I'm rather "paranoid" myself. ;)
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.
Icing... it happens all the time in August over Greece.
Yeah, Greece is funny like that.
It used to be when a plane crashed, you worked from the assumption that the most probable cause was pilot error, followed by mechanical failure, and finally by malicious intent. Nowadays, the ROPers have stood these assumptions on their head, and one should presume that Islamakazi a$$holes are responsible for any plane crash until proven otherwise.
Have you ever read this article?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12387
"From Russia With Terror"
Interview between Frontpage Mag and Ion Mihai Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service.
He tells how Russia prodded the middle east to use airplanes as a means of hijacking, etc.
Very interesting story ;)
This happened right before the crash correct? Someone else said that EVERYONE was freezing. Which is correct, or was this a strong willed person who lasted long enough to TM then whatever? Also, why no report of terrorist onboard if so by this person? Sabotage on the ground I'd assume. It came from Larnaca, Cyprus.
"In the late 1960s, a new element was added to the Soviet/PLO war against Israel and American imperial-Zionism: international terrorism. Before 1969 came to an end, the KGB's Thirteenth Department-known in our intelligence jargon as the Department for Wet Affairs, wet being a euphemism for bloody-invented airplane hijacking. The KGB constantly lectured at us that no one within the American/Zionist sphere of influence should feel safe anymore. The hijacked airplane became an instrument of Soviet foreign policy-and eventually the weapon of choice for September 11, 2001."
I'm rather "paranoid" myself. ;)
Can't go to the cockpit. The cockpits is locked and now thanks to 9/11 it is very soundly locked.
That was me that posted that, and I've been rooting around for information in other places; take it with a grain of salt, but other postings I've seen on other boards indicated that the escorting F-16s may have seen oxygen masks deployed (indicating depressurization) and that either the F-16 pilot, or a passenger--I've heard both versions--reported that the pilot's face was "blue".
It almost certainly wasn't a bomb, because the plane flew along at cruise altitude for some period of time, probably on autopilot, with no visual damage that the escorting fighters could see and no contact with air traffic control, hence the fighters. So Occam's Razor says that it's a pressurization problem (which would also explain the "frozen" bit...it's pretty darn cold up there at 34,000 feet). But pilots are trained in what to do when that happens, and there's two of them up in the front of that 737. And if the cabin pressure alarms go off, the first thing they're supposed to do is put on their own masks...the second is to get the airplane the hell down to 14,000 feet or lower as fast as they safely can. EVERYTHING else is secondary, because at those altitudes, hypoxia will turn anybody into a blithering idiot in mere seconds, and knock them out cold seconds after that.
It may not be terrorism. It may just be a mechanical failure compounded by pilot error. I seriously doubt it was a 9/11-style hijack, or a bomb; if there was foul play involved, my SWAG is that it would have to have been on the maintenance side. But we won't know until the investigators get to the crash and start digging through the wreckage.
All we know for sure right now is that a helluva tragedy just went down.
}:-)4
I'm a pilot, and everything that you wrote makes sense.
I'm waiting for some more clarity from the authorities before assuming anything more, but the news points reported don't make sense when taken together.
Yet this passenger, at least, knew the condition of the pilots? That's what is so strange. Unless, of course, the person writing the TM was not as "passive" as we all believe...
" ... But separate press reports that militants had been detained were denied by the police yesterday."
Thanks for the links.
Even in a privately-owned Greek airliner?
Heard a report on this on AmericaRight on XM, while driving home from the airport this morning. Just got back from the West Coast on a redeye. Their report mentioned the pilots being doubled up or hunched over, as viewed by the F-16 pilots.
I guess I'll go read the other thread now.
From that site:
German news station n24 just reported about the incident.
Eyewitnesses (including the F16 pilots) reported that the a/c smashed into the mountain with full speed. Debris are spread widely over the crash site.
The pilot obviously reported problems with the aircondition after takeoff in Larnaca, but the problem was considered to be rather harmless.
And then the news lady applied for the Pulitzer price when she declared that a technical failure can be excluded, and the only explanation is that hijackers entered the cockpit and shot the pilots down...
Another:
Reports of "air conditioning problems" are rather odd given the crew obviously became incapacitated. Had there been a real problem the crew would immediately don oxygen masks as a precaution whilst reporting the problem.
Lack of oxygen, whilst it quickly befuddles, doesn't immediately incapacitate and there are very definite procedures to be followed. There have been cases of Lear Jets (one US, one German) where the air conditioning/oxygen failed and the crew passed out BUT these were at cruise levels above 36,000 and there was no notification from the crew.
Given that this aircraft seems to have impacted a mountain, unless the voice recorders give some more info, the post mortems will be critical to answering what looks to be a rather odd set of circumstances.
Well, if the stuardess couldn't reach them on the intercom and couldn't get them to open the door, then a reasonable person might assume that they were unconcious. If this were the case, one would expect more than one communication from the passengers though.
Islamofacists will take credit for this, whether they did it or not, so that really can't be the key.
Hopefully, more facts will be forthcoming. I'm not saying anything other than that airplanes did crash before islamists started bringing them down.
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