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.
"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."
August 16, 2005 -- Where was the captain? That's the question authorities were looking to answer yesterday in the mysterious crash of a Cypriot airliner that went down in the mountains north of Athens, killing 121 passengers and crew.
He wasn't seen in the cockpit when a pair of F-16s scrambled to intercept the 737 that lost contact with the Athens control tower Sunday — possibly after losing cabin pressure at 34,000 feet.
And investigators — who have now exposed the text message from a freezing passenger as bogus — have yet to find the pilot's body amid the wreckage strewn across the hillside.
Authorities yesterday said all but two bodies were recovered from the crash site. Captain Martin Hans Gurgen, 58, of Berlin, was among the missing — after mysteriously disappearing from the cockpit during the flight's last, crucial minutes.
When the pilots of Helios Airways Flight 522 did not respond to air traffic control, two Greek pilots scrambled to the rescue in F-16s. They saw the co-pilot slumped over in his seat, and oxygen masks dangling in the cabin.
The F-16 pilots made a second pass, and still found no sign of the captain. Instead, they saw two people desperately struggling with the controls. They could not tell if the two were passengers or crew members.
excerpt =
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/51943.htm
From Edmonton Sun:
"But two fighter-jet pilots who scrambled to intercept the plane saw the co-pilot slumped over, oxygen masks in the plane dangling, and two unidentified people trying to take control of the plane. The pilot was not in his seat when the plane crashed, about 2 1/2 hours after the crew first radioed in air conditioning problems."
Very bizarre incident - here is an article that confirms the bizarre nature of the crash:
"It's odd," said Terry McVenes, executive air safety chairperson for the Air Line Pilots Association, International. "It's a very rare event to even have a pressurisation problem and generally crews are very well trained to deal with it." "
More at
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1754580,00.html
One of which is the pilot's body.
hmm
Major news now reporting that medical examiner says copilot was alive at time of impact. Seems odd that the depressurization at 35,000 ft would not have been fatal unless his O2 mask was working. If it was working why was he out and why did he not earlier take emergency action or respond to ATC (after 90 minutes)?
Very Strange....
Was the pilots name D.B. Cooper?
Was the pilot's name D.B. Cooper?
Officials said Tuesday that a stewardess's body was found near the remains of the cockpit, along with the co-pilot. The German pilot's body has still not been recovered.
In Cyprus, the private Antenna television station reported that one of the cabin crew, Andreas Prodromou, was a trained pilot, and that he and girlfriend Haris Charalambous, a stewardess, had been provisionally identified from video footage shot by the F-16s of the struggle for control of the cockpit.
"Athens, Greece - Officials said on Tuesday they had found only the exterior container of the cockpit voice recorder from a Cypriot airliner crash that killed 121 people, hampering investigative efforts into the accident's cause."
The pilot whose body has not been found was a former East German pilot:
http://toronto.cbc.ca/cp/world/050816/w081650.html
This whole thing is weird, if they don't ever recover the voice box I will go out and buy some Reynold's wrap & fashion myself a tin foil beret.
Just a few months earlier another terrorist incident on board a BA flight from Cyprus occurred. I wonder if maybe this tragedy was more "successful".
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/output/2005/05/11/newsstory7117450t0.asp
Well, I just reviewed our entire dialogue and I can answer that question in one word...You. Several posters have tried to explain things to you in a variety of ways and each explanation just sails right over your head. There is absolutely nothing I've said that isn't true or that I didn't preface as a theory. Unfortunately, I don't think there is anything anyone could say that would be simple enough for you to understand. It has been reported today that the two people seen in the cockpit were a stewardess and a pilot in training. If you are still wondering how they could be functioning while the pilots weren't please reread the multiple attempts by several posters who tried to explain to you how the pilots could be incapacitated while the passengers weren't. And if those explanations still don't make sense to you, please just accept the fact that you will never understand the answer and move on.
Actually, I have to agree with you here. It was a bit like trying to explain physics to a dog. Pretty much a worthless waste of time.
Worth noting. This story is two days old as I come to it today, but when I first heard that passengers were in the cockpit it made me skeptical of the rest of what we're hearing.
This sounds like a bunch of Demrats using the smoke and mirrors methodology. . .
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