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Cabin staff struggled to control crash plane
EFL: The cabin crew of the Helios Airlines plane that crashed in Greece on Sunday tried to bring it under control but could do nothing to save the aircraft, it was disclosed yesterday. Video footage retrieved from the nose cones of the F16 fighter planes scrambled to accompany the stricken Cypriot aircraft showed a man and a woman enter the cockpit, said Greek media reports. They were thought to be a newly-trained pilot standing in as cabin crew and his stewardess girlfriend. The stewardess was seen in the captain's seat, while the first officer remained unconscious in the right-hand seat. The couple wrestled in vain with the controls of the Boeing 737, Greek military sources said.
Didn't know how to turn off auto-pilot
. All 121 passengers and crew died when the plane plunged into a hillside north of Athens during a flight from Larnaca. Autopsies on 26 bodies, including the co-pilot, showed they were alive but not necessarily conscious when the plane went down. Earlier reports suggested that all on board may have frozen to death before the crash.

Cypriot television said many of the bodies retrieved were still wearing oxygen masks. Once the masks had been released, prompted by a drop in pressure, the cabin crew would have expected the plane to descend immediately from 34,00 ft to a breathable altitude below 15,000 ft. Aviation experts believe that when this failed to happen cabin staff entered the cockpit, aware that the flight crew's emergency oxygen supply was limited. But with the pilots incapacitated the attendants lacked the skill to fly the airliner or even to make a mayday call.

Experts said that by this stage the jet would have been beyond the range of the Cyprus control centre in Nicosia - the last frequency tuned on the radio. Even if the cabin crew had been familiar with the radio they were unlikely to have known how to tune either to Athens control or international emergency. Back in the cabin, the passengers' oxygen supply was dwindling.

Helios Airways admitted yesterday that the crashed aircraft had experienced a decompression problem in the past. A statement on the airline's website said the incident occurred on a flight from Warsaw to Larnaca last December and the plane "landed in accordance with normal procedures". Helios went on to say that the incident was cleared at the time by the Cypriot air accident investigators and Britain's Civil Aviation Authority, which did not question the aircraft's maintenance.

The authorities at Birmingham International Airport, meanwhile, said that a day before the crash in Greece another Helios Airways Boeing 737 had reported difficulties with its wing flaps. Emergency services were deployed but the plane landed safely.
Next time I fly in Europe it's Lufthansa all the way.
A Greek man was yesterday charged with disseminating false information after police said he falsely claimed to have received a text message from a passenger before Sunday's crash. Nektarios Voutas, 32, said he had received a mobile phone call and changed the wording of the supposed text in different media interviews. His arraignment was delayed after he tripped outside the public prosecutor's office and had to be treated for face injuries in hospital.
"tripped", is that Greek for "beaten"?
Greek aviation officials yesterday expressed doubts over whether the crash aircraft's black box voice recorder would be recovered. Capt Akrivos Tsolakis, the head of the Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Safety Board, said that only the cover of the recorder had been retrieved. This was badly damaged, so it was unlikely that the contents, if found, could reveal much about the flight's last moments. In Cyprus, demands for explanations for the accident from grieving relatives were becoming louder.
Posted by: Steve 2005-08-17
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=127033