Plane may have been hijacked (GREECE)

news24.com ^ | 8/14/05 | N/A

[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.

[drlevy88]

Autoland would be a nice thing to have, but the system would have to be hackproof.

[Smokin' Joe]

Cold has been mentioned, but telephone keypads don't work very well below 20 degrees F or so. I used to have to put my handset on the defroster (bag phone) in the winter to get it warm enough to work. (older van, more space than heat).

[Gunrunner2]

Yes. Rokke is being sacastic. Rokke is well-known fighter pilot/commerical heavy driver and has lots of credibility here on FR. Puking Dog as well.

[Gunrunner2]

>>I'm talking about airliner crashes world wide.

NTSB doesn't have those numbers, and I'm not sure anybody does. <<

ICAO and other aviation organizations, here and abroad.

[Gunrunner2]

Thanks for the excellent observation reference ATC.

Please let us know what the INFORMED commentators are thinking.

[redgolum]

Very interesting.

Did you remember the early reports that there was text messaging from someone on the plane? That and this morning I heard that a few of the passengers were alive at the time of the crash.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Especially since one news article mentions that a passenger text-messaged a relative before the crash that the pilots were unconscious...

the "receipient" of that "message" has been arrested and has admitted thathelied about receiving it.

[Gunrunner2]

Post 222.

Text message was a hoax.

[redgolum]

Thanks! I just read that a few minutes ago on another site.

Kind of makes me wonder why someone would do that though.

[redgolum]

Dang, for some reason my last post didn't have come through with any words!

What I said was Thanks! I had just heard about the fake message a few minutes ago on another site. Kind of makes me wonder why someone would fake that.

And a thought about the black box. If this airline had shoddy PM, maybe someone took the FDR out and sold it for cash?

[bill1952]

Have to disagree. - That isn't exactly how they hijacked those birds.

How about ten large muscular dudes with razors totally bent on mass murder?

Sure, one guy isn't going to last long (Richard Reid)
but a bunch of them would be very formidable indeed.

Give me 9 chosen and trained buds with razors and I'd bet on us.- It could be done if the crew isn't armed.
I have to go with the abundance of caution concept here, even if it's to prevent some drunken Ahole from going ballistic with a weapon.

BTW, I met some of the passengers from that flight that Reid tried to blow up at a Club Med in Florida where they were vacationing.

The doctor who helped subdue him, and pumped him full of something to sedate him was a fat bald older dude with glasses.

When I asked him how he had the "balls" (that didn't translate very well) to attack him, he replied: "What else could we do? Die?"
I have to say, I was impressed, and that would certainly bolster your point about passengers taking action.

[Pukin Dog]

The point I was trying to make(that I hesitate to make) is that razor blades wont get you into the cockpit. We have been trained to insure that no matter what is going on behind that door, we are not to open it. It doesn't matter if terrorists are killing every one of you back there, the pilot is not going to open that door, and the aircraft is not going to be sent crashing into a building.

The airlines wont say it, so I will: You, the passenger, is expendable.

[bootless]

Thanks, and I will do it when I get a chance. Work, as usual, is getting in the way. One of the regular members, btw, is a former Northwest AL captain/accident investigator.

[bootless]

"What else could we do? Die?"

Nailed it. Thanks for sharing that.

[r-pogo]

The tinfoil hat case.

There are two issues everyone is trying to connect: the pilots failure fly the plane and decompression.

It might be too big of a leap to connect these two since logic suggests decompression was not the cause of the pilots failure to fly the plane. If there was gradual decompression over time the onboard alarms and deployment of the cabin O2 supply would have alerted the pilots and they would have taken emergency action. Under these circumstances one could not see how the pilots would be incapacitated or ignore the emergency. If the decompression was rapid then the pilots would have immediately taken emergency action or, if unable to do so, would have gone unconscious and death would have followed in minutes not hours. This however does not explain the medical examiner reports that some passengers were alive on impact -- clearly indicating that the decompression was not, in fact, fatal as one would expect. If there was rapid decompression then the passengers, with only 12-20 minutes of O2 would have all died shortly after the pilots, at lest in the time frame that the F16 reported that the 02 masks had been deployed. This suggests that the pilots died by some other means. How would one otherwise explain how some passengers survived and the flight crew did not?

If we ignore the decompression issue what do we have:

The flight crew failed to respond to air traffic control for over an hour and a half. The aircraft was apparently on autopilot and the flight crew never took any emergency action. The copilot was observed slumped over in his seat. The pilot was no longer visible on the flight deck. "Somebody else" was observed at the controls attempting to take control of the plane.

Anybody have a guess as to what this sounds like?

[Rokke]

In order for the tinfoil hat case to work you have to make certain assumptions and ignore certain realities. First, you have to assume something incapacitated the pilots other than a malfunctioning O2 system. It could have been hijackers, except if it were, they were incredibly inept. They made no radio transmissions, they obviously didn't know how to fly the aircraft, and nobody has claimed responsibility for the accident. You would think that if a hijacker was effective enough to kill the crew, he would have a follow on gameplan other than silently orbiting at 35,000 until the aircraft ran out of gas. So you can surmise the pilots were incapacitated by "someone", or you can surmise the pilots were incapacitated by a lack of 02. Since the pilots never communicated a problem of any sort, they may not have been aware they had a problem until it was too late (ie they were unconscious). Since the emergency O2 systems for the cabin and the cockpit are separate, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the passengers' worked and the pilots' did not. Hence, the aircraft flew on autopilot with nobody at the controls (pilots, terrorists or passengers) until it ran out of fuel and crashed.

Either way, I'm sure the final report will be interesting reading.

[eleni121]

"I am done trying to explain to you that your ignorance on a topic..."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Who's ignorant here - I am asking questions and trying to figure things out unlike you who have everything figured out. Actually you are playing fast and loose with the facts as we know them and are being less than helpful.

You may have experience in flying but you are jumping the gun in explaining what happened in Toronto and especially what happened over the skies of Greece in the Cypriot airliner.

Regarding Toronto from CNN:

They (authorities) were quick to add that it was too soon to determine whether the long landing on the 9,000-foot (2,700-meter) runway, combined with torrential rains and gusting winds, was to blame for the crash on Tuesday, which all 309 people on board survived.

[bill1952]

You, the passenger, is expendable.

Agreed.

Actually, part of my point would be that since that is the case, then no knives should allowed.

They are truly expendable, to my min, along with every other type of possible weapon that comes to mind.

Who needs to have such things in the carry ons, anyway?

[princess leah]

WHO was on that flight? Check the flight records - bet someone's name appears that will turn up to be of some significance on this war on terror...maybe a dry run with the wrong outcome for the terrorist.