Victims may have died before crash( Passengers frozen solid! )

CNN ^ | 08/15/2005 | CNN

[devane617]

ATHENS, Greece (CNN) -- Investigators were working to determine why a Cypriot plane apparently suffered a catastrophic loss of cabin pressure and slammed into a Greek mountain -- possibly with all 121 people on board already dead. All but two of the bodies have been recovered, a Greek government spokesman said Monday, and officials hope autopsies and cockpit recorders will hold clues to Sunday's crash of Helios Airways Flight 522. The autopsies were ordered to determine if the 115 passengers and six crew were already dead or oxygen-starved before the crash, the spokesman said. A Greek Defense Ministry source with access to the investigation told Reuters that most of the bodies recovered were "frozen solid."

[Americanchild]

My suspicious mind wants to know why these people in the cockpit weren't trying to radio a control tower. Wouldn't a non-pilot want help being talked down?

[OldFriend]

The plane was on auto pilot and circling for an hour before the jets scrambled to see what was wrong.

[Fog Nozzle]

And yet TWA 800 climbed 3000 (?) feet with the cockpit sheared off?

A question - how often during a flight of 3 or more hours is the pilot in touch with controllers?

[PAR35]

The passenger drop masks would be useless without an emergency descent.

There are a couple of small portable O2 tanks in the passenger compartment of most planes, making it possible for a flight attendant or passenger to extend his or her breathing time until overcome by cold.

Wild speculation on my part, but my present guess is that the pilot's supplemental O2 supply didn't work, taking him out before the passengers. If he put on his mask when the instruments indicated a decrease in pressure, but while the air was still breathable, he could have gone before the passengers. Again, that is wild speculation without any factual support.

[Semper Vigilantis]

Hey! Show some respect for your local security screeners, folks! ;-)

[maestro]

...I gotta admit, while Occam's Razor says this is just a mechanical failure (possibly compounded by pilot error?), when I heard "Cypriot airliner crashes in Greece," terrorism was the first thing I thought of. Greece and Turkey have had a long, long dispute over Cyprus, and there have been a lot of terrorist incidents over the years (including, I think, at least one airliner bombing)....

?hush,hush,...?

and,.....how many 'right-wing' orthodox priests of various countries on board,...not to mention the 'Czhe___'-Moscow-_______ connections,...and...

:-(

[Heatseeker]

Thanks Moose. I've surfed around and several sites say the 737-300 was first produced in 1984, though that certainly doesn't mean this particular airframe is that old.

[Heatseeker]

My suspicious mind wants to know why these people in the cockpit weren't trying to radio a control tower. Wouldn't a non-pilot want help being talked down?

I sure would! (Humor is probably inappropriate here but I can't resist thinking of Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett in "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World".) But perhaps they didn't know how to operate the radio?

[maestro]

I don't think that the pilots had any time at all...

:-(

[mware]

If there was a breach in the aircraft than it would have only gotten -30 but the oxygen would have been minimal.

When Paine' plane was breached they died from lack of oxygen besides the freezing temperature.

I believe they probably died from that before freezing.

[devane617]

Sometimes I wonder why I wonder about God. Now I know.

[Boundless]

> ... my present guess is that the pilot's supplemental
> O2 supply didn't work, taking him out before the
> passengers.

And he might have gone to get the cabin bottle.

> If he put on his mask when the instruments indicated
> a decrease in pressure, but while the air was still
> breathable, he could have gone before the passengers.
> Again, that is wild speculation without any factual
> support.

A key question here is: why didn't this crew make an
emergency descent to 10K when they first noticed cabin
alt problems? Another speculation: this had happened
before, and the crew thought they knew how to fix it.
Except this time the problem was different/more severe.

We await the DFDR and CVR data, unless those didn't
work either, which would be rather damning evidence of
criminal negligence in the maintenance dept.

[maestro]

....."the maintenance dept."

.....the maintenance departMENTS...worldwide?

or,....just local?

[maestro]

....my question is What kind of valves are (could be) involved...?

?...a wrongly designed valve may not be 'able' to work properly once 'used'....?

:-(

[NASBWI]

"It will be interesting to learn the age of the aircraft. Boeing 737's have been in production longer than any other A/C model."

The 737-300/400/500 series have been flying since 1984, but this particular aircraft (so I read elsewhere) was actually relatively recent, having been built in 1997. I also read that apparently this aircraft had a history of decompression problems. If I can get my hands on the link, I'll post it - I believe it was at www.airliners.net though.

[Calvin Locke]

...cold bodies in rigor mortis for "frozen".

When a body assumes room, er, ambient temperature, it goes through "algor mortis". Rigor, livor, and algor morti(sp?)
used to be the tools of the trade in determining the time of death of a recently deceased body. Not useful in this
instance...

[Zavien Doombringer]

IMHP - Fight 800 was not because of structure or fuel cell problems.

The sudden loss of cabin pressure was due to the struture failure brought on by a foriegn object damage - ie a missle struck the aircraft....

Answer - Depends on the pilot... some like "fly" other like to "sit"

[Zavien Doombringer]

to finish... Flight 800 continued to clime because the only way to shut off an aircraft jet engine is to shut off the fuel.

It quit flying because aerodymanics was comprimised, to much drag.

[Heatseeker]

Oops - just saw a CNN report via airliners.net that "The body of a woman flight attendant was found in the wreckage of the cockpit".

If so, that would argue against my didn't-know-how-to-work-a-radio hypothesis.

[spetznaz]

bump