Firefighters worked Sunday near the tail of the Helios Air Boeing 737 that crashed and broke apart in the mountains near Grammatikos, Greece.
Posted on 08/15/2005 6:06:27 AM PDT by OESY
...Aviation experts were perplexed, saying it was rare for a plane to crash because of depressurization.
"Although there are precedents for both pilots losing consciousness at the controls of the aircraft in the past, for it to happen on a large airliner like a Boeing 737, with all the backup systems they have there, does seem to be really quite extraordinary," said Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence....
Airliners are pressurized by a system that draws air from the engines, which compress air for internal use. A valve at the back of the plane determines how fast air is let out of the fuselage.
Aviation experts say that depressurization is rare, and that when it occurs, a warning horn sounds in the cockpit, and crew members are supposed to put on oxygen masks and descend to 10,000 feet, where there is enough oxygen for humans to function even in a depressurized aircraft.
In October 1999, a Learjet carrying the golfer Payne Stewart and five others crashed in South Dakota after flying hundreds of miles on autopilot. Air Force pilots who shadowed the jet reported that the cockpit windows were iced over, a sign of depressurization.
After the investigation of that crash, a doctor with the National Transportation Safety Board said pilots' cognitive ability could fade away quickly when oxygen was limited, often faster than they realized.
Another source of incapacitation can be smoke or fumes in the cockpit. If the problem is not obvious from the wreckage, it may be discerned from tests on the blood of the victims, which will show what they were breathing before they died.
The cockpit voice recorder is likely to capture the sound of the warning horn, if it sounded, and conversation between the pilots about the problem....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I think I heard this a.m. that the bodies were frozen solid?
That's what they reported on Fox News this morning.
Did anyone blame Bush yet?
Those air bags/mask that drop down during lost of pressure will not work properly above 30,000 ft. A little inside info the guy said.
Can someone tell me how the bodies can freeze solid in such a short time?
Frozen SOLID? A human body, even a dead one, holds a LOT of heat energy. Think of how long it takes a 4-lb. roast to freeze in a freezer.
I can believe the passengers froze to death, i.e. died of hypothermia, but if they're frozen SOLID it's time to call in Agent Mulder and Dr. Who to investigate.
Guess I better carry my own Oxygen supply and stay at a Holiday Inn Express.
That's what was being reported.
Above 30,000 feet the outside temp is about 55 below. If that was being circulated through the cabin it doesn't take long. They may have even been freeze dried.
When I traveled last week, the reported outside temperature at 32,000 ft was -50F.
...I'm bringing a jacket next time.
That can't be right.
Some things here just do not compute. We will have to wait for the experts to sort out things.
He probably meant they wouldn't work if the cabin pressure was lowered far enough to be equivalent to the air pressure at 30,000 feet - but depressurization is usually gradual, not instantaneous, unless there is a big hole in the plane.
I'm sure there must be a Freepert, Freeper Expert, that might know for sure?
And wouldn't everything not nailed down get sucked out of the hole?
Not necessarily, I think. If the heat system to the cabin failed, the temperature in the cabin would drop very fast, epecially if the pressurization ws still operating. The outside air at 35,000 ft can be -50 degrees, easily.
Yes, and the F-16 pilots didn't say anything about seeing a hole. Sounds more like a pressurization malfunction coupled with an oxygen system malfunction - an unusual combination that was probably the result of shoddy maintenance by a third-rate discount airline.
Maybe they don't supply enough O2 flow if the cabin pressure is above 30,000 feet?
The more I hear about this accident, the weirder it gets, and the less I think terrorism was involved. No pilot in the cockpit, co-pilot unconscious or dead, reports of two other people in the cockpit (passengers? attendants?) before the plane crashed. Odd.
One other thing I'm wondering about is how far away from Athens the plane was when it crashed. If it ended up like Payne Stewart's Learjet and crashed after running out of fuel, seems to me it would've gone a pretty good ways beyond Greece if it was flying on autopilot. I wonder if passengers or crew went up front and tried to "fly" it and wound up accidentally crashing it instead. Or maybe it wasn't on autopilot and the crew was hand-flying it. Once they start deciphering the recorders, that's when the answers will come out.
}:-)4
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