The report concluded that the two pilots failed to competently operate controls regulating cabin pressure and misinterpreted a subsequent warning signs which led to the crash. It crashed at Grammatiko, north of the Greek capital.Īll 115 passengers - all Greek Cypriots and Greeks - and six crew were killed on the flight from Cyprus to Prague which is the deadliest air disaster in the history of Cyprus and Greece. His heroics were witnessed by pilots of two fighter jets sent up when Flight ZU 522 lost radio contact. His girlfriend a stewardess, was also on board. The remains of Mr Prodromou, who had trained as a pilot but been unable to secure a job, were found in the cockpit. This caused everyone aboard, except for the steward Andreas Prodromou, 25, to fall unconscious. The official report says technicians in Cyprus who were checking the decompression system - following problems on an earlier flight - forgot to switch on its automatic activation.īut once airborne, this omission was compounded when pilots forgot to check whether the system was switched on automatic or manual.Īs a result, the higher the plane flew the less oxygen was in the cabin. This turned the plane into a "flying tomb" at 34,000 feet as passengers were frozen to their seats by temperatures of minus 50c.Ī steward fought desperately to save the stricken plane after he found the pilot and co-pilot unconscious.īut after he too was overcome, the Cyprus-based Helios Airways plane ploughed on for nearly two hours on auto-pilot before running out of fuel and crashing into a mountain 25 miles north of Athens on August 14 last year. It blames the pilots for failing to spot the warning signs that led to the tragedy in which the Boeing 737-300 airline was hit by a catastrophic loss of cabin pressure and oxygen supply. Investigations said the passengers were alive but unconscious at the time of the crash, though some Greek officials believe many passengers froze to death during the flight.Human error by two pilots led directly to a packed passenger plane turning into a frozen "flying tomb" before it crashed - killing all 121 on board, the official report has concluded. The plane was out of gas and it crashed into a mountain outside of Athens. The 737’s pilots were slumped over their controls and passengers were wearing oxygen masks.Ī moment of hope emerged when a flight attendant, still conscious after using several crew oxygen containers, made his way into the cockpit and took the plane’s controls. Unresponsive to radio communication, the jet flew into Greek airspace, where two F-16s intercepted it. Even after oxygen masks dropped to passengers, the plane continued its climb. Instead, pressure started dropping 13 minutes into the Cyprus-to-Prague flight.Īlarms sounded onboard but the pilots, beginning to feel the effects of hypoxia, misinterpreted them. Investigations after the crash showed that the flight crew had several opportunities to notice and correct the setting, but they never did. The system was never switched back to auto.
HELIOS AIRWAYS MANUAL
The problem with this 737 began when ground crew set the plane’s pressurization system to manual to check a reported leak. Human error was the root of this terrifying 2005 ghost flight that crashed outside of Athens and killed all 121 people onboard. A Cypriot airplane belonging to Helios Airways plowed into a hill north of Athens on 14 August 2005, killing all 121 people onboard in the worst airline disaster in Greek history.
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