Doomed Cypriot airliner ‘had suffered earlier decompression problem’

Peter Woodman

In Cyprus, a former chief mechanic for Helios told Greek state television the plane had pressurisation problems during a flight to Warsaw, Poland, in December 2004 that caused the oxygen masks to deploy.

Kyriakos Pilavakis, who said he resigned in January, spoke after giving a six-hour statement to a prosecutor. “Shortly before landing at Larnaca airport, the plane had a problem with depressurising in the cabin. The emergency procedures were followed. The oxygen masks were released and the plane landed at Larnaca,” he said.

The Cypriot airliner’s pilots reported air conditioning system problems about a half-hour after takeoff, and Greek state TV quoted Cyprus’ transport minister as saying the plane had decompression problems in the past.

But a Helios representative said the plane had “no problems and was serviced just last week”. The plane was built in 1998 and delivered to Helios in April 2004, the company said.

In Cyprus, Kyriacos Pougrouris, a cousin of co-pilot Pambos Charalambous, said his relative was called with two hour’s notice to help fly the doomed plane when the scheduled co-pilot was unavailable. Pougrouris said his cousin had complained before the flight of “problems” with the aircraft.

“Pambos told his mother twice in the last week that there was a problem with the plane, not the same kind of problem as you have with a car that you can pinpoint easily,” Pougrouris said.

Police ended a search of offices of Helios Airways for evidence in case of a criminal investigation into the flight from Larnaca in Cyprus to Prague with a stop in Athens.

It also emerged that emergency services were put on stand-by at a British airport after a Helios 737 jet reported mechanical problems the day before the Greek crash.

The pilot of the scheduled service from Larnaca, Cyprus, radioed problems with the plane’s flaps before coming in to land at Birmingham Inter-national Airport on Saturday.