into the Penteli hillside just after midday.

Clouds of thick black smoke smothered the valley and firemen fought throughout the day to control fires raging through dry undergrowth and pine trees.

By the early evening rescue workers said they had uncovered the two flight recorders crucial to identifying the true cause of the crash. The black boxes should contain the pilot's last words. The crash of Helios Airways flight HCY 522 is Greece's worst ever aviation accident.

The company was founded in 1999 as Cyprus's first independent airline. It was bought by Libra Holidays Group, one of Britain's leading independent holiday tour operators, in November 2004.

It operates a fleet of four Boeing 737 jets to cities across Europe including London.

In December 2004 three passengers from a Helios plane were taken to hospital after its cabin pressure dropped, forcing it to make an emergency landing at Larnaca.

Greek television reported remarks by Cyprus transport minister Haris Thrasou that the plane had previously had problems with decompression.

But a spokesman for Helios said at Athens airport: "The plane had had no problems and was serviced just last week."

A spokesman for the Cyprus government in Nicosia said there was no evidence that it had been a terrorist attack. But Greek government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said: "From what we've heard so far, it's possible that there was some sort of problem with the plane."

Among the many questions left unanswered last night was why, if a decompression problem had been recognised on board, it had not been possible to bring the plane down to an altitude at which air is breathable.

It is interesting that they have ruled out terrorism so soon. Decompression leading to a drop in cabin pressure, well I would think a definition of decompression would be "a drop in pressure".

Lots of things can cause decompression, usually it is a hole in the skin of the airplane that does it, this can be caused by an explosian. What caused the decompression, I didn't see an explanation for the cause of the decompression.

A failure of the pressurization system or a failure in the air conditioning system can also cause the aircraft's pressure to drop. Other slim but still possibilities would be a failure in the waste system or a failure in a small part of the fuselage due to previous damage or corrosion.

Personally I don't think it was terrorism, especially not a bomb. Pilots are trained extensively on how to react to sudden decompression; their oxygen masks can be donned in just a few seconds, and they know exactly what to do to safely get the plane down to a breathable level. But as other folks speculated today on the original live thread, a slow leak might have "snuck up" on them. Or maybe they didn't react appropriately. Or maybe something else happened. Until they go over those flight recorders, we won't know for sure.

Also, the plane was followed by F-16s for several minutes, and if there had been bomb damage, there's a good chance they would've seen it, especially since they got close enough to look inside the windows.

}:-)4

"Also, the plane was followed by F-16s for several minutes, and if there had been bomb damage, there's a good chance they would've seen it, especially since they got close enough to look inside the windows."

Yup. The passengers on the cell phones probably would have said something too.

"Messages from passengers aboard the doomed airliner seemed to back up the theory."

Didn't golfer Payne Stewart and all on his flight die from a sudden drop in cabin pressure some years ago? As I recall, the plane was enroute to Texas from some golf tournament in the northeast and crashed in South Dakota after flying on autopilot until it ran out of fuel.

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