Posted on 08/14/2005 4:49:17 AM PDT by Gorons
Athens - A Cypriot Boeing 737 airliner with 121 people on board from Larnaca, Cyprus, crashed apparently pilotless on Sunday near Athens, a traffic controller at Athens international airport told AFP.
Just before the crash, airforce crew observed the airline's pilots doubled up in the cabin, the controller said.
A spokesperson for the Greek army chief-of-staff said hijacking "could not be ruled out".
"An act of piracy is likely," said the spokesperson, Gerassimos Kalpoyannakis. The pilots of the two F16 fighters that were sent up to escort the airliner before the crash "saw a situation that was not normal in the pilots' cabin."
Kalpoyannakis said the plane crashed at Varnava, an uninhabited area about 40 kilometres northeast of Athens and not on the Euboea peninsula as previously reported by the Athens control tower.
He said teams of rescue workers, fire-fighters and ambulances were on their way to the scene and that all the hospitals in the region had been placed on emergency status.
There was no immediate word on casualties.
"The plane has crashed," said Iannis Pantazatos, who was in charge of the Athens airport control tower. "The information was given to us by the air force, which sent two fighters to escort the aircraft."
Shortly before the plane crashed, Pantazatos told AFP: "The airport lost all contact with the plane, which should have landed in the late morning, and two air force planes sent up in reconnaissance found it flying above the Euboea peninsula, but they saw the pilots doubled up in the cabin."
"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." he said.
The Helios airways plane was reported to be carrying 115 passengers and six crew.
Helios, established in 1999, is the first private airline in Cyprus. It had a fleet of four Boeing 737 jets and operated flights to London, Athens, Sofia, Dublin and Strasbourg in France.
Toronto was easily explainable: the weather.
Cypriot flight: remains bizarre and perplexing
Yeah. You're right. Toronto is easily explainable. It is very common for commercial airliners to drive off the end of runways when it's raining out. Hundreds of rainstorms at airports all around the world at any given moment, and airplanes are sliding into the ditch at every one of them. Forget about the automatic landing systems that allow aircraft like the A340 to safely land in zero visibility with 30 knot crosswinds without a pilot ever touching the controls. Forget about redundant radars and windshear sensors on the aircraft that give the pilots plenty of warning and time to respond to dangerous weather. Forget about the fact that any Air France pilot senior enough to fly a widebody aircraft on transatlantic flights has thousands of hours and years of experience landing in lousy weather. Forget all of that because it makes perfect sense why that airplane crashed in Toronto. There was just some bad weather. Funny we haven't seen an investigation report on that one. Maybe you should get in touch with the investigating team and tell them you've got it all figured out.
Nevermind. I am done trying to explain to you that your ignorance on a topic does not mean that one of the greatest mysteries to hit civil aviation in decades is what caused this 737 to go down. Just be prepared for a bit of a letdown when the investigation is completed and it turns out this accident was nothing more than a tragic result of human made and maintained mechanical systems failing.
Oh they didn't wait for that news. The claims of cover up started before the fires were out. It HAS to be a cover up. Obviously since all the facts aren't already laid out like a Greek mosaic providing us with a perfect picture of exactly what happened to that airplane...IT'S A DAMN COVER UP!!! Worse yet, it is being covered up because this was OBVIOUSLY the result of some terrorist act. And the NWO is just covering up the acts of Islamofascist terrorists. Everyone knows airplanes just don't crash unless the shoebomber's brother sets off a bomb that causes the airplane to crash while magically leaving no trace an explosion ever happened. It's a cover up all right. It's got to be.
Oh by the way...this is just between you and me but I heard the reason the 737 went down was because it was in the process of spreading chemtrails across Greece. The spray equipment malfunctioned and directed the passivity chemicals right into the cockpit. Oh, and one more thing...it is all Bush's fault.
Man you REALLY need a tin hat. The Toronto plane was an accident. Truly step away from your computer and get a grip. Geesh not EVERYTHING in the world is an act of terrorism. It is really scary that you believe the bs that you are posting. Hopefully you were being sarcastic or something.
Accidents DO happen you know.
lol you hit the nail on the head with some of these people! That was funny. The sad part is that there are so many posters that seem to buy into every conspiracy theory out there.
A possibility here:
Maybe the pilot had ALREADY LEFT HIS SEAT inorder to explore some solution when the reason/need to don the oxygen appeared...such that he was caught unawares (out of his seat, out of reach of the oxygen mask).
He MIGHT have left his seat to try to repair or remedy whatever might have been a problem, is my point, and THEN the emergency that prompted donning the oxygen mask occured.
That would explain the pilot not being in his seat, not being in the cabin (I haven't read if he was IN the cabin or not, just that he was not in his seat), and if that event then occured, the copilot would be as was wearing his oxygen mask and in the cabin but unconscious...with others trying to wrestle the plane under control.
I think there's not yet enough information to speculate about the various positions the crew and cabin crew were seen to be in from the F-16's.
I'll bet they had the fish...
Yeah. More like on the lines of "something".
Excellent observation...I hadn't thought about that, the locked cabin door, how anyone outside that locked cabin would be able to know how the pilot appeared.
Interesting.
I'm not talking about private plane crashes in the U.S.
I'm talking about airliner crashes world wide.
NTSB doesn't have those numbers, and I'm not sure anybody does.
In 2004, for example, the Chechen Islamokazis took down two Russian airliners on the same day. I don't remember or know how many other airline crashes worldwide there were that year, but I certainly remember those two.
When I hear major airline crash, the first cause that comes to mind is rabid islamic fanatics. It's unlikely that I'm the only person who thinks that way.
When I hear of a bombing in a subway, pizza parlor, bus, super market, school, or other soft civilian target, the first cause that comes to mind is rabid islamic fanatics.
Coulda been IRA, or neo-nazi skinheads, but the first cause I think of is the moozies.
You can disagree, but I don't think that qualifies me for a tin hat.
So am I. And the numbers are easily found on the internet. Try www.airdisaster.com. It lists every commercial accident from 1950 to 2005. So far in 2005 alone, there have been 16 commercial aircraft accidents. Exactly none of them were due to terrorist attack. In 2004 there were 28. The only two you remember were the only two attributed to terrorism. So were up to 2 out of 44 in less than two years. Keep moving backwards and you won't see anything dramatically different.
ping
Jumping in here late, by as you get into the high altitudes, icing is very possible, even in August over Greece. The temp drops as the altitude increases (called the lapse rate), and if there's moisture (a cloud), icing is possible.
The temperature on the ground is only a starting point for the ultimate temperature at altitude.
Hey Gunrunner...
Just got here (only a weenie PPL, but that's something). I'll be checking on Avsig.com in the morning to see what some preety dang knowledgeable line pilots have to say.
Speculation is somewhat useful, but the noise to signal ratio is usually pretty high.
And yes, "communicate" is LAST in the Oh $#!t list. What IS ATC really going to do for you? Hit the Autoland button? :-)
Just a tidbit of info here... I'm sure unrelated to the Air France of today. My father was an airline pilot for 33 years, retiring in 1979. He would not fly Air France after he saw a F/A bring martinis to the cockpit during a flight (this must have been the 1950s). Yikes!
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