Cyprus mourns airline disaster
Financial Mirror, Cyprus
Aug 15 2005
15/08/2005
Cyprus started three days of official mourning Monday as the island
recovered from Sunday’s disaster when all 121 people were killed on
board a Cypriot airliner that crashed on its approach to the Greek
capital Athens.
What should have been a celebration, marking the second holiest day for
Greek Orthodoxy, the holy day of ‘Panayia Theotokou’ (the Virgin Mary,
Mother of God), turned into a day of prayers as bells chimed somberly
and the faithful started their annual pilgrimages to monasteries with
a heavy heart.
Being a traditionally close-knit society with a population of 700,000,
everybody had a relative or friend that died in the tragic crash.
Complete families were wiped out as most of the travelers, as many as
48 of whom were reportedly children, had embarked on their holidays
to Greece or were expected to continue on the Helios Airways scheduled
flight to Prague, Czech Republic.
The eastern seaside town of Paralimni declared 40 days of mourning
as four families of four had been killed in the disaster with the
municipality announcing it would undertake the cost of the burial
and would help with the recovery of the remaining families.
One other family of five left behind the sole survivor, a 20-month baby
boy, who had suffered a fever and stayed home with his grandparents.
Another family of four shocked the island’s small Armenian community
as they traveled together for the first time, with their 12-year-old
son boarding his first flight.
Relatives of the air crash victims were also flown to Greece Monday to
help in the grueling task of identifying the remains of their loved
ones, many of whom were charred beyond recognition and needed blood
samples to match their DNA.
Even though the tragedy dominated the front pages of the Monday
newspapers, the local media were screaming at the incompetence of the
airline as well as the civil aviation authorities that could not give
out a list of passengers, even though 24 hours had elapsed. This was
expected to happen later in the day.
The responsible Minister of Communication refused to heed to calls by
local television stations that the young private airline be grounded,
at least in order to show an initial sympathy to the relatives of the
victims and to instill confidence to the rest of the airline travelers.
“We have to follow procedures as set out by international aviation
regulations,” said Minister Haris Thrassou.
“Panayia mou (Oh, Holy Mother), I lost three children” wrote the daily
Politis on its front page. “Why, Panayia mou” pleaded a mother through
the daily Alithia, adding that this was a Black Holy Day, while the
Simerini newspaper read “Cyprus mourns, whole families wiped out.”
The top circulation daily Phileleftheros has already been chided by
the morning television and radio shows for its gruesome display of
charred bodies strewn on a hillside on its broadsheet front page,
at a time when families had yet to identify their relatives.
The media have also reflected on public pleas for information and that
an investigation of the circumstances that surrounded the mysterious
crash be concluded promptly and with transparency.
On the other hand, calls for resignation have been directed at civil
aviation authorities that granted the leased Boeing 737-300 its air
worthiness certificate, while the general public outcry demanded that
the airline be shut down.