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Crash: Pilot not in his seat
16/08/2005 07:34 - (SA)
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| The tail of a Cypriot airliner is seen as investigators carry plastic bags at the crash site where the aircraft slammed into a hill, in the coastal town of Grammatiko, Greece. (Thanassis Stavrakis, AP) |
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Patrick Quinn
Athens - Investigators into the jetliner carrying 121 people which slammed into a hillside north of Athens were unable to determine why the pilot was not in his seat shortly before the crash.
The pilots of two Greek air force F-16 fighter planes scrambled to intercept the plane after it lost contact with air traffic control shortly after entering Greek airspace said they saw the co-pilot slumped over the controls. The pilot did not appear to be in the cockpit, and oxygen masks were seen dangling in the cabin.
The fighter jet pilots also saw two people possibly trying to take control of the plane; it was unclear if they were crew members or passengers.
The plane might have run out of fuel after flying on autopilot, air force officials said, asking not to be named in line with Greek practice.
Passengers alive when plane went down
At least half a dozen people aboard were alive when the jetliner went down, Athens' chief coroner said on Monday after conducting the first autopsies from the crash.
But Fillipos Koutsaftis could not rule out that the six people were unconscious when the Helios Airways Boeing 737-300, with six crew and 115 passengers, plunged 10 400m on Sunday into a mountainous area near the village of Grammatiko, 40km north of Athens. There were no survivors.
"We have performed autopsies on six people. Our conclusion is they had circulation and were breathing at the time of death," Koutsaftis said, but stressed: "I cannot rule out that they were unconscious."
Investigators, to be joined by US experts, were sending the plane's data and cockpit voice recorders to France for expert examinations that could shed light on what happened.
But the head of the Greek airline safety committee, Akrivos Tsolakis, said the voice recorder was damaged. "It's in a bad state and, possibly, it won't give us the information we need," he said.
Police raid airline's offices
In Cyprus, police raided the offices of Helios Airways in the coastal city of Larnaca, near the international airport.
A search warrant was issued "to secure... documents and other evidence which could be useful for the investigation into possible criminal acts," Cyprus' deputy presidential spokesman Marios Karoyian said.
After the crash, authorities said it appeared to have been caused by a technical failure - resulting in high-altitude decompression. A Cypriot transport official had said on Sunday the passengers and crew may have been dead before the plane crashed.
"They had circulation and were breathing - so they were alive - but of course that only concerns the people that have been examined. The others, according to a preliminary observation, show the same signs, but the autopsies must be carried out to confirm this," Koutsaftis said late Monday outside Athens' main morgue.
- SAPA
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