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Cypriot co-pilot 'was alive'
16/08/2005 13:58 - (SA)
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| A man reacts as he leaves the Athens morgue following the Cypriot airline crash near Athens. (Petros Giannakouris, AP) |
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Athens - The autopsy on the body of the co-pilot of a Cypriot airliner that crashed in Greece shows he was alive when the plane went down, private Greek television channel Mega reported on Tuesday.
Coroners were conducting autopsies on a total of 26 bodies that had been identified by relatives. The Helios Airways plane crashed on a mountain north of Athens with 121 people aboard on Sunday, and there were no survivors.
Pilots of two Greek F-16 fighter jets that intercepted the plane after it lost contact with Greek air traffic controllers had reported seeing co-pilot Pambos Haralambous slumped over the controls in the cockpit, apparently unconscious, shortly before the plane crashed. The plane's German pilot was not in the cockpit.
Autopsies on a total of at least 20 bodies, including that of a flight attendant, have shown they were all alive when the plane went down, coroner Nikos Kalogrias said.
But coroners have stressed they have not been able to determine if the crew and passengers were conscious when the plane crashed.
Chief Athens coroner Fillipos Koutsaftis was expected to later make a statement on the autopsy of co-pilot Pambos haralambous.
Kalogrias, one of a team of seven coroners, said the autopsies showed that those autopsied so far had their hearts and lungs working. A flight attendant was also alive, he said.
"The attendant was alive and died of injuries" sustained in the crash, he said.
Kalogrias said the attendant's body "appears to have been found near or inside the cockpit."
Coroners conducted the first six autopsies on Monday, and Kalogrias said that by early Tuesday afternoon, they had almost completed examinations of all 24 bodies identified by relatives - including that of Haralambous.
Pilots of two Greek F-16 fighter jets that intercepted the plane after it lost contact with Greek air traffic controllers had reported seeing the co-pilot slumped over the controls in the cockpit, apparently unconscious, shortly before the plane crashed. There was no sign in the cockpit of the plane's German pilot, and his body has still not been found.
- AP
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