Cyprus plane crash victims “frozen solid”
By Brian Williams and Karolos Grohmann | August 15, 2005

Reuters, UK
Aug 15 2005

ATHENS (Reuters) – Most of the bodies recovered from a Cypriot plane
that crashed near Athens with 121 people on board were frozen solid,
a Greek official said, suggesting the airliner was a flying tomb
before it plunged to earth.

As accident investigators combed the crash site for clues, aviation
experts were baffled at what appeared to have been a catastrophic
failure of cabin pressure or oxygen supply in freezing temperatures
at 35,000 feet — nearly 10 km (6 miles) up, higher than Mount Everest.

One expert said reports of extreme cold suggested there was no air
circulating in the cabin.

“Autopsy on passengers so far shows the bodies were frozen solid,
including some whose skin was charred by flames from the crash,”
the Defense Ministry source, with access to the investigation, told
Reuters on Monday.

The Helios Airways Boeing 737 was carrying 115 passengers and six
crew when it crashed 40 km (25 miles) north of Athens on Sunday.
There were no survivors.

Rescue workers recovered the body of the pilot, a German identified
as Martin Hans Gurgen, and said they had found the plane’s black box
flight recorders, including the one that records pilot conversations,
and would send them to France for analysis.

The recovery of the black boxes is crucial to determining the cause
of the worst air disaster in Greece and the worst involving a Cypriot
airline.

Greek TV reported on Sunday that the pilot had told air traffic
controllers the plane was experiencing problems with its air
conditioning system shortly before contact was lost.

A passenger list released by Cyprus’ Transport Ministry showed a family
of four Armenians living in Cyprus, 12 Greeks and 104 Cypriots were
killed in the crash. There were 17 children under the age of 16 on
board, the youngest aged 4.

Relatives of some victims were on their way from Cyprus to the crash
site to start the grim task of trying to identify loved ones.

At Larnaca airport in Cyprus, from where the doomed plane took off,
crew and passengers on Monday refused to board an aircraft belonging
to Helios Airways, the state-run Cyprus News Agency reported.

About 100 passengers due to fly from Larnaca to Sofia demanded to
travel on planes of other airlines. “First the crew refused to board,
then the passengers,” the agency said.

But a Helios spokeswoman denied a Cyprus Transport Ministry statement
that its planes had been grounded.

The Mediterranean island of Cyprus started three days of mourning with
flags at half mast in a long weekend holiday that is the busiest of
the summer for Greeks and Cypriots.

TERRORISM RULED OUT

The plane was on a flight from Larnaca to Prague with a stop in
Athens. Greek authorities ruled out any hijacking or terrorism links
to the crash.

The flight was declared “renegade” when it entered Greek air space and
failed to make radio contact. Two F-16 air force jets were scrambled
to investigate and reported that the co-pilot was slumped in the
cockpit and the pilot was not visible.

Defense Ministry officials said 90 minutes elapsed between the alert
being raised and the plane crashing at 12:03 p.m.

Greek government spokesman Theodore Roussopoulos said the F-16 pilots
reported that with the pilots out of action there may have been a
last-gasp effort by others on the plane to bring it back under control.

“The F-16s saw two individuals in the cockpit seemingly trying to
regain control of the airplane,” Roussoupoulos said. It was not known
if they were passengers or other crew.

“The F-16s also saw oxygen masks down when they got close to the
aircraft. The aircraft was making continuous right-hand turns to show
it had lost radio contact.”

A passenger on the doomed plane said in an SMS text to his cousin in
Athens: “The pilot has turned blue. Cousin farewell, we’re freezing.”

Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence, told Reuters:
“When he talks about being extremely cold, that really suggests that
there was possibly no air circulating in the cabin at all.”

Other questions included how the plane appeared to fly for so long
with the pilots unconscious or dead. Media speculated it was on auto
pilot and crashed when it ran out of fuel after being in the air for
twice the scheduled flight time.

The Defense Ministry said it suspected the plane’s oxygen supply or
pressurization system may have malfunctioned, which could have led
to death within seconds for all on board.

Loss of cabin pressure was identified as the probable cause of other
similar but smaller-scale air crashes in recent years.

Golfer Payne Stewart and five others were killed when their Learjet
aircraft crashed in the United States in 1999 after flying for more
than four hours without radio contact.