“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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