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Cypriot plane crash 'puzzling'
16/08/2005 11:56 - (SA)
Washington - United States aviation experts say they cannot 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 cabin lost pressure. But if so, experts say, the pilots and the flight attendants for some reason did not react the way they were trained to.
"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."
Unexplained events
The fighter pilots saw the airline pilot was not in the cockpit, the co-pilot was slumped over his seat and oxygen masks dangled from the ceiling, government spokesperson Theodoros Roussopoulos said. He said the air force pilots also saw two people possibly trying to take control of the plane, flying at 10 363m.
It is that sequence of events that puzzles aviation experts.
Warnings should go off if an airliner suddenly loses pressure, and pilots are trained to immediately put their oxygen masks on and dive to about 3 658m, where there's enough oxygen for people to breathe, they say.
The chief Athens coroner said at least six of the victims were alive at the time of the crash.
Clues to the puzzle
The pilots did not report any windows out or holes in the fuselage, the most likely causes of a catastrophic loss of pressure, said Bill Waldock, an aviation safety professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona.
Another clue to a sudden pressure loss would have been frost on the windows because it's so cold at 10 363m, said Waldock.
If the fighter pilots could see into the cockpit, the windows could not have been iced over, as they were in the 1999 crash of a Learjet 35 that killed golfer Payne Stewart and four others.
Paul Czysz, emeritus professor of aerospace engineering at St Louis University, says the co-pilot "couldn't have been unconscious for a small decompression at 34 000 feet (10 363m)", Czysz said. "Something's amiss."
The pilot and the co-pilot would have had five times as much oxygen as the passengers, he said.
"Even if the pressurisation system was failing, it doesn't fail instantaneously. Even if it goes fast, you've got all the oxygen in the cabin to breathe, you've got the masks and you've got plenty of time to get to 12 000 feet (3 658m)," he said.
Jim Hall, former chairperson of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said it is possible the oxygen in the cockpit failed. "The accident did not have to occur," said Hall. "It has to be either a training issue or an equipment issue."
He's worried the answer will not be found because the cockpit voice recorder probably recorded over itself after 30 minutes. Since the plane was in the air on autopilot for so long, it probably will not provide any information, he said.
- AP
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