Greek Boeing Crash Puzzles the USA's Aviation Experts

[Manchurian Taikonaut]

U.S. aviation experts say they can't understand the behavior of the flight crew aboard a Cypriot airliner that crashed north of Athens after flying on autopilot for what could have been hours.
Early reports indicated the Helios Airways jet lost cabin pressure. Temperatures and oxygen levels would have plummeted and left everyone aboard unconscious and freezing to death as the plane flew on autopilot long before it crashed, experts said Monday.
But if there had been a sudden decompression, experts say, the pilots and the flight attendants for some reason didn't react the way they were trained to.
"It's odd," said Terry McVenes, executive air safety chairman for the
Air Line Pilots Association, International. "It's a very rare event to even have a pressurization problem and in general crews are very well trained to deal with it."

The plane was fairly new, a Boeing 737-300 delivered in January 1998, according to company spokesman Jim Proulx. The flight data recorder that came with the aircraft records 128 kinds of data about the plane, he said.
Investigators were sending the plane's data and cockpit voice recorders to France for expert examinations.

from the Associated Press

[Metricyard]

I've been following this story. There is alot of strange things happening here.
Co-pilot unconsioius at the wheel, pilot missing. Twilight zone material.

I'm wondering if the pilot bailed? :o

My woo-woo- 2 cents.

[kucharek]

All pilots interviewed on tv are puzzled about the missing dive manoeuvre after depressurization. My only idea is, that first the oxygen supply for the pilots failed, but this seems to be a pretty fail-safe system. Most nasty thing would be empty oxygen bottles for some reason, but this is highly unlikely.

BTW, as they wait for the results from the cockpit voice recorder: Isn't it recording just the last some minutes before crash. If the plane was really flying for hours on autopilot, could it be that nothing will be left on the voice recorder?

Some new facts:
-That "We are freezing"-SMS was a lie.
-First examinations showed that passengers were still alive at the time of the crash, no inhalation of toxic gases could be shown.

[Sammy]

Latest info (1AM EDT Aug 16) is that most of the passengers were unconscious or dead at the time of impact.

Experts on the local NBC TV outlet think that there was a gradual decompression, not a sudden explosive loss of pressure. That would explain the failure of the crew to initiate an emergency dive to lower altitudes.

Initial reports from Paris state that the voice recorder was heavily damaged and may not yield any data. Per the comment above, there may npt be anything on it anyway if the crew was unconscious and the craft on autopilot for an extended period.

[Enzp]

Even if they were unconscious, it still picks up cabin sounds. SOme could potentially be enlightening.

[jt-3d]

Most strange, if it was a gradual loss of cabin pressure they should have got an alarm at 10000 feet cabin altitude. If it was explosive they would have known and put on their masks. At 14000 the masks in the cabin should drop but if it didn't crash until a while later, the passengers would have run out of O2 by then and been dead. But if the captain was in the cabin at the time he would have used the passenger masks or a walkaround bottle to get back up to the cockpit and then used his own mask or even the walkaround until he got down below 11000. If the crew bottle was off, they are supposed to check their masks before taking off. If the pilots were both up there and unconcious, the flight attendants could have used the walkarounds and got into the cockpit, put the pilots masks on or at least got on the radio and got instructions on how to dial the autopilot down to 10000 or so which is just turning a knob.

Most strange indeed. Oh well, the facts will come out eventually so no need to speculate but this chain should prove most interesting.

EDIT: Ok so it sounds like they lost a pack shortly after takeoff which means they had no business at 30000 in the first place. If one was already inop then you fly unpresurized below 10000. If terrain was a factor then you don't go. This doesn't make any sense. Sure sounds like the fly boys screwed the pooch.

[sarongsong]

August 14
"According to early reports, the jet departed from Cyprus at 9 a.m. and lost contact with controllers at 10:30 a.m. Two Greek F-16 fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the aircraft, and one of the F-16 pilots reported abeam the airliner at 34,000 feet that he could not see the captain in the cockpit and the co-pilot appeared to be slumped in his seat, according to Reuters. The Associated Press reported that Greek government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said on a subsequent flyby, the F-16 pilots, "saw two people apparently trying to take control of the Boeing 737. It was unclear whether they were passengers or pilots."
AvWeb (http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/452-full.html#190367)

[Argos]

Did the F-16 pilots follow the plane until its final plunge?

[Eoanthropus Dawsoni]

Even if they were unconscious, it still picks up cabin sounds. SOme could potentially be enlightening.

Now the news reports are saying that they only have recovered the recorder containter, the recorder itself is missing. The conspiracy people are going to have fun with that one.

[Eoanthropus Dawsoni]

It is only 500 NM between Larnaca and Athens however the flight lasted three hours. This aircraft wandered around in the sky for two and a half hours after reaching Greek airspace, then crashed only 25 miles from where it had been headed. That is a bit odd.

[sarongsong]

August 16 (http://reuters.myway.com/article/20050816/2005-08-16T123538Z_01_KWA433859_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-CRASH-GREECE-DC.html)
"...if the plane had continued flying for just five more minutes Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis would have had to give an order to shoot it down...Pougrouris said his cousin [the co-pilot] had complained before the flight of "problems" with the aircraft..."He didn't go into it, but he also told me personally."..."

[Captain Kidd]

August 16 (http://reuters.myway.com/article/20050816/2005-08-16T123538Z_01_KWA433859_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-CRASH-GREECE-DC.html)
"...if the plane had continued flying for just five more minutes Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis would have had to give an order to shoot it down...Pougrouris said his cousin [the co-pilot] had complained before the flight of "problems" with the aircraft..."He didn't go into it, but he also told me personally."..."

The Greek government on Tuesday denied press reports stating that it was close to shooting down a Cypriot Boeing 737 before it crashed near Athens killing all 121 people on board.

[snip]

Roussopoulos on Sunday said the plane was considered an out-of-control "confirmed renegade" that could be shot down if it threatened to crash into a populated area.
But he said the government had "no such thought" of shooting down the aircraft, while a defence ministry source said "the question never arose".


Edit: Dangit I meant to preview not submit.

I heard on the radio that this particular plane had suffered a decompression issue a few weeks (month?) ago. But I'm failing to find any info on that now, too many articles on the missing recorder and people being alive (albiet unconcious) when it crashed. Anybody else seen/heard that?

[Maksutov]

Some 737s have had serious decompression issues. (http://www.aloha.net/~icarus/) Except for an unfortunate flight attendant, everyone survived this 1988 flight.

[NEOWatcher]

Some 737s have had serious decompression issues. (http://www.aloha.net/~icarus/) Except for an unfortunate flight attendant, everyone survived this 1988 flight.
I don't think we can count this one as a decompression issue. Decompression was a result of a problem, not the cause. It would be like saying Challenger had a decompression issue.

[The Saint]

The temperature is -50 degrees C at 30,000'. With an oxygen mask, clothing and a blanket, is this not survivable for at least 20 minutes?

At 30,000' cabins are usually pressurised to the equivalent of 6-8000'.

More speculation from DEBKA:

"Why was no lunch served aboard Helios airliner before it crashed? At what point were crew and passengers overcome?

Another question relates to the two mystery people reportedly observed in the cockpit at moment of the communications break-off between the airliner and Larnaca control tower early in the fatal flight. Were they passengers trying to save the plane after the pilots were incapacitated? Or possibly hijackers making sure the plane would not survive the flight?

The passenger list as released by the Cypriot police includes 103 Greek-Cypriot nationals, many of Armenian origin, and 12 Greeks. The pilot was German and the rest of the crew Greek. Most are presumed Christians, but Muslims who form 18% of the Cypriot population may have been among them. That is the third key question whose answer awaits identification of all the bodies, some by

DNA testing which takes 10 days for results.

Helios president Andreas Drakos admitted that a depressurization problem had occurred on a Boeing 737 Warsaw-Larnaca flight last December but stressed that the plane had been checked by the British authorities in London and the manufacturers and declared airworthy.

According to the evidence of the Greek coroner, 12 of the victims were alive when the Boeing came down but may have fainted.

A former Helios engineer Kyriakos Pilavakis told the investigation that loss of cabin oxygen is a common event. He said the pilots had a big tank full of oxygen under their seats. It was not connected to the passengers’ supply. Pilavakis did not believe the disaster was caused by decompression.

The investigators have still to question the two Greek air force F-16 pilots on their visual impressions of the doomed plane just before it crashed into a mountain north of Athens. They earlier reported they saw one pilot slumped in his seat and the second absent, and oxygen masks dangling over the motionless passengers.

The flight recorders may answer some puzzling questions which prompted the Greek army chief to say a terrorist hijacking cannot ruled out and which sent Mediterranean airports on hijack alert. The fragmentation of the plane into small bits of widely scattered debris suggests a possible explosion."

[kucharek]

Loss of cabin pressure is not a common event. But it is an event every pilot is trained for regularely.
The fragmentation of the plane into small bits of widely scattered debris suggests a possible explosion.
We are used to planes that crashed on low speed - as many accidents happen during take-off or landing or less or more under control of a pilot who tries to fight the crash. This time, it seems the plane went with cruise speed into a mountain. Much more kinetic energy involved. It's the same thing people don't understand when they asked where the wreckage of the plane that went into the Pentagon or down at Shanksville on 9/11. There are only small frgments due to the high impact speed, not because there was an explosion.[/code][/quote]

[Argos]

The fragmentation of the plane into small bits of widely scattered ebris suggests a possible explosion.

So, the F-16 fighters approached, took a look, saw that something was strange and turned back. :roll:

I thought it was reasonable to suppose that they would witness the crash from a privileged point of vantage.

[Melusine]

Some 737s have had serious decompression issues. (http://www.aloha.net/~icarus/) Except for an unfortunate flight attendant, everyone survived this 1988 flight.
I don't think we can count this one as a decompression issue. Decompression was a result of a problem, not the cause. It would be like saying Challenger had a decompression issue.
Thanks for sharing that anyway, Mak, I didn't remember that one (in fact, as I watched a program on MSNBC last week re two crash landings with survivors, I realized there are lots of crashes I don't remember). Gives a seat with a window new meaning..that would really freak me out. If I had been that passenger who saw the crack prior to boarding I would have said something--geesh.

This Helios jet crash is creepy--can't wait to hear more details. Now the crash in Venezuela....

[kucharek]

I'm sure we will soon hear from the woo-woos that the plabne was shot down by the F-16s - just as they shot that truck in Utah last week... :(

[Argos]

Why, for the sake of the stars, the F-16´s didn´t escort the plane right to the end? Am I missing something?

[kucharek]

FAIK they did. Escort the plane as long as it was flying.

[frenat]

Why, for the sake of the stars, the F-16´s didn´t escort the plane right to the end? Am I missing something?

Depending on where they had come from and how much fuel they had left after the intercept, they may not have had enough fuel to stick around.

[Argos]

FAIK they did. Escort the plane as long as it was flying.

So why the explosion conjecture due to the "fragmentation" of the plane? The fighters should be able to tell what happened.

[Gillianren]

yes, but that would mean letting Mr. Logic into the discussion.

[Melusine]

FAIK they did. Escort the plane as long as it was flying.

So why the explosion conjecture due to the "fragmentation" of the plane? The fighters should be able to tell what happened.

The News24 article said:
After circling the island of Kea southeast of Athens, the plane flew northeast of the capital before crashing after midday. That was nearly half an hour after two F-16 fighter planes intercepted it and reported seeing two people in the cockpit trying to take control.
So, they took off, though in all the articles I've read they haven't said why-maybe it was a fuel issue. They were close enough to see in the windows, but they can't stay that close in case the plane blew up, right? Seems odd, but they are pretty useless anyway except to witness the plane's demise. How long can F-16s fly?

[Argos]

FAIK they did. Escort the plane as long as it was flying.

So why the explosion conjecture due to the "fragmentation" of the plane? The fighters should be able to tell what happened.

The News24 article said:
After circling the island of Kea southeast of Athens, the plane flew northeast of the capital before crashing after midday. That was nearly half an hour after two F-16 fighter planes intercepted it and reported seeing two people in the cockpit trying to take control.
So, they took off, though in all the articles I've read they haven't said why-maybe it was a fuel issue. They were close enough to see in the windows, but they can't stay that close in case the plane blew up, right?

OK, but they could watch the events from a safe distance. We should have an account of what really happened by now. The fighters range (~350 miles radius in combat, so they say) is something to consider, but was there only 2 fighters for the action? A crucial bit of info is lacking, imo, for the delight of the woo-woo´s.

[Melusine]

On AirDisaster.com they have an AP article where they say:

A witness described the instant the airline smashed into the 1,500-foot-high mountain, flanked by the F-16s. "We saw some fighter jets flying very low and after a few minutes we heard a very loud noise and saw pieces of the plane flying in the air," said Spyros Papachristou.
http://www.airdisaster.com/news/0805/15/news.shtml
Various articles are saying slightly different things; best to wait until the investigators are through.

Edit to add: Great, there's was one ad above-

Overcome Fear Of Flying
Have Your Fear Gone In Minutes With This Breakthrough Technique!
banza.ii.net/fear-of-flying
:roll:

[Fram]

AFAIK, the fighter planes stayed with the plane till the end. The article Melusine quoted says they intercepted half an hour before the crash, but I can't get from that quote that they left after that. They probably stayed with it. This view gets reinforced by the statements of the Greeks (can't remember who, a minister I believe) that if the plane would have flown for five more minutes, they would have shot it down (as it was approaching densely populated areas).

[Fram]

More speculation from DEBKA:
[SNIP]
The passenger list as released by the Cypriot police includes 103 Greek-Cypriot nationals, many of Armenian origin, and 12 Greeks. The pilot was German and the rest of the crew Greek. Most are presumed Christians, but Muslims who form 18% of the Cypriot population may have been among them. That is the third key question whose answer awaits identification of all the bodies, some by

DNA testing which takes 10 days for results.

"

Wow, a few objections. First of all, the equation they implicitly make here that terrorists have to be Muslims (and even worse, vice versa) is stupid (to put it mildly). The Greeks, like many other people, have had their share of Christian terrorists in the past. Of course, if it would turn out to be an Al Qaeda style plane bombing, chance are that it are Muslims, but to state it like they do in the article is rather prejudiced.

Secondly: how are you going to determine if someone is a Muslim by DNA testing? Either the passengers are those as mentioned on the passenger list, and you can deduce their religion from there (indirectly, via research), or they boarded under a false name, and you'll never know (or at least not by DNA testing).
The only thing I can imagine is that if those two passengers where still in the cockpit at the time of the crash, and this can be seen from the wreckage (position of the bodies and so on), then you can perhaps deduce who they were and if they were Muslim. A long shot and very poorly expressed in the article (because it doesn't need identification of all the bodies of course), if that was their intention...

[Laguna]

How long can F-16s fly?
In combat about 850km.
Assuming they saved their fuel, maybe they could fly 1000km?

[Maksutov]

Some 737s have had serious decompression issues. (http://www.aloha.net/~icarus/) Except for an unfortunate flight attendant, everyone survived this 1988 flight.
I don't think we can count this one as a decompression issue. Decompression was a result of a problem, not the cause. It would be like saying Challenger had a decompression issue.
Well, the cause of the Aloha Airlines accident was metal fatigue, but the resulting decompression issue was a real problem for the passengers and crew.

Re "saying Challenger had a decompression issue" wouldn't be that far off. The causes of course were faulty SRB field joint design and lack of management action when the effects of this bad design became evident.

But, when the right SRB severed its lower strut and rotated into the ET intertank, the result was a severe decompression of the ET liquid oxygen tank. The liquid hydrogen tank had already been breached by the field joint plume and was decompressing. One result of this decompression was the liquid hydrogen tank moving forward into the intertank and contributing to the liquid oxygen tank rupture.

What is commonly referred to as the Challenger "exploding" was more accurately a burn of the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen freed by the decompressions and resulting aerodynamic breakup of the ET, as well as the reaction control system and orbital maneuvering system hypergolics burning when the orbiter broke up due to excessive aerodynamic stresses.

[jt-3d]

And again, if this was a sudden decompression, the crew would have known about it and put on their O2 masks much the same as the Aloha crew did. And it wasn't an issue once the pressure was equalized. They just had to fly a broken airplane...carefully.

You seem to want to hijack the thread so you can argue symantics. Aloha and Challenger have nothing to do with this. Not that I care. I don't even like this thread.

[Melusine]

You seem to want to hijack the thread so you can argue symantics. Aloha and Challenger have nothing to do with this. Not that I care. I don't even like this thread.
:o I just thought the "I don't even like this thread" was an odd thing to say. I'm wondering what you have against the thread. :)

Fram, I don't know why I read that article that way, but it does appear that the fighter jets stayed with the plane, so Argos you can stop wondering about that.

[Argos]

AFAIK, the fighter planes stayed with the plane till the end. The article Melusine quoted says they intercepted half an hour before the crash, but I can't get from that quote that they left after that. They probably stayed with it. This view gets reinforced by the statements of the Greeks (can't remember who, a minister I believe) that if the plane would have flown for five more minutes, they would have shot it down (as it was approaching densely populated areas).

Yes, I suppose it´s true. What annoys me is the careless description of the events by the press. I would like to hear something like: "The Air Force informed that the pilots escorted the plane until its final plunge". That would leave no room for hoaxes. The reporters made the fighters vanish in the air.

[jt-3d]

You seem to want to hijack the thread so you can argue symantics. Aloha and Challenger have nothing to do with this. Not that I care. I don't even like this thread.
:o I just thought the "I don't even like this thread" was an odd thing to say. I'm wondering what you have against the thread. :)


Simple, everytime one of these things happens everybody starts speculating before the fires are even out, as to what happened. Wait for the data to get gathered, these things take time. All the speculating in the world isn't going to hurry the investigation.

And while you might call my few posts speculating, I do have 19 years in the business so I'm just offering my knowledge to counter all the 'OMG CNN says' posts.

[NEOWatcher]

Some 737s have had serious decompression issues. (http://www.aloha.net/~icarus/) Except for an unfortunate flight attendant, everyone survived this 1988 flight.
I don't think we can count this one as a decompression issue. Decompression was a result of a problem, not the cause. It would be like saying Challenger had a decompression issue.
Well, the cause of the Aloha Airlines accident was metal fatigue, but the resulting decompression issue was a real problem for the passengers and crew.

Let's just disagree on the use of the word "issue"... Just another one of those context things. In your original post, you make it sound like decompression was the cause of the problem. Decompression is a problem(issue) but to say that the "737's had a history of decompression" is where I disagree.

[publiusr]

I think they had better do some good screenings on the folks who maintain their fleet. Why take over a plane when you can finger tighten a widget so it fails in flight?

[Sam5]

AFAIK, the fighter planes stayed with the plane till the end. The article Melusine quoted says they intercepted half an hour before the crash, but I can't get from that quote that they left after that. They probably stayed with it. This view gets reinforced by the statements of the Greeks (can't remember who, a minister I believe) that if the plane would have flown for five more minutes, they would have shot it down (as it was approaching densely populated areas).

Yes, I suppose it´s true. What annoys me is the careless description of the events by the press. I would like to hear something like: "The Air Force informed that the pilots escorted the plane until its final plunge". That would leave no room for hoaxes. The reporters made the fighters vanish in the air.

Right. I just looked over some news reports and they all seem to be unreliable. The BBC said all passenger's bodies were frozen on impact and all passengers were dead on impact. Reuters said most passengers survived until impact. Another report said the F-16s saw two pilots slumped over their controls, then during a later fly-by only one was slumped over the controls and two people were trying to fly the plane, maybe passengers. So I think the news reports have been unreliable.

[Manchurian Taikonaut]

amazingly officials said 16 passengers in the tail section of the 737-200 Survived the horror in Medan, Indonesia’s third biggest city.
at least 147 people were killed yesterday when a Boeing 737 plunged into a busy Indonesia residential area
- Relatives of victims of last month's Helios Airways crash in Greece have filed a lawsuit in the United States against the Cypriot airline, its holding company Libra Holidays and Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer, three law firms said on Friday.
Three US-based law firms said they had filed a lawsuit on Thursday in the Superior Court of California on behalf of three Cypriot families that lost a total of 11 relatives.
The legal action seeks moral and material compensation for the wrongful death of the victims, as well as for the injuries they suffered.

[Lianachan]

Wow, a few objections. First of all, the equation they implicitly make here that terrorists have to be Muslims (and even worse, vice versa) is stupid (to put it mildly). The Greeks, like many other people, have had their share of Christian terrorists in the past. Of course, if it would turn out to be an Al Qaeda style plane bombing, chance are that it are Muslims, but to state it like they do in the article is rather prejudiced.

Secondly: how are you going to determine if someone is a Muslim by DNA testing? Either the passengers are those as mentioned on the passenger list, and you can deduce their religion from there (indirectly, via research), or they boarded under a false name, and you'll never know (or at least not by DNA testing).
The only thing I can imagine is that if those two passengers where still in the cockpit at the time of the crash, and this can be seen from the wreckage (position of the bodies and so on), then you can perhaps deduce who they were and if they were Muslim. A long shot and very poorly expressed in the article (because it doesn't need identification of all the bodies of course), if that was their intention...

I thought that too, and had been going to post about it until I saw your post.

[Monique]

I thought that too, and had been going to post about it until I saw your post.
Seem bad time for Muslims in America and Europe. <sigh> Is unfortunate :(

[sarongsong]

September 7, 2005 (http://iht.com/articles/2005/09/06/news/crash.php)
"The crew members of a Cypriot airliner that crashed Aug. 14 near Athens became confused by a series of alarms as the plane climbed, failing to recognize that the cabin was not pressurizing until they grew mentally disoriented because of lack of oxygen and passed out...Complicating the cockpit confusion, neither the German pilot nor the young, inexperienced Cypriot co-pilot could speak the same language fluently, and each had difficulty understanding how the other spoke English, the worldwide language of air traffic control..."