1/27/2024 0 Comments Helios airways flight 522![]() However, Mr Irwin wants the case reopened and his colleagues cleared. The three executives were given the option to avoid a 10-year jail sentence by paying €73,000 ($116,843) each, which they all did, the Cyprus Mail reported. They were found guilty of manslaughter with conscious negligence, a misdemeanour.Ĭhief engineer Alan Irwin, the fourth defendant, was found not guilty. That includes Helios director Demetris Pantazis, flight operations director Andreas Kikkides and chief pilot Ianko Stoimenov. In February 2013, three of the four defendants involved in a case brought about from the disaster were convicted in an Athens court. The families were paid an undisclosed amount when the case was settled out of court.Ī Boeing spokesperson to the Guardian of the case: “The Greek Air Accident Investigation & Aviation Safety Board and the Greek courts independently found that the direct causes of the accident were a failure to follow standard operational procedures.” In 2007, the families of eight passengers who perished in the crash filed for €76m ($125m) in compensation from Boeing, for having “the same alarm in place for two different types of dysfunction”, according to their lawyer. The tail of a Cypriot airliner is seen as investigators carry plastic bags at the crash site. Even with them on, these masks aren’t powerful enough to sustain consciousness for long. Had the flight crew realised the significance, they should have immediately donned their oxygen masks”.Ī sudden decompression at 30,000 feet and above can plunge temperatures inside the cabin below zero degrees, making people hypoxia and could reportedly result in them losing consciousness in 10-30 seconds without their oxygen masks. Later, it was concluded that the crew had “reacted to the warning horn as if it had been a takeoff configuration warning. To which Irwin said they were behind his seat, and the call ended. “He said, my cooling light is off,” Mr Irwin told The Guardian, to which he had replied “Well, they’re meant to be”, because there are two equipment cooling fans and if they fail, the light turns on.Īccording to the accident investigation report, Irwin asks the captain to confirm the pressurisation panel was selected to “auto”, to which the captain said “where are my equipment cooling circuit breakers?”. The flight had taken off, when around 6.12am the warning horn sounded, and two minutes later the captain contacted the airline’s operations centre, and spoke to chief engineer Alan Irwin. One pilot had also reportedly complained of problems with the airconditioning on-board. Debate followed over whether or not it had been switched back to “auto”, but the engineer was found not guilt of manslaughter in a later court case. Investigators probing the crash found out that when the aircraft arrived from London earlier that morning, the previous crew had reported the door seal was frozen, along with some unusual noises heard from the right aft service door.Ī pressurisation leak check was performed by a ground engineer, who had switched the pressurisation system to “manual”. Helios Airline grounded its entire fleet after the incident. Sophia and Ioanna Xiourouppa pictured with their brother George, who was not on the plane. The doomed flight was the worst air crash in Greek history, and became known as a “ghost flight”. ![]() They also reported seeing two other people desperately attempting to gain control of the plane, while emergency oxygen masks dangled in the passenger cabin.įor 90 minutes after the alert was raised, the plane flew on until it ran out of fuel and crashed in a mountainous area 40 kilometres north of Athens, at 12.03pm, killing everyone on-board. They could not visualise the captain his seat was empty. The fighter pilots saw the co-pilot slumped over the controls in the cockpit, motionless. Two Greek F-16 air force jets were scrambled to investigate the situation, and they reported witnessing a disastrous sight over the Aegean Sea. The 737 plane continued on autopilot, and was declared “renegade” when it failed to make radio contact upon entering Greek airspace. Flight 522, which was scheduled to fly from Larnaca to Prague via Athens, included passengers from Greece, Cyprus and Australia.ĭuring the flight, the crew became incapacitated due to what investigators later discovered was a loss of cabin pressurisation. ![]() It was early on the morning on August 14 when 121 people boarded the Helios Airways Boeing 737 plane. On this weekend back in 2005, tragedy struck a passenger plane near Greece.
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