Gerassimos Kalpoyannakis - Let's see how many more announcements this person will be allowed to make in the future .. like .. none?
They are already covering up (ahem, not even trying to disclose) the F-16 facts in US web media.
Has there been any word on a passenger list? Nationalities?
We have two friends and each of their families traveling through Greece right now.
This may have been discussed and I just missed it, but I have a question:
If both pilots passed out due to lack of oxygen, why didn't the passengers pass out too?
Wonder if it was shot down.
One report has this:
"Although there are precedents for both pilots losing consciousness at the controls of 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.
Quite extraordinary and highly suspicious.
Our heartfelt sorrow to the families of the departed. May the Lord comfort the living and bless the dead with His love.
I seem to remember a recent terrorist warning that there were going to be attacks in London, Italy, and Greece.
Has anybody checked the maintenance crews who worked on this aircraft ..??
Greece crash plane may already have been flying tomb
ATHENS (Reuters) - A Cypriot airliner that crashed in Greece may already have been a flying tomb when it plunged to earth with some of the 121 people aboard already either dead or unconscious, early indications suggest.
Sunday's crash, the worst air disaster in Greece and the worst involving a Cypriot airline, perplexed aviation experts astounded by what appeared to have been a catastrophic failure of cabin pressure and or oxygen supply at 35,000 feet -- nearly 10 kilometers (six miles) up, higher than Mount Everest.
There was also mystery over the last minutes of the Helios Airlines Boeing 737 flight which was declared "renegade" when it entered Greek air space and failed to make radio contact, causing two F-16 air force jets to scramble to investigate.
All 115 passengers and six crew died, most burned beyond visual recognition, when the plane, with neither pilot in control, spiraled down in a death dive into a mountainous area about 40 km north of Athens.
The plane was on a flight from Larnaca in Cyprus to Prague with a stop in Athens. An airline spokeswoman and Greek authorities denied some media reports that many of those on board were children.
Airport officials in Cyprus said flight HCY522 left Larnaca at 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) on Sunday and lost contact at 10:30 a.m.
Greek Defense Ministry officials said 90 minutes elapsed between the alert first being raised at 10:30 a.m. and the plane crashing at 12:03 p.m.
Greek government spokesman Theodore Roussopoulos said the F-16 pilots sent to investigate reported that with the pilots out of action there may have been a last-gasp effort by others on the plane to bring it back under control.
"The situation was characterized renegade, meaning the aircraft was not under the control of the pilots," Roussopoulos told reporters, explaining how the crisis unfolded after the plane failed to make radio contact.
"At a later stage, the F-16s saw two individuals in the cockpit seemingly trying to regain control of the airplane," Roussoupoulos said.
"The F-16s also saw oxygen masks down when they got close to the aircraft. The aircraft was making continuous right-hand turns to show it had lost radio contact."
A passenger on the doomed plane said in an SMS text to his cousin in Athens: "The pilot has turned blue. Cousin farewell, we're freezing."
CHARRED BODIES
Reuters photographer Yannis Behrakis reported from the crash site that dozens of bodies were still strapped into their seats, some with the remnants of oxygen masks over their faces.
"Two charred bodies were still hugging each other," he said.
The plane broke into many pieces on impact, with the two engines 500 meters away from each other, the cockpit a further 200 metros away and the tail broken off a further distance away.
Greece's defense ministry said it suspected the plane's oxygen supply or pressurization system may have malfunctioned.
Loss of cabin pressure was identified as the probable cause of two similar but smaller-scale air crashes in recent years.
Pro-golfer Payne Stewart and five others were killed when their Learjet aircraft crashed in the United States in 1999 after flying for more than four hours without radio contact.
In 2000 a plane crashed in Australia after flying for more than an hour from 25,000 feet up with no sign of life on board.
Experts told Reuters it was extremely rare for a plane to lose oxygen, and that emergency systems should have kicked in.
"The pilots should have had their masks on," a retired British pilot who did not wish to be named told Reuters. "Why they didn't put them on is the big mystery."
"A loss of pressurization in the cabin is in itself a rare event but to go as far as it incapacitates the pilot is hugely rare," the retired pilot said.
Greek media speculated a toxic gas from possible faulty air-conditioning could have incapacitated the two pilots before they knew they were in danger.
One of the F-16 pilots said he could not see the captain in the cockpit and his co-pilot appeared to be slumped in his seat.
A spokesman for the European Aviation Safety Agency, Daniel Holtgen, based in Cologne, Germany, said the cause of the crash was likely to be a combination of factors:
"It is highly unlikely that the loss of cabin pressure alone would cause such an incident. There would have to be other contributing factors."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050814/ts_nm/crash_greece_dc_17
I see the tin hat crowd is out. How about just plain de-pressurization? The crew had passed out and the temp inside was very very cold. Phone message seems to confirm the theory.
But if you all are happy with terrorists, so be it. But don't speculate.
Of course the scrawl on TV quoted some Greek official "no terror" literally as the first reports came out.
No sense speculationg when the Black boxes have been found and will provide enough info to rule this in or out.
ping
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
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
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. . .
I think I smell the stench of Islamopukes (pig poop be upon them).